Bad Heir Day Read Online Free PDF

less in the left-hand side of her brain or wherever the creative part was supposed to be.
    A PASSIONATE LOVER ,screamed the poster pinned on the wall opposite her desk in bold letters of searing red. They were a searing reminder to Cassandra that her publishers had seen fit to start a poster campaign before seeing a single word of the novel it described. The apparent rationale was that if they proceeded as if the book existed, it might, through sheer force of corporate effort, actually materialise. “Love, lust, and betrayal—with a twist in the tail,” declared the poster. “The new Number One bestseller from the author of The Sins of the Father , Impossible Lust , Guilty ,and Obsessions ,”it went on in smaller letters running across the illustration of a tousle-haired Pierce Brosnan smoulderer in a frilled shirt who could pout and suck his cheeks in at the same time. Cassandra stared at him with loathing.
    Love , lust , and betrayal—with a twist in the tail .Well, thought Cassandra bitterly, the publishers certainly had a head start on her. She hadn’t even begun to think about the plot, let alone start trying to write it. And as for Number One bestseller, well, despite the publishers’ best efforts—and often their worst and most underhand ones into the bargain—that was in the lap of the gods. It certainly wasn’t, at this precise moment, in her laptop.
    Forcing this uncomfortable and inconvenient fact from her mind, she stared at the electronic display beside the wardrobe door as it processed the numbers she had punched in. The figures were rippling like the destination boards used to do at Waterloo in those thankfully long-ago days when public transport and Cassandra were not the strangers they were now. She tapped her foot as impatiently as she could, given that each tap sank into inches-thick cream carpet.
    What had gone wrong? Why had the inspiring spark, so reliable for so long, recently failed to spring into anything approximating a flame? “Everything I’m writing is shit,” a panicked Cassandra had yelled at her editor recently. Harriet’s lack of surprise, indeed the unspoken implication that that was entirely expected, did little to improve Cassandra’s mood. But if shit it were, she thought indignantly, it was successful. Four bestsellers under her belt in as many years, spawning three mini-series and one talking book read by Joanna Lumley. But lately…Cassandra swallowed. The thought of the flint-faced executives she would shortly face around the boardroom table make her heart sink.
    She could no longer think of plots. The personalities of her characters vacillated as wildly as their gender, hair colour, and motivation; her development and consistency skills had gone, although, she thought, reddening, many of her reviewers had questioned the existence of those skills in the first place. Bastards .But far, far worse than the worst reviews (and there had been plenty of those and she never forgot the names and one day the score would be settled) was the fact that Cassandra couldn’t seem to write sex scenes anymore.
    Sex scenes had been Cassandra’s stock in trade. Or stocking trade, as more than one razor-witted reviewer had pointed out in the past. Along with the smirking observation, following revelations that Cassandra was celebrated among the commuting classes for her ability to produce erections on the Circle Line at seven in the morning, that “here was a writer at the peak of her powers.” But for the moment, those powers had deserted her—Cassandra doubted now she’d be able to produce an erection among a gang of footballers being lapdanced in Stringfellow’s. Chronicling the most basic sexual encounter seemed beyond her; the springy breasts with their dark aureoles of nipple consistently failed to spring to mind. Likewise, the piston-like penises, so reliable of old, resolutely refused to come.
    Cassandra was at a loss to explain, to Harriet or anybody else, why this should