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Published by Avon an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © Sophie Jenkins 2018
Cover design © Sinem Erkas 2018
Sophie Jenkins asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008281809
Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008281816
Version: 2019-02-26
Dedication
To Paul and Joe, Elaine, Pat, William and George,
for humour, happiness, tolerance and joy;
and for Rowena, with love
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One: The Sequel
Chapter Two: Heroic Attributes
Chapter Three: Reflections
Chapter Four: Catalysts for Change
Chapter Five: Writer’s Block
Chapter Six: Plateau
Chapter Seven: Turning Point
Chapter Eight: Words, Words, Words
Chapter Nine: A New Dawn
Chapter Ten: Perseverance
Chapter Eleven: The Science of Attraction
Chapter Twelve: Defining Stories
Chapter Thirteen: The Way Forward
Chapter Fourteen: A Source of Inspiration
Chapter Fifteen: Rapport
Chapter Sixteen: Archetypes
Chapter Seventeen: Antagonists
Chapter Eighteen: Barriers
Chapter Nineteen: The Shape of the Hole in the Hero’s World
Chapter Twenty: Return of the Antagonist
Chapter Twenty-One: Heroines
Chapter Twenty-Two: The Wrong Turning
Chapter Twenty-Three: Conflict
Chapter Twenty-Four: Consequences
Chapter Twenty-Five: Departures and Reunions
Chapter Twenty-Six: Reliving the Dream
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Viewpoints
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Equanimity
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Regrouping
Chapter Thirty: The Lonely Hearts Literary Society
Chapter Thirty-One: External Conflict
Chapter Thirty-Two: Plans
Chapter Thirty-Three: The Dream Realised
Chapter Thirty-Four: The Dark Night of the Soul
Chapter Thirty-Five: Downturn
Chapter Thirty-Six: Resurrection
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Settings
Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Destination
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Ideas for an Epilogue
Chapter Forty: Treasure
Chapter Forty-One: Trilogy
Acknowledgements
About the Publisher
How I thought my story ended …
After months on the road in her camper van, she was coming to her journey’s end, to the place where it had begun. In the distance the city sparkled. Marco drove through the outskirts of north London and the leafy suburban streets, into Highgate Village with its Victorian and Georgian houses, and down Highgate West Hill where he bumped up the kerb and parked up next to a red-bricked mansion block with a green wooden gate flanked by dark hedges. The engine cooled and ticked.
‘This is it.’ Marco took the key out of the ignition and kissed her, his mouth warm on hers. ‘We’re home, Lauren,’ he said softly, watching her, his eyes dark with love.
The word took her breath away. She looked up at the building with its warm, lighted windows.
She thought back to the moment everything had changed. The moment he’d asked her to go back with him.
‘I hoped you might be ready to come home now,’ he’d said, squeezing her hand. ‘Come home with me.’
‘Home?’ For a moment she’d felt as if she was stepping on quicksand; that off-balance terror and the thrill of excitement.
‘Lauren, I love your independence. You’re the most self-contained woman I’ve ever met. You and me, we’re two of a kind, don’t you think? You can have all the freedom you need and I’ll be away some of the time anyway. It will be like it is now except I won’t have to rely on a tracker to find you.’
‘That’s crazy!’ she’d said. Put together all the time they’d known each other and it amounted to a few weeks at the most.
‘I know,’ he’d said cheerfully, taking it as a compliment.
And now, for the first time, they weren’t parting with promises to keep in touch, promises that faded as time passed. Home was togetherness and warmth and permanence and, after nine months of travelling, the word was like a forgotten dream and she was filled with sudden happiness.
Their adventure wasn’t over.
It was just about to begin.
CHAPTER ONE
The Sequel
Some days start off looking hopeful: it’s August, the sun is out, the birds are singing, people are smiling – this was one of those days. I was waiting with anticipation for my literary agent Kitty Golding to let me into her apartment block. She lives in the penthouse of a modern architectural block bordering Regent’s Park, which is five storeys high and glass-fronted, giving it the effect of a doll’s house. On the ground floor, the white sofa had its back to the window and I could see the top of a head of black, curly hair – could be a man or woman, girl, boy or dog. I was itching to reach in and rearrange the furniture.
The intercom clicked into life. ‘Come on up, Lana.’ The door clunked open, and I got into the lift which took me up to my agent’s floor.
Kitty was waiting for me, smiling faintly. Early forties, lean, glossy black hair, wearing a lime-and-heather-coloured boiled-wool dress.
She held the door open, and I smiled back at her and went into her office. The glass wall looked out at the sky and the rooftops above the busy street below. The other three walls were lined with books. Mine was easy to spot: Love Crazy, with LANA GREEN emblazoned along the spine.
