The Writers' Festival by Stephanie Johnson

Author:Stephanie Johnson [Stephanie Johnson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781775537991
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand
Published: 2015-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Orla has bought flowers and tidied the office — including, Rae notices with some astonishment, Rae’s desk and private corner. The board table has been tugged to the centre of the room and at every place is a glass of water, a yellow pad and ballpoint pen.

Ten minutes late — is that all she is? — and the coffee plungers are empty. A plate has two slumped slices of cake with surrounding crumbs, and they all seem well into the first exercise. A digital screen reads ‘Our Mission Statement: To promote the love of books and reading’ and a stocky, balding short man is adding to a list of words on a whiteboard beside it. At varying artful angles are Define and Re-define. Imagine. Dream. Inhabit. Strengthen. Support. Coalesce.

‘Distil,’ says Orla, glaring at Rae and gesturing to her empty seat.

‘Expand,’ says Martin.

‘David’ reads the leader’s name badge when he turns to face her. Rae recognises him. Eight years ago. A similar exercise in New York, when she and her workmates went to a luxury upstate conference centre with everything laid on. She was newly pregnant with Ned and working for a wealthy arts patron who sent her entire staff away for the weekend. It was fab. The facilitator was thinner then, with hair, riding higher than he is now, slogging it out in this backwater.

Change your attitude: this is a thriving culture and David’s reach is global.

‘Hello,’ she says. ‘Sorry I’m late.’

‘Half an hour late!’ says Orla, injecting a fun and tolerant tone as if she often suffers Rae’s unpunctuality, which she doesn’t. Rae’s problem is that she’s usually early. She wants to say, ‘Usually I’m early.’

Orla passes Rae her name badge.

‘Rae,’ reads David. ‘Artistic Director. Very important!’ He has one of those faux-South London accents fashionable among generations of upper-class Poms since Nigel Kennedy.

As she gazes at the board Rae remembers that he flirted a little with her in upstate NY over various dinners and lunches and that she would have been glowing then, not gaunt as she is now, and she supposes he won’t flirt with her again, not that she wants him to. No thank you. Just as well he gives no indication of recognising her.

‘Would you like to contribute?’ he asks.

‘To encourage the discussion of ideas and literature,’ she says, and David laughs as if she’s said something amusing.

One of the two board members, a retired literary-minded lawyer, gently corrects her.

‘We’re not up to that,’ she says. ‘Right now it’s only verbs.’

‘Yes,’ says David. ‘Let’s just think about doing-words.’

Rae thinks she detects a raised lawyerly eyebrow, a degree of incredulity, as if Libby has never before encountered such foolishness. Maybe she retired from the profession before it became widespread and fashionable. Now it’s the norm, all this meaningless babble, even in legal firms.

But Rae’s had some good laughs at other motivational weekends; she’s got into the groove of it. She can do it again. She can, only there has been such a cataclysmic shift in her own life that the only honest response is impatience.

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