Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 130255 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 651(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130255 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 651(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
“Right now, Ellie, you are the only thing I’m sure of.”
His words echoed in my mind, and I fisted my t-shirt where I had my arms crossing over my body. If I’d written them, I’d know exactly what they meant.
But I hadn’t written them.
I’d heard them.
And I…
Well, bugger.
I didn’t know what they meant at all.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
ELLIE
Just Another Day
The glaringly harsh sound of a call coming through my laptop made me pause and look up at the screen right as Alexis Rose proclaimed her iconic line of, “Ew, David!” on the TV.
Meg’s name was flashing on my laptop screen with the request for a video call, and it was the last thing I wanted to do right now. I wanted to stay here, painting my toenails in my little hole of melancholy and guilt.
Unfortunately, I knew my best friend better than that.
With a groan, I leant forwards and tapped the green button to start the call. “Hey. What’s up?”
“I figured it out!” Meg’s face was terrifyingly large on the screen. “I know how Rose and Yvonne are connected!”
I blinked, doing a double take. “Can you sit back? You just put the fear of God in me appearing on the screen like that.”
“Sorry.” Meg moved away from the camera. “I figured it out!”
“I got that. What you figured out is what I want to know.”
“How they’re related.”
I paused, almost letting nail polish drop in a big pink gloop from the brush onto the carpet before I quickly put the brush back in the bottle and secured it, instead leaving my right foot half unpainted. “Yvonne and Rose?”
“No, Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men,” she snarked, grinning. “I found out this afternoon.”
I held out my hands. “Well?”
“Rose is married to Yvonne’s nephew.”
My eyebrows shot up.
“Yup. It’s her sister’s son Rose married, too, so they’re super close. And that’s not all.” She leant even closer to the camera until her face filled the screen once again.
It was a whole lot scarier with her wide eyes gazing into my soul, let me tell you.
“Well?” I asked after a moment when she didn’t speak.
“Hang on. I’m screen sharing.”
She was doing a lot of sharing, mostly with her freaky-arse gaze, but I digress.
The camera box blinked, and I narrowed my eyes at the document on the screen. “What is that? A court document?”
“Yep. So it turns out that Yvonne’s sister was just prosecuted by the Department of Work and Pensions for a false disability claim,” Meg explained. “She’s basically bankrupt and is now living with her son and Rose, so Yvonne is trying to get Rose a new deal so they can help her get out of their house. It’s only a small two-bedroom place and they’ve been trying to have a baby, something they’ve stopped since she’s moved in with them.”
I blinked at the screen. “How the fuck do you know all this?”
Meg appeared back on my screen and tapped her temple. “I am a genius.”
“Meg!”
She sighed, sitting back. Finally. “I did some… Internet… digging into Yvonne.”
So it was questionable at best, illegal at worst.
Nothing I hadn’t done as a writer, to be honest.
“That’s how I ended up finding out about her sister. Honestly, the Rose connection was a total fluke because they were pictured going to court with her sister. But it’s a big one.” She leant to the side, just disappearing out of the frame for a moment, before she reappeared with a glass of red wine. “Yvonne is trying desperately to get her a contract under false pretences. She doesn’t sell enough of her current series, and her new agent appears to have fudged her previous sales numbers.”
Wow.
“Yvonne is being a complete headache for us in marketing over this. She’s blaming us for Rose’s last book flopping and it’s not our fault, it was a fucking shit book.”
I wasn’t going to respond to that.
It wasn’t professional.
No matter what I thought.
“Well, what are you going to do now? Are you going to tell Francesca about it?” I asked, referring to her boss.
“I don’t know how to, if I’m honest. I’m not sure if it’s a conflict of interest for her or if that’s even a thing in the company.”
“I can’t see how it wouldn’t be. She’s pretty intimately connected to her, given the circumstances.” I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth a few times to make little tick-tock type noises. “Either way, I think you need to share what you know with her. She’s the only one who can actually do anything about it.”
Meg sighed. “You’re right. So how do I bring that up to her?”
“Just ask her if you can have a meeting and tell her what you found. Then you’ve done everything you can, and you know you’ve tried.”
“I wish she’d bloody retire. Yvonne, that is. She’d make my life a lot easier.”