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One More Chapter
a division of HarperCollinsPublishers
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www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2021
Copyright © Abigail Mann 2021
Abigail Mann asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for 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.
Ebook Edition © 2021 ISBN: 9780008393694
Version: 2021-03-01
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Acknowledgements
Keep Reading …
About the Author
Also by Abigail Mann
About the Publisher
To Joe
For all the laughing and walking that brought me back to myself
Chapter 1
At twenty-seven, I should have outgrown the act of picking glitter from my cuticles, but then again, being Lorrie Atmore’s daughter comes with its own set of obligations. Today, I’m covertly multi-tasking. If you were to part the wind chimes at the back door to peek inside our tiny kitchen, you’d see me blasting oak leaves with a hairdryer, using my elbow to pin down the stack that I’ve already washed and dried. In my head, however, I’m running over lines from the script I’ve spent every lunchtime working on for the past week.
Mum launches into an anecdote about a supposedly malicious gluten scandal between the PTA mums as I silently mouth the words that I’ll present on a live stream tomorrow morning. After five years at Snooper, I’m a little too well-adjusted to my role as sub-editor, or Captain Comma, as my colleague Max so often calls me. The Oxford A-Z of Punctuation is my Bible and I can reference it with the passion of a born-again Christian. It’s not the legacy I thought I’d have, so when I was offered a chance to front something of my own, I said yes immediately. Seeing as Snooper claims to be ‘on-the-pulse media for the anti-news generation’, I should have expected that career progression would be unconventional, but going from an editorial desk to a spotlit studio is decidedly out of my comfort zone, not that I’ve admitted it.
Mum, however, relishes being at the centre of a community that hums around her. She’s been the chairperson at Dulwich Green Primary since 1999, a position she refuses to relinquish, despite the fact that I stopped attending fifteen years ago.
I hold two glittery acorns to my chest like I’m plucking the cherry from an iced bun. She frowns, her cheeks dimpled in a barely suppressed smile.
‘You look like a burlesque dancer. A really cheap one,’ she says.
‘Mum!’ I shout, as she chugs with laughter like a faulty diesel engine. I flick the acorns across the table, stretch high above my head, and let my mind tick things over. I’ve been on the cusp of telling her about my work assignment all week, but every time I open my mouth it’s like a claw drags the words back down my throat. ‘So …’
‘Mmhm?’ She threads a silver bead down the stem of an oak leaf.
Now. Tell her now.
‘How many more do I have to do? My fingers hurt,’ I say, falling back on topics I know to be conversational safe zones.
‘Don’t be silly. It’s too early for that. You’ve got no idea what a hardcore session with half a dozen placards and paint tubes looks like—’
‘Back in the day …’ I say wistfully, pre-empting her speech. Thanks to her terrible aim, the acorn she throws in my direction misses by a foot and tinkles as it hits a porcelain teacup on the dresser behind me.
‘Cheeky cow,’ she says, using her glasses as an Alice band for her mess of over-permed hair. ‘But yes, back in the day we’d pull all-nighters with the fabric paint. That red blob by the fireplace is a symbol of resistance. And sleep deprivation.’
‘The one that makes the living room look like a crime scene?’
‘That’s it. “You Otter Be Ashamed” painted over four bed sheets. We made the front page of The Sunday Times with that one. Best day of my life,’ she says, wistfully.
‘Thanks …’
‘All right, second-best day of my life,’ says Mum. ‘Before you came along, obviously.’
I push my chair back to let our pot-bellied cat vault onto my lap. He purrs, kneads my thigh, and looks up at me with sleep-drunk eyes.
‘Tea?’
‘All right, but then I’ve got to go to bed. Big day tomorrow.’
I rub my stiff knuckles and knead my temples, tucking a lock of hair behind my ear. I glance at the clock and check my phone through a squint. If I go to bed now, I might be able to get six hours in before I have to travel to Holborn for the hair and make-up appointment that was booked for me. Personally, I don’t think my twice-yearly trim needs updating, but apparently when you’re asked to present on a live stream it requires a look that’ll ‘stop the kids from scrolling’, whatever that means.
