Wrong Book Righ Time

Wrong Book Right Time By Jennifer Talkington Copyright ©️ January 2026 No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission from the author, except for brief quotations in reviews. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, companies, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or real events is purely coincidental. On the morning the wrong book arrived, the rain had already decided to settle in for the day. It drummed on the kitchen skylight with patient insistence, as if tapping out a code only the clouds understood. Eleanor Drummond signed for the parcel in her stockinged feet, thanked the soaked courier with heart felt gratitude, and set the wet cardboard box on the table beside her untouched mug of coffee. She had ordered a book on Drafting and Negotiating International Commercial Contracts, 3rd edition. An authoritative book, the kind of thing that came shrink-wrapped and smelled faintly of ink and obligation. It was meant to shore up her already extensive knowledge and her confidence before a promotion interview at the firm the following week. She was aiming for Senior partner at the international litigation firm near Holborn. More glass walls, bigger salaries but even less sleep. Her cat, Kit, blinked at her from his throne pillow perched on the radiator. He was fairly ancient by feline standards, a soft, tattered brown and white rescued moggy with one ear permanently folded as if in mid-thought. His slightly and permanently bent tail flicked once, as if in a furry question mark. Eleanor sliced open the tape around the soft soggy box with a butter knife and frowned. The cover was wrong. Entirely wrong. Instead of sober typography and judicial gravitas, the book that slid into her hands was alive with colour: a deep rainforest green, threaded with sunlight, a young orangutan peering out from between leaves, huge eyes dark and unmistakably curious yet sad. The Last Red Forest By Hasma Indrid She checked the invoice. Wrong ISBN. Wrong title. Wrong world. She registered the mistake online and moments later her phone buzzed with a refund notification. No need to return the item. Our apologies for the inconvenience. “Inconvenience,” Eleanor murmured. Kit leapt down and rubbed against her ankle, leaving behind a ghost of warmth. She scratched his ears absently, staring at the book as if it might explain itself. She considered putting it aside. There were emails to answer, case notes to review, arguments to polish. But the rain pressed closer to the windows, flattening the city into a blur, and something about the orangutan’s gaze made her pause. “Alright,” she said, to the cat, to the day, to herself. “One chapter.” By the second chapter, she had forgotten the coffee. She couldn’t disturb Kit now, he was comfortable on her lap. By the fourth, she had pulled a blanket around her shoulders and shifted onto the sofa, Kit a dense, purring weight had snuggled up against her ribs. The rain deepened, drumming a steady heartbeat while the book opened a different rhythm entirely. The Last Red Forest was not a polemic. It did not shout. It told stories. It spoke of a forest that breathed, of mothers teaching infants how to weave branches into nests, of hands so like human hands, reaching for fruit, for comfort, for connection. It spoke of fires set for profit, of land cleared in geometric violence, of the slow bewilderment of creatures who had never learned to fear people and bulldozers. Eleanor read about palm oil, about its ubiquity and its horrific hidden cost. About chocolate bars and shampoo bottles and the quiet erasure of habitat that made these common products cheaper, smoother and sweeter. She read about sanctuaries in Borneo where humans tried, imperfectly, to make amends. Somewhere around page two hundred, Kit had turned himself on his back, white belly upper most and was snoring. Eleanor did not notice. She read until the rain softened and the light shifted and the afternoon slid into evening without her realising it. She read the final page with tears cooling on her cheeks, the book resting against Kit’s rising and falling flank like an oath. When she closed it, the room felt altered. Not transformed, changed is too dramatic a word but somehow shifted, as if the axis of her thinking had been nudged a few degrees and now everything pointed somewhere entirely different. She sat very still. “What now?” she asked the cat. Kit opened one hopeful hungry eye, flicked his tail and harrumphed unimpressed. The idea did not arrive fully formed. It came in fragments. A sentence from the book surfaced during a meeting the next day, uninvited, while a colleague dissected a corporate compliance loophole with relish. Eleanor felt something twist not outrage exactly, but recognition. In her tiny lunch-break, she googled orangutan sanctuaries. That night, she watched documentaries she had never clicked on before. Over the following weeks, she found herself reading ingredient lists with forensic attention, noticing palm oil everywhere where she had once seen only convenience. The book lived on her coffee table. She lent it to no one. It felt too personal for that, like a letter addressed only to her. Three weeks later, she politely and firmly declined the promotion. The partners were baffled. One asked if she was unwell and if she was suffering from the beginnings of the epidemic called “burn-out”. Another assumed negotiation tactics and offered more money. Eleanor surprised herself by laughing. “No thanks. I’m just… done,” she said, and meant it in a way that had nothing to do with exhaustion or any malice. She took a sabbatical first, sold her flat, and donated a significant portion of the profit to an orangutan sanctuary in Indonesian Borneo whose website looked as though it had been built by someone who loved the animals it cared for far more than fancy fonts. Six months after the wrong book arrived, Eleanor stepped off a small plane into heat so thick it felt slick on her skin. The sanctuary was louder than she expected. There were birds calling in a variety of both melodic and metallic notes, insects vibrating the air, and the constant human murmur of volunteers working, laughing, occasionally swearing. The forest pressed in at the edges, vast and unapologetic. Eleanor felt very un-heroic in her first weeks. She sweated. She misjudged her footing. She cried once when a juvenile orangutan refused to release his grasp on her hair. But she listened and she learned names of both human and otherwise. She learned