I headed for a low tan and chrome chair, and for a disconcerting second I had the sensation of plummeting – the chair was lower than it looked. I tugged at my red skirt: I could see my fake-tanned knees in close-up.
Kitty took the chair opposite me, gripping the armrests and lowering herself in a sort of triceps dip. She picked up the typescript of my sequel, Heartbreak, from the glass table and flicked through a few pages, nodding thoughtfully.
‘Nice paper.’ She looked up. Her gaze met mine, and held.
The feeling of anticipation was similar to the early days of a relationship: expectation mingled with excitement. Kitty doesn’t show much emotion – she leaves that to editors – but I was waiting for my high-five moment.
Kitty tapped my novel. ‘As you know, I love your writing. You can write; there’s no doubt about that.’
‘Thanks,’ I said.
Kitty hooked her pale fingers into the string of lime beads around her neck. She took a deep breath and let it out long and slow. ‘But we’ve got a problem.’
‘Oh?’ I hadn’t been expecting the but. ‘Is it too long?’
‘No – well, maybe a touch. It’s not that. The question is, Lana, what’s the hook?’
I did some quick-thinking. ‘The hook is that this is the sequel to Love Crazy,’ I said after a moment.
‘That’s not a hook,’ Kitty said.
‘Okay.’ I had another try. ‘The hook is how love turns to heartache.’
‘Yes. Heartache. That’s what the problem is. It’s the storyline.’
‘Eh? What’s wrong with it?’
‘Frankly, it’s depressing. The last few days I’ve had this dark shadow over me and’ – she hoisted my typescript up as evidence – ‘it’s this book. It’s bleak.’
Couldn’t argue with that. ‘Well’ – I shrugged – ‘that’s the story. It’s about the break-up. It broke my heart.’ I was starting to feel nervous. No one likes criticism. ‘That’s why it’s bleak.’
‘It’s not just bleak; it’s bitter.’
‘Yeah. That’s what I was trying to get across.’
Kitty sighed and changed position. She studied the neat tan shoe dangling on her toes and looked up again. ‘Lana, no one wants to sit down with a book that makes them feel bitter. Bitterness is not appealing,’ she said. ‘What’s happening with your blog?’
‘I was getting so much hate mail I stopped posting.’
‘You see? Sad; now that’s something else. Sad, you can get away with, at a push. So, maybe you could have your hero die of something?’
‘Yes, I could do that!’ I leant forward eagerly. ‘Trust me, I’ve imagined it – Mark Bridges is hanging off a cliff and I could save him, but I don’t, and at the funeral, although I’m wearing black, I’m ecstatic that he’s been smashed to a bloody pulp on the jagged rocks.’
Kitty screwed her nose up. ‘No, that’s a different genre altogether. Look – think of your first book. Writer falls for photo-journalist. You’ve got lots of conflict but plenty of pay-off, too – and that ending, with Lauren and Marco moving in together, and that last line …’ Kitty pinched her fingers together, waving the words at me like a tiny banner. ‘“… Their adventure wasn’t over. It was just about to begin.”’
Woah, was I wrong about that.
‘You’ve already given us the happy ending,’ Kitty said, ‘and the sequel should go on from there. It should be about their continuing adventures. Forget about the fact Mark Bridges abandoned you for a Swedish girl—’
‘Helga,’ I said gloomily; her name hurt like a curse.
‘Whatever – that’s between you and him. Leave real life out of it. We’re talking fiction here. This isn’t about you and Mark Bridges, it’s about Lauren and Marco, the couple your readers love. We want the adventure, the lifestyle, the feel-good factor.’
‘Feel-good factor?’
‘So let’s talk about what happens next. Maybe Lauren and Marco start a family,’ she suggested.
I looked at her in dismay. ‘You want me to write about having a fictitious baby?’
‘That’s it! Remember, your book is about living the dream. No one wants to read about how it all went wrong and you didn’t get out of bed for a month – they can look to their own lives for that sort of thing.’
I stared at her bleakly. What kind of insanity would that be, writing as if Mark and I were still together, in love, and then switching off the PC and coming back to the desperate hideousness of reality? I couldn’t do it. The whole idea made me ill.
I gripped the chair tightly. ‘Kitty, could you just tell me, before we start thinking about new ideas, is there anything at all about this book that you do like? Apart from the paper?’
She thought about it for a few moments, obviously troubled by her own integrity. Personally, I don’t mind a lie if it’s told in a good cause.
‘The problem is, it’s too real,’ she said at last.