I think back to the steps that led to me presenting tomorrow and struggle to credit it to the Rolodex of self-help books I listen to on my commute. To get ahead at work, The Career Doctor suggested ‘socialising with your superiors outside the office to build rapport’, but Duncan – our Editor-in-Chief – didn’t even attend his own birthday lunch, so that was off the cards. Take the Reins details a five-point-plan for success that includes ‘say yes to everything’, but that led to working late on Christmas Eve, checking for typos in a recipe for vegan pigs in blankets.
Snooper frequently gets sent PR products to review, so when Duncan handed out genealogy kits in the conference room for this week’s ‘Hot in Tech’ feature, I didn’t think much of it. That was until we each unboxed a plastic vial with instructions to fill it with saliva. The meeting was undignified, to say the least; lots of hacking, spitting, and wiping of chins. Like always, everyone in editorial had to pitch for features linked to the product, and like always, I expected my idea to turn up on someone else’s desk. When I let slip that I didn’t know who my father was, Duncan sat back and rubbed his jowls, a sign that he was listening.
The notion that I’ve been given this chance purely because there’s ambiguity over my parentage has crossed my mind, but I’m not going to jeopardise it by asking any questions. Opportunities like this are rare; like getting through a day without seeing a single Kardashian in your Twitter feed. Mum still takes pictures on a disposable camera, so there’s no chance she’ll watch the live stream, but the idea that I’m going behind her back to find answers to questions she never wanted to answer makes me a feel a bit … squirmy.
Mum plugs in a hot glue gun and taps the worktop, waiting for the kettle to boil. She’s always liked the idea of me being a journalist, but new media is a step down from the kind of writing she thought I’d be doing. This is largely due to her fervent mistrust of the internet. Basically, if it’s not in print, she doesn’t think it legitimately counts; although the same logic doesn’t apply to Henry, our elderly neighbour, who writes, prints, and delivers the community paper on his electric scooter.
My stomach squirms like I’ve swallowed a sandwich bag full of baby eels. For the umpteenth time, I’m within arm’s reach of asking about my dad. Mum’s in a good mood, so the risk factor is fairly low. Then again, I don’t know why it would play out differently today. It’s like the very first time I noticed that we weren’t like the families around us, the ones with 2.5 kids and a car big enough to fit camping gear in.
I was six years old in the bakery section of Sainsbury’s, which would soon become synonymous with traumatic moments I’d rather forget about. Seeing as I’d just been given the part of narrator in the school play, I wanted to show off, and picked up the nearest greeting card to do so. The words confused me, so I patted Mum’s leg.
‘Does “father” mean the same as “dad”?’
‘Yes,’ she replied, looking elsewhere.
‘Why do fathers need a day?’
‘They don’t,’ she replied. ‘Put it down.’
‘We could send it. To my dad.’
‘We can’t. You should only send cards to people you love.’
‘Why don’t you send it then? Mums and dads love each other.’
She squatted down, kissed my head, and gently peeled my fingers off the cellophane wrapper. ‘Some do, but lots of mums and dads don’t, and that’s OK too. Because I’m both, aren’t I?’
This was wildly confusing to me, but I didn’t say so.
‘So, he doesn’t have a house?’
‘No, sweet pea. He’s in the same place Grandma and Granddad are. Shed his mortal coil, so to speak.’
‘What does that mean?’
Mum pulled me to one side, away from the wheels of someone else’s trolley. ‘He’s dead, my love.’
‘Why?’
‘Jesus Christ, Ava. Sorry. Can we not talk about this now? I only came in for milk.’
I thought I was in trouble, so did what most six-year-olds would and started to cry.
