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‘Yee-ees.’ I’ve never fancied teaching because I’m no good at telling people what to do but I didn’t argue because she’d just said I was a successful author – the first time she’d ever acknowledged it. It gave me a bit of a lift, to be honest. ‘Thanks, I’ll think about it.’
‘Good!’
Before I could say anything else, she hung up.
I always forget that about her, that she comes to the end of a call and hangs up. Mind you, it does away with the closing awkwardness of lovely to talk to you, yes, same, see you soon, yeah great, have a good day, call me, I will, lots of love, etc., but it still takes me by surprise.
I stood by the window and imagined getting a job.
It would just be for money, I told myself.
I would still write in my spare time.
Getting a job. The phrase broke my heart; the fading dreams of an ex-writer, the brave face – yeah, but it’s only temporary, I’m working on another book, going for literary this time … dragging that lie out for a few years until people gave up asking me how the novel was coming along.
Still, I was forced to face reality and so I began to update my CV. I was sadly deficient in most employment skills such as bar-tending or barista work, but I was willing to learn.
Shortly after that, my father unexpectedly rang me to tell me the Chelsea score. I only support them because he does, not because I have any particular interest in football, but he used to take me to the home games when we lived in Fulham and I think of those days with a certain nostalgia. Since we had lost touch with the minutiae of each other’s daily lives and we had taboo subjects like Jo-Ann and my mother to avoid, I liked our footballing chats.
He gave me his personal version of the match report and a scathing overview of the incompetency of the manager and, just as we were on our goodbyes, he said, ‘Your mother called.’ He lowered his voice. ‘She’s worried about you. I’m sorry they didn’t like your new book.’
‘Oh.’ I felt both touched by the concern and surprised my parents were on speaking terms since the news of Jo-Ann’s pregnancy, at the age of forty-five. ‘Don’t be,’ I said. ‘It’s probably for the best. I’d have been like Gwyneth Paltrow, telling the world about my perfect life, and then in book two, oh, by the way, my perfect man has only gone and uncoupled me. I’d be that woman at literary parties who people whisper about out of the corner of their mouths – her first book was amazing but he left her, you know, and she never got back on form.’ Tears filled my eyes. Self-pity is seductive, but it makes you pitiful.
‘That’s the spirit,’ my father chuckled. ‘I’m glad you’re staying positive. Look, darling, you can come here until you find your feet.’
My spirits lifted. ‘Really?’
‘Of course. Just a moment,’ he said quickly. He muffled the phone. I could hear Jo-Ann talking indignantly with an offended ‘Excuse me … seriously … don’t I have a say in it?’ and my father replying in a low stern voice, ‘Daughter … bad patch … least you can do …’ Didn’t he know the phone had a mute button?
The truth was, I couldn’t imagine moving in with Dad and Jo-Ann. Nothing wrong with her, and probably they’d grown out of the constantly touching stage by now, but she was home all day and how would I find the space to write?
I was ready to hang up when my father’s voice came clear again. He was slightly out of breath after the argument. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘It’s okay. Thanks for the offer, Dad,’ I said briskly, ‘but I’ll manage.’
‘Oh … well done!’ he said, sighing with relief as if he’d just kicked his work shoes off. Yeah, that Jo-Ann. She pinched. ‘The next game’s on Sunday; Spurs at home. Speak to you then.’
I got off the desk. My left leg had gone numb.
Checking through my emails, I found the one from Carol Burrows at London Lit offering me a job.
I composed a reply and told her I’d been reconsidering her generous offer of tutorial work of a few months previously, and I was now in a position to take her up on it and give something back to the community. (Coming up with a line like this is one of the benefits of writing fiction.)
Carol Burrows phoned me about ten minutes later to ask me if we could meet for lunch, adding apologetically that it would have to be in the college canteen – which was a relief, because canteens I could just about afford, if it turned out I was paying.
The London Literary Society is down Euston Road so I had a quick shower, dressed in the red suit, took a hardback copy of Love Crazy as a thank you, which was all I had to offer, walked to Kentish Town and caught the tube to Euston.
