Not Another Happy Ending by David Solomons Page A

with language, sometimes I could feel it almost destroy you.’
    In the audience, Tom looked up from beneath the hand he'd clamped over his face when Willie had begun talking. All that crap about the blank page and the reality of misery, he'd thought, seriously, what the hell? But the stuff he was saying now, that was different.
    Tom tugged Roddy's sleeve. ‘That's what I said.’
    ‘Hmm?’
    ‘About Jane. That night after the poker game? Remember I told you?’
    ‘Oh yeah.’ Roddy vaguely recalled the conversation. ‘Shame you never told her.’ He nodded to the stage where Jane gazed wide-eyed at Willie Scott.
    Willie took her hands in his and said softly, though still loudly enough for the microphone to pick it up, ‘In your soul, Jane, you are a poet.’
    ‘
Putain
,’ Tom cursed, slamming the arms of the seat. From the row behind, someone shushed him.
    Applause rolled out across the hall. The authors in the audience applauded in appreciation of Willie's praise, the rest applauded to encourage him and Jane to vacate the stage.
    Jane reeled. Sure, Willie's Hollywood
shtick
was excruciating, but that last part had somersaulted her opinion of him. No one,
no one
, had ever talked about her writing like that before. Willie planted a kiss on her cheek.
    ‘Congratulations. And here, I believe this belongs to you.’ With another electric smile he handed her the ‘Jane’.
    ‘Hey,’ he feigned surprise, ‘it's already got your name on it.’
    The party after the ceremony carried on late into the night. Music! Dancing! Socially awkward writers! It was a rare affair.
    Sitting alone at a table on the edge of the dance floor, Jane accepted the congratulations and best wishes of at least, oh, three people. Two of whom were waiters. Tom sent over a bottle of champagne, but he didn't count. She had banished him to the other side of the table. He didn't appear to be suffering, surrounded as he was in a bubble of publicity girls, his greatest hardship the threat of being struck by an errant hair-flick. At his shoulder Roddy flapped hopefully.
    Jane knocked back a glass of Tom's champagne andwondered whether she was being too hard on him. Briefly she considered dragging him away from Sophie, Sophie and Sophie, inviting him over to share their mutual moment of triumph. After all, he was her editor and she almost certainly wouldn't be here tonight if he hadn't spent so long working with her on the novel.
    ‘Y'know, I won an award once.’
    Jane looked up to see Willie Scott standing over her, a copy of
Happy Ending
in one hand, a golden signet ring like a sword pommel flashing from the little finger of the other as he drew down a memory from the air.
    ‘Best Moon Landing in a Stricken Rocket-Ship in a TV Movie,’ he said, proudly.
    ‘That was you?’ Jane said with a gasp of mock amazement.
    ‘I know. Impressive, huh?’ He grinned and gestured to an empty chair. ‘May I?’
    ‘Sure. Why not.’
    He slid in beside her. Somewhere between presenting her on stage with the award and joining the party he had discarded his tie and popped the top two buttons on his shirt, revealing a portion of improbably groomed chest.
    Willie was in his forties, though at what end Jane couldn't judge. His age seemed to depend on the angle you looked at him, his face like one of those collector's cards you used to get in cereal packets with a cartoon image of a duck or a monkey which, when you tilted it, would appear to smile or throw a banana. From one anglehe displayed enough frown lines to suggest a life well lived, but turning him a few degrees revealed suspiciously dark hair for a man of his age.
    Her first impression of him had not been a good one. On stage he had hogged the microphone and was clearly revelling in the spotlight; she'd had visions of having to wrestle the ‘Jane’ from his grip. Not so much lounge lizard as lounge T-Rex, she'd decided. But then he had said those things about her writing and she had glimpsed someone else