‘But the first book was real!’
‘Broadly speaking, yes; but you fictionalised it, you made a romance of it, whereas this one’ – she laid her palms on it – ‘to be honest, it reads like a misery memoir. Lana, I want you to see this’ – she spanked the typescript with the flat of her hand – ‘as a catharsis, a healing process, a way of getting all your angst out of your system.’
‘But – you don’t like any of it? There’s nothing I can keep?’
Kitty sighed – the only thing worse than receiving bad news was giving bad news. ‘Okay. Forget about writing a sequel. Put this book behind you and start again with something new. Start afresh. Invent a hero. You’re a writer. Be creative! Find that little spark of hope!’
I tried. I looked inside my head for a spark of hope. It was very dark in there. There was no glimmer of light at all. Opening my eyes, I said in desperation, ‘I don’t know where I’m supposed to get that from when there isn’t any. I’m not sure I even believe in love any more. What if it’s all a myth?’
I expected her to get panicky right along with me, but she stayed calm.
‘We need to think about your publishers, you know,’ she said gently. ‘Anthea feels that Heartbreak is not suitable for your established readership. Those are her exact words.’
Ohhhhh.
Don’t ask me why I hadn’t considered this before. I’d got the idea the publishers were buying my writing, when actually they were buying the romance. I hadn’t realised that until now.
To be fair, Kitty had asked me at regular intervals to show her the sequel, but had I? Nooooo. Had I even given her a synopsis? Nooooo.
Why not? Well – I was convinced she would love it: the Dream turns into a Nightmare. It was real. I honestly thought Kitty would be moved to tears; I didn’t expect to make her depressed.
I burned with shame. Second novels are notoriously difficult to write. Kitty was strumming the rubber bands binding my four hundred sheets of good quality paper together while she waited for me to work it out for myself.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘What are my options?’
‘Either you can start again …’
‘Or?’
‘You can pay back the advance.’
‘Or?’ I prompted in a panic, because I was broke and the promise of a payment was one of the major factors why today had started off perfect.
Kitty raised her eyebrows and shrugged. On the or front, that was it.
Generally, you have to be thin-skinned to be a writer, so you can be insightful and all that, but you have to be thick-skinned too, because no one in the history of the written word has ever written anything that everyone likes.
Still; rejection does put you off, even if you’re trying to be philosophical about it.
The truth is, I like being a writer. I don’t like the actual writing, which is hard work, but the rest of it – lunches, interviews, festivals – is great fun and I recommend it.
I looked around. On the shelves were books with bright covers. By the law of averages, some of them had to be bad – trust me, plenty of bad books get published. And how depressing was this – mine was too bad even by those standards.
I imagined starting on a new book. In the right genre. A contemporary romantic novel.
I pushed myself out of the low chair and walked right up to the glass window, pretending to walk off the edge, which is what I felt like doing. Pressed up against the pane, I couldn’t go any further and neither could my thoughts. Way down below, a man was looking up at the building. I could see his face, his shoulders and his feet. What could he see? A blonde-haired doll standing in the doll’s house?
Hope flared – I could write about him! – and faded.
Once upon a time I had looked at all men with interest; and then I found Mark and I stopped looking. The end.
My breath clouded the window and I was just about to wipe it with my hand when Kitty said, ‘Don’t do that! It’s just been cleaned.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I have a lunch at one.’
I hugged myself in panic at being dismissed. ‘What do I do now? I need the “on delivery” money. I’ve got an overdraft. I’ve got bills to pay!’
Kitty brightened. ‘Good! That’s your incentive! Now we’ve got something to work with. Let’s forget about paying back the advance for the moment,’ she said briskly. ‘We’ll extend the deadline. You come up with a new story and we’ll talk it over. Love, and it goes wrong, but they get back together, happy ending. Find the characters, the emotions, the dialogue and we can stick a plot in later.’ She smiled. ‘Okay?’
I’m very susceptible to suggestion, so I nodded back. ‘Okay.’
She stood up and I realised we were done.
‘I’ll give you the typescript back,’ she said. ‘You can recycle the paper.’
She gave me a Tesco carrier bag to take it away in.
When I left her apartment I had a day-drinking feeling of light-headedness.
My book on rejection had been rejected.
CHAPTER TWO
Heroic Attributes
Heading towards Camden Town, I decided to avoid the markets and the tourists by calling in the York and Albany for a drink. If you feel drunk and you drink, it makes you feel less drunk, like homeopathy. But I realised it was exactly the kind of place that Kitty might be going to for lunch. A bit further on, just off Delancey Street, is the Edinboro Castle, a place she would never set foot in, so I walked on and went into the bar, swinging my heavy Tesco bag. It was so dark it was like being momentarily blinded.