Carol Burrows was waiting for me by the barrier to the car park, wearing a fluttery green print tea dress and a leather biker jacket. She was her fifties and her curly brown hair was cut in a wedge; she looked feminine, stern and erudite, as if she belonged to the Bloomsbury set. After she’d given me a visitor’s pass to hang around my neck we went inside, straight to the canteen. She had a burrito and chips and tea and I had fish and chips and a Diet Coke, and as she paid I helpfully carried the tray to a table.
‘The full-time post of creative writing tutor has been filled,’ she said, drawing up her chair.
‘When? Since I spoke to you this morning?’
‘No, a while ago.’
I changed my mind about giving her my book, but then she said, ‘We’re looking for someone to take an evening course. It’s for writers who want to progress towards publication.’
‘Hmm.’ I opened my Coke can. Pffft!
She smiled, and delicately cut a chip into three with her knife and fork. Her eyes met mine. ‘We all feel it would be a great fillip for the college to have you here.’
Philip? Oh yeah. I felt better already. ‘How much would be …’ I’d caught her way of speaking, ‘… the salary?’
When she told me, it sounded fair enough, until she added ‘pro rata’.
Whatever happened I realised I was going to have to get rid of the flat and find somewhere else to live. I felt ill again. But at least this was guaranteed money in my hand, I reasoned, squirting ketchup on my plate. And it wasn’t totally a copout. It was still about writing, still creative, and possibly – here’s the smart bit – I might get inspiration from my students.
Readers sometimes feel that taking things from life is cheating, and that fiction should be something a writer has completely invented from some mysterious source deep in the imagination, but the truth is, all stories come from reality. Take Hemingway, for instance. He plunged straight into the action. Married young, fought wars, replaced his wives, insulted his friends and found himself with plenty of material to keep him published for years. Of course, his friends stopped talking to him once they recognised themselves in his books and he made his ex-wives utterly miserable and in the end he shot himself, but that’s not the point. The point is, he got what he wanted, which was fame.
I might also get some new ideas from my students. This is not in any way plagiarism. Plagiarism is the ‘stealing and publication of another author’s language, thoughts, ideas or expressions and passing them off as one’s own’, according to Wikipedia and I’m giving the source so as not to be accused of plagiarism, which would be a horrible irony.
‘There is some paperwork involved with the course in the form of progress sheets and end-of-term assessments,’ Carol said, her delicate hands fluttering, ‘but nothing too arduous.’
‘I was expecting that,’ I lied. Assessments were another name for school reports. ‘I will take the job.’
She spent the rest of lunchtime asking for my professional opinion on books I hadn’t read. Some I hadn’t even heard of. I bluffed and mumbled around my food, pulling adjectives out of the air and even said that one of them was ‘too wordy’, which to my surprise she agreed with.
When we’d finished, she escorted me to the office, took my photograph, gave me my staff pass, showed me the fire escapes and the location of the library as she was contractually bound to do, and by the time we said goodbye I was feeling optimistic.
I’d had a hot lunch and found myself a job. Things were looking up.
CHAPTER FIVE
Writer’s Block
Despite the trauma and conflict of my private life – like failure, disappointment and penury, which are all the traditional ingredients of a decent book – I still hadn’t managed to come up with an idea for a heart-warming story. And I knew why. The one essential ingredient for writing was missing: boredom.
Boredom stimulates the imagination in a way that nothing else can. The mind hates a void with its intimations of mortality. On the minus side, if unchecked, it can fill itself with any old junk, as I found out the day I booked a session in a flotation tank at a central London spa for creative purposes.
I’d gone there to find my muse.
Trisha Ashley, a writer I admire, has a vain, bad-tempered, leather-clad muse named Lucifer and I thought it was time I got one for myself.
At the spa, surrounded by rolled-up towels, dizzied by rose petals and incense sticks, I listened as Michaela-in-the-white-uniform explained the process to me. The flotation tank was like a large water-filled cupboard. The lights would dim to black, the music would gradually fade to silence, and sensory deprivation would promote vivid colours, auditory hallucinations and creative ideas, the effects of which would last up to two weeks, until it was time for a top-up.