the difference between play calls and warning calls, between a nest built for the night and one abandoned in a hurry. She learned the rhythm of feeding times and the quiet devastation of traumatic rescue stories. And slowly, she learned where she fit. It turned out the sanctuary had a problem. Several, actually. But one loomed larger than the rest: a multinational chocolate manufacturer whose suppliers were linked, indirectly but undeniably, to illegal deforestation that was encroaching on protected land. The evidence was complex, buried beneath shell of cover companies and plausible deniability. The sanctuary had tried to raise the issue before. Letters had been sent. Meetings requested. Responses had been… illusive and when they came, they were vague and evasive. When Eleanor mentioned her background one evening, over rice and something enthusiastically labelled vegetarian curry, the table went quiet. “You’re a lawyer?” someone asked. “Was,” Eleanor corrected. Then paused. “Could be again. If needed.” It was needed. The first letter she drafted from Borneo was calm, precise, unthreatening. It cited sourcing reports, satellite imagery, discrepancies in supply chain disclosures. It asked pointed questions rather than making wild accusations. The response arrived quickly but it was dismissive. The second letter was firmer. The response to that one was undeniably legal in tone. By the third exchange, Eleanor recognised the familiar contours of a fight. Not the courtroom drama version, no impassioned speeches, no gasps from the gallery but the real thing: attrition, intimidation by mountains of complex paperwork, the slow grind meant to exhaust and isolate. The company’s name appeared in the header, heavy with implication: Nestlay. The tactics escalated. A representative offered a “consulting opportunity” with an eye-watering fee, provided Eleanor signed a non-disclosure agreement. When she declined, there were warnings about reputational damage, about the risks of making unfounded claims. Anonymous emails and calls followed. Then less anonymous ones. Ridicule appeared online, questioning her expertise, her motives and her mental stability. Eleanor felt fear, certainly. But beneath it was something steadier and founded in her years in the legal profession. She had stood in a forest where the silence was wrong because too many voices were missing. She had watched an orangutan relearn trust, finger by finger. She had read the book that had opened this door and had walked through it willingly. She did not stop. Instead, she changed tactics. Social media had never interested Eleanor much. She had some accounts, in the abstract way one has spare keys, useful, but rarely handled. Now she learned quickly. She posted evidence, carefully sourced and plainly explained. She shared photographs, not of suffering, but of what stood to be lost. She wrote threads that untangled supply chains like a magician revealing a trick, patient and precise. Others amplified her words. Journalists noticed. An unexpected ally emerged in the form of a popular food blogger who traced her favourite chocolate back to its origins and found the trail disturbing. A climate scientist offered to verify satellite data. A former Nestlay employee who chose to remain anonymous, but credible shared internal documents that shifted the narrative from speculation to proof. The story went viral not because it screamed, but because it made sense. Nestlay responded with statements about commitments and intentions. Eleanor responded with dates and documents. The pressure mounted. Advertisers grew nervous. Shareholders asked questions in public forums they could not easily control. Behind closed doors, the company tried again. A senior executive flew to Singapore and requested a meeting. The offer this time was not subtle. Eleanor listened politely, her hands folded on the table. “No,” she said, when he finished. “What would it take?” he asked. She met his eyes. “For you to stop treating extinction as a rounding up financial error.” He did not smile. The legal battle that followed was not swift. There were injunctions attempted and withdrawn, jurisdictional arguments raised and dismantled. Eleanor worked long nights... again, but the work felt different now. Purpose has a way of lightening even the heaviest of labours. The sanctuary scraped together funds for legal support. Volunteers organised online fundraisers. Someone designed a logo without being asked. Inside Nestlay, something unexpected happened. A mid-level director in sustainability, someone who had spent years trying, unsuccessfully, to push incremental change from within had read Eleanor’s filings and felt a crack open. He reached out quietly. Not to undermine her, but to help. He provided insight into decision-making bottlenecks, suggested leverage points, and, when the time came, spoke up in meetings where silence had been safer for him. He was supported by a growing number of high level employees who had become uncomfortable with the short comings in regard the negative impact their company was having on world ecology. When the case reached its critical juncture, the facts and traceability were undeniable and inescapable. Nestlay settled. Not with a token donation or a vague promise, but with a binding commitment to transition to responsibly sourced palm oil across its chocolate products, independently audited, and to fund long-term habitat protection tied directly to the orangutan sanctuary Eleanor had come to call home. The press framed it as damage limitation. Eleanor framed it as a beginning. On the evening the agreement was signed, rain fell again in Borneo, sudden and exuberant. Eleanor sat on the wooden steps of her cabin, muddy boots discarded, listening to the forest celebrate. Her phone buzzed with messages from around the world. Congratulations. Gratitude. Invitations she would politely decline. She thought of Kit, back home now living with a friend, likely annoyed at the disruption to his routine. She thought of the book on her coffee table, its pages now soft with rereading. The wrong book. Or perhaps the only right one. A young orangutan clambered down from a nearby platform and paused, considering her with solemn interest. Eleanor held out her hand, not touching, just offering presence. The forest breathed. And somewhere, in a city far away, a supply chain shifted, not because it had been asked nicely, but because one woman had read the wrong story on a rainy afternoon and decided to answer it with her life. The End.