I took my wine out into the glare of the beer garden and sat at a table all to myself under a silver birch where I could think up a plan with no distractions.
A shadow fell over me. ‘Is this seat taken?’
‘Yes,’ I said automatically. Looking up, I saw a guy wearing a bright orange Nike sweatshirt and faded jeans. He had messy dark hair but, despite being unshaven, he had a friendly, open face with straight dark eyebrows and clear grey eyes. Realising I was being ‘difficult’, as my parents liked to put it, I quickly apologised. ‘Sorry, that was rude.’ Suddenly, having company wasn’t such a bad idea, even if it was with a stranger. ‘No. Help yourself.’
‘Cheers.’ He smiled, sat down and put his lager in front of him.
His smile looked like the smile of a man who has had an easy life, which is a good foundation for a warm character. People who have an easy life assume the best and tend to be generous and optimistic – I haven’t googled this or anything; it’s just my opinion, based on experience.
On the downside, I do remember reading that optimistic people die younger because when they’re ill they take it for granted it’s something trivial. But it’s not as if the optimistic people I knew were dying in droves, so it wasn’t much of a negative, currently.
As I was pondering on these facts about him, which I later discovered I’d got completely wrong, the sun slid out of the shadow of the pub and shone through my wine glass, throwing a radioactive reflection onto the wooden table. A phone rang.
We both sprang to life and patted ourselves down, but it wasn’t mine, it was his.
‘Jack Buchanan,’ he said. And then he frowned. ‘What?’
I heard the disappointment in his voice.
He listened for a few moments and then said, ‘I don’t understand. Embroidery scissors? What are they? How big are they? Well – okay, so she bit him, but what did he do to her? Yeah, well – how hard could she bite? She hasn’t even got a full set of teeth,’ he said with increasing indignation. ‘I don’t see how biting him makes her vulnerable. It’s the bar manager who’s vulnerable. Why don’t you put him in a home?’ He listened a bit longer and then said gloomily, ‘Thursday. At two.’ He ended the call and shook his head. All the happiness had gone out of him and he looked weary and troubled.
If you’re going through a bad time and you’re with someone who is happy, it makes you feel ten times worse. Conversely, if you’re going through a bad time and you’re with someone who is also struggling, things start to look a lot brighter.
‘Dog trouble?’ I asked.
He looked at me blankly. ‘What?’ His eyes were grey and distant. Then he saw where I was coming from, and said, ‘No. It’s my stepmother, actually.’
I’d been trying to work out where the embroidery scissors came into it, and it made more sense now. A warm and friendly feeling came over me, the sort you get when you see a man on his own with a baby. I hadn’t realised you could get the same effect with stepmothers, but there we are – my mission as a writer is to observe and report; something I learned from my journalism days.
‘She bit someone? I couldn’t help hearing.’
‘She’s been going to that bar for years,’ he said bitterly. ‘Now social services have got involved. You know what that means.’
‘Yes, I do,’ I said. Our two problems were very different, but who had the worse one? He had a feral relative and I had a whole novel to write. Just at that moment, a yellow birch leaf dropped into my wine glass. It didn’t exactly tip the scales but I did start feeling got at.
Jack Buchanan watched me fish it out. ‘Can I get you another one?’ he asked as I flicked it under the table.
‘Thanks!’ But like a warning vision I saw the whole week speeding by. ‘Better not, though. I’ve got to write a book. Well, an outline. I know Stephen King did all his best work while he was drinking but it doesn’t really work for me – it comes out gibberish, or sentimental.’
‘You write books? Who are you?’
‘Lana Green,’ I said.
‘Ah …’ he responded. He rubbed the stubble on his chin. ‘Sorry.’
‘That’s all right. You’re not my target market.’
‘So what’s your book going to be about?’ he asked.
‘It’s got to be a romantic novel. Love, and it goes wrong, they get back together, happy ending.’
He laughed. ‘Well, that seems easy enough.’
‘Yeah, it’s not.’
‘Subdivide it into where, why, what and how.’
‘It’s not as simple as that.’
‘No, I suppose it isn’t,’ he reflected. ‘Otherwise everybody would be doing it.’
‘Don’t get me started on that,’ I said, ‘because it seems as if everybody is doing it. Comedians write children’s books, models write romances, chat-show hosts write drama – it’s really annoying. How would they like it if I started doing stand-up, or hosted a chat show, or got famous for my boob jobs? People should stick to one occupation per person. On principle, I don’t buy any fiction written by people who are famous in other fields.’