Michaela held the door while I climbed in and she promised to be back at five forty-five.
It was the longest forty minutes of my life.
Alone in the dark, once the music stopped and the white right angle of light around the door disappeared, I lost sense of the walls around me and suddenly felt as if I was drifting alone in a black sea. With sharks. No colour or auditory hallucinations, just the prickling awareness of large creatures biding their time beneath me. Nudging me. Getting a sense of what they were dealing with. To reassure myself, I groped for the walls to get my bearings and got saltwater in my eyes. It stung. I forced myself to relax but as I breathed out deeply I lost buoyancy and sank lower into the water and it flooded into my ear. How much water can an ear hold before it starts to weigh down your head, pulling you under?
Eyes throbbing, mind wandering, I realised I’d been in there longer than forty minutes. The water was getting cold. It had been quiet for a long time. I imagined Michaela forgetting all about me and taking off her white jacket, locking up and going home while I lay uncomfortably suspended in the thick and silent dark. She might only remember me when she was fighting to get on the tube. And what if she had a date? Yes, I was suddenly certain she did. That’s why she forgot about me. If the date went well she might not remember me until morning, when she came in and found me hypothermic in the ice-cold water, half eaten by sharks.
On the scale of panic, from nought to ten, I was at this point about a five. I got to my knees and felt for the door handle, for reassurance. It wasn’t where I expected it to be so I methodically smoothed my hands over the general area, panic rising swiftly to a seven when I couldn’t find it. But why would there be a handle on the inside anyway? Michaela was supposed to be there. She’d promised to let me out.
My perception swiftly altered. I was no longer a tiny soul in limitless space. I was fully grown and locked in a watery cupboard getting claustrophobic.
‘Help!’ I shouted, deafening myself. ‘Help!’
A bright light shone over me.
‘You okay?’ Michaela asked quizzically from behind me.
‘You came back!’ I said, crawling out.
‘You’ve got another thirty minutes,’ she said.
I looked at the clock and she was right, but nothing in the world would have induced me to go back in there. I haven’t bothered looking for a muse since.
I threw my energy into cleaning the flat mostly for mercenary reasons – I needed the deposit money back. When Mark and I moved in, we’d photographed every flaw, every scuff on the skirting board, every chipped tile in the bathroom, because if there’s one thing landlords hate, it’s returning the deposit.
The creative power of boredom is something that the non-writer doesn’t appreciate. They see you sitting there with your feet on the desk, staring out of the window, and assume that you have knocked off for the day, and ask what’s for lunch. Obviously you’re not ready to make lunch because you’re writing. Then the person will point out that you’re not writing, you’re sitting there doing nothing. So you explain that the creative force is all going on up here, and you point to your head, and then they will tell you to take your creative force with them to the nearest McDonald’s because they’re starving.
After the argument, you find you’ve lost your train of thought completely.
Anyway, as well as cleaning I cancelled my phone contract and walked to Camden and bought a cheap pay-as-you-go phone. Over a McCoffee I texted my new number to Kitty, my parents and Carol Burrows and once I’d done that I walked back home and sat at my desk and tried to think of good characters for my book. Characters are more important than plot. When you finish a book that you’ve really enjoyed, you never miss the plot. Nobody ever says that they enjoy the plot trajectory and wish they could have more of it; no, it’s the characters that you long for. That feeling of closing the jacket knowing they’ve gone off without you and you’re left alone as they disappear into the distance; that’s the feeling that feeds a reader and forces her to find another book to get involved in.
I couldn’t think of any character to write about. I wondered if I had writer’s block. Herman Melville got it after writing Moby-Dick. Hemingway was terrified by it. F. Scott Fitzgerald suffered enormously with it. What if I was a one-book wonder like Margaret Mitchell, who, after writing Gone with the Wind, got run over in the street without having ever written a sequel?
The problem with writing is, the only way to be a writer is to write. This might seem obvious, but there are a lot of people who want to be writers without writing. They go on motivational courses and spend whole fortnights at writers’ retreats in Crete or in timber lodges in Dorset, having food delivered while they wait for inspiration to strike. They join the BBC Book Club and ask authors interesting questions and take notes and listen to the broadcast a few weeks later. They go on holiday for research purposes and generally have a really good time without writing enough words to make a short story. I should know; I was currently one of these people.
Slightly depressed, I spent that evening googling house shares. I could afford to live in Barcelona and Malaga (but imagine the commute). I could share a bathroom with two vegetarians and a salamander in Ealing. I could hot-bed with students in Bethnal Green if I didn’t mind going nocturnal and sleeping through the day.
And then I came across a website called the Caring Share.
The deal was, I could live with an old person for practically nothing and in return I would spend eight hours a week keeping them company and generally being helpful by doing ‘light household duties’, something I did anyway, for free. The website looked inviting – patterned china and cupcakes and old people with grateful white smiles. It was like moving in with Granny. I could offer advice on crossword clues.
I typed in my details. For references, I cited Kitty and Anthea, who could at least vouch for the fact I was honest and literate.
In anticipation, I advertised my possessions on Gumtree with the proviso ‘Must Collect’, and over the next two weeks I sold the lemon sofa and armchair, my IKEA desk and the small beech foldaway table with the four chairs that slotted into it.
It was like dismantling a dream, emptying that flat. Each night the place was hollower and less mine. The landlord brought people round to see it and the couples would stand by the window, arms around each other, taking in the view, and I wanted to kill them. And one day, scaffolding went up, and the safety netting bathed the flat in an alien green hue, like living in a pond.
The red and black Trek bike was still in the hall. I couldn’t bring myself to sell it, even though it was the most valuable thing I possessed. It was a symbol of success; and I wondered if I could save money by riding it.
I carried it downstairs. It was very light – it weighed practically nothing. This is, in cycling terms, a sign of quality, apparently.
The night was cold, the kind of cold you get opening a fridge door, and in the west the turquoise sky was streaked with dirty dark blue clouds. I tucked my scarf into my parka and wheeled the bike onto the Heath, the wheel ticking, the chain clanking against my leg.
I couldn’t sit on the seat because it was too high so I held onto a bollard for balance and pedalled a few yards, sitting on the crossbar. It really was a lovely bike. I dismounted in a controlled fall by a speed bump and wheeled it virtuously along the path which says ‘No Cycling’ and took it for a walk before I went back to the flat.
When Mark and I moved in together, I’d imagined life was going to get better and better and better; all summits and no valleys; I’d imagined us soaring relentlessly upwards, propelled by happiness, trailing fame and fortune.
I hadn’t imagined it coming to this, being here alone, clearing the place out by myself.
Love. What was it all about?
I thought about my dad and Jo-Ann’s unlikely alliance and whether love amounted to nothing more than finding someone you could watch Netflix with.
That’s what dating apps should be about – matching up couples and box sets. ‘I have The Wire and I’ll raise you Better Call Saul.’ ‘I have Happy Valley and Miranda. Sorry. It’s not going to work out.’
A few days later I was delighted to get a call from the Caring Share about a place in Knightsbridge with a widow named Mrs Leadbetter who had room in her apartment for someone mature. Was I mature? I reassured them about my maturity and general common sense and I agreed to go there that afternoon to meet Mrs Leadbetter in person.
Knightsbridge! Harvey Nicks and Harrods! I was instantly cheered by the news. I’ve always wanted to live in Knightsbridge – who wouldn’t? We could go walking in Hyde Park. And forget the baking, we could go out for afternoon tea.
Mrs Leadbetter’s flat was in a small sixties block at the back of Harrods, in an architectural style totally different from its neighbours.
I buzzed her bell and she told me to come up in the lift. It was a very small lift with no mirrors. Personally, I like a mirror in a lift. It’s the last chance to prepare before meeting someone, but as this one didn’t have one I had to hope for the best.
Mrs Leadbetter was waiting for me by her open door. She looked very old and withered, with thinning white hair over a candy-pink scalp, but her navy velour tracksuit and white trainers gave her a jaunty air of sportsmanship. She was scrutinising me with the same thoroughness.
‘You’re too young,’ she said.
‘I’m not that young,’ I reassured her. ‘It’s just good genes.’
She studied my face. ‘Are you over fifty-five?’
‘No.’ My genes are not that good.
‘I need someone over fifty-five to come with me to the Over Fifty-Five Club. I told the Caring Share I wanted someone mature.’
‘Oh … I thought they meant sensible.’
‘Come in anyway. You might as well have a cup of tea while you’re here. Have you come far?’
‘Parliament Hill Fields.’
‘I used to watch the Blitz from there,’ she said. ‘It was like Bonfire Night every night.’
I was right. She was very old.
Her sofa was draped with a cream mohair throw, and as I sat down the hairs magnetically attached themselves to my black trousers.
Mrs Leadbetter made the tea and sat next to me with the perky curiosity of the elderly. ‘Tell me something, why would a good-looking girl like you want to live with an old dear like me?’ she asked.
So I told her the whole tragic story from the beginning and felt depressed again.
She was sympathetic about my rejected book and my lost love and she offered some advice. ‘Find yourself a husband with a house and a good job.’
‘It’s not that easy these days to find someone to love you.’
She looked surprised. ‘Don’t worry about looking for someone to love you. Find someone to love,’ she said.
‘Yeah – I’ve tried that and it didn’t work,’ I told her.
As I said goodbye I felt disappointed that my room with her hadn’t worked out. I wanted to be settled; I wanted to go home again – wherever that was.
The following evening I went to see a bedsit in Mornington Crescent.
Mornington Crescent is that inconvenient stop between Camden Town and Euston on the Northern line, Charing Cross branch, and a road at the wrong end of Camden High Street. However, it had a charm of its own and, what’s more, a Burma Railway Memorial.
I got there at six. It was a wet night and the rain made golden haloes around the street lights.
The building had the faded ghost of a sign stencilled above the front door: ‘The Grand Hotel’. A flake of red paint peeled off the front door as I banged the knocker, not a good sign, and I heard footsteps thudding down the stairs.
This thin guy opened it, shirtless, early twenties, smoking and toting a Spanish guitar. ‘Hey! I’m Louis, come on up,’ he said, taking me up the uncarpeted stairs to the first floor.
On the landing, the energy-saving light was losing the battle against the dark.
With a flourish, Louis showed me into what he described grandly as ‘a place to call your own’, which was thoroughly deodorised by cigarette smoke. Strung across the room was a pink sheet hanging from curtain wire, which, with a candle behind it, cast a rosy glow.
‘See that partition? Behind there it’s all mine. This here is your end,’ he said, hoisting his jeans from his hips to his waist and pointing to an alcove fitted with a single bed and an orange Anglepoise lamp. ‘Want to take a look? Get an idea of the potential?’
He pulled back the ‘partition’. Most of his end was taken up with a king-size mattress. Beer cans doubled up as tables – handy for his phone charger and that sort of thing.
‘You can do what you like with your own space,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Knock yourself out. Feel free.’
The one thing that kept me standing there was the fact that I could afford it.
‘And this way to the ensuite,’ Louis announced, quite the joker. He threw open the bathroom door.
I looked around, which took all of two seconds. ‘It’s not quite what I was looking for,’ I told him. ‘Basically, we’d be sharing a room.’
‘It’s cheap though, isn’t it?’ he pointed out, to tempt me. ‘See, what it is, my girlfriend’s just left me and I need someone to share the rent.’ He played a plaintive chord on his guitar.
We had more in common than I thought.
‘Not keen on the partition, am I right?’
‘Right.’ I stood there thinking: this is what it’s like to have no options. I’d never experienced it before; never want to again. ‘No offence, but I’ll keep looking.’
‘No worries,’ he said philosophically, and he stood cheerfully on the gloomy landing and strummed an accompaniment on his guitar as I descended the stairs.
I caught the bus home.
The evening stretched ahead, long and empty, and I opened the window, breathing in the cool night air to calm myself – fresh air costs nothing. Through the green netting I saw two buses idling at the terminus, their destination, Victoria, all lit up. Behind them the Heath was dark and humped with bushes. A drunk meandered along the pavement, shouting hoarsely into the night.