‘Shit.’ She hauled me into her arms and walked us round to the bakery, where rows of birthday cakes sat covered in thick factory icing. ‘Pick one.’ Thus distracted, I forgot about the conversation and we went home with a ten-person sponge covered in candy bracelets and gummy sweets.
This routine persists; I bring him up, Mum snipes at me, drags me along for the food shop, and we come back with a disproportionately large celebration cake.
I think about it now and feel a bit sick. We’ve not done the bakery run for a few years.
Mum pours hot water into our mugs and picks up a glue gun, wielding it with the dexterity of a cowboy in a shootout. ‘How are you feeling about it, then? Being on camera.’
‘Absolutely horrible, to be honest. And excited, in a way. It feels like a really long time coming. I’ll finally be delivering the content I write, y’know? It’s just the thought of everyone watching my face.’
‘You can hardly wear a paper bag.’
I snort and a smile pulls at the corner of my mouth, despite the headache sitting heavy on my brow. Mum runs a hand through her hair, glittery dandruff falling on the table. ‘I think we’ve rehomed half of south London’s woodlice by bringing all this lot inside, don’t you?’
‘Pickles is too lazy to chase them out, so they’re essentially lodgers at this point.’
Mum snorts and squints at the calendar tacked by the door. ‘You still all right to take photographs tomorrow? For the Harvest Festival? If you’ve got something on, I can find someone else.’
‘Nah, it’s all right, I’ll be there. Did Ginger say if Rory was going?’
‘I don’t think she is, no. Apparently she’s busy doing a “Wagamama’s crawl”, whatever that is.’
‘Really? I thought that was just a distraction technique after she broke up with Myles,’ I say, sliding a silicon mat under the glue gun before a globule of molten plastic lands on the table. ‘I didn’t think she’d still be going after – what has been now, a month?’
‘She sounds like her mother when it comes to break-ups.’
‘Katsu curry is for Rory what Malbec is to Ginger.’
‘Your generation. Honestly.’
Mum and Ginger became friends at playgroup when Rory and I were babies, and we’ve been solid fixtures in each other’s lives ever since. Whereas Mum is stubbornly independent, the same isn’t true for Ginger, who has welcomed countless boyfriends and five fiancés into their house over the years. Rory and I started to make bets on how long they’d last, with a sherbet Dip Dab awarded to the closest guess within a week.
‘I’m surprised Rory hasn’t moved back in with Ginger whilst she’s in between flats. All that money she could save,’ says Mum, wistfully.
‘She wants to be independent. I don’t blame her, to be honest. Ginger keeps telling her to forgive Myles, but why should she when he has a propensity for Thursday evening cocaine and can’t say where he spent the last three nights? Anyway, I don’t think that Rory finds living with Ginger particularly … calming.’
Mum scrapes her hair into a top knot, rubs her neck, and looks at me from beneath a puff of fringe.
‘What about that one you went out with? Dan? Demi?’
‘Drew.’
‘The American. Any more dates on the cards?’
‘Pfff, absolutely not. He told me he hates cats because “they have no concept of the alpha male”, which is really … disturbing.’
I slide Pickles off my lap. He lands on the floor with a sizeable thud owing to his near spherical shape, achieved by eating three dinners a night thanks to neighbours who fall victim to his feigned cry of starvation.
I pull out a plastic wallet containing the script I wrote for tomorrow’s live stream, my lines neatly highlighted in pastel green. As I re-read it, a band of tension tightens across my forehead. The lines I wrote to sound authentically casual now read like I’m trying too hard, which, of course, I am. Mum puts her hand on the back of my chair and cranes forward. She smells like hemp hand cream and sandalwood smoke.
‘Want to practise with me?’
‘No,’ I answer, folding the page in half. She holds her hands up, as though absolving herself from a crime.
‘Sorry for asking! What’s it about anyway, this TV thing you’re doing tomorrow?’
I pull one leg up, hug my knee, and peek through my overgrown fringe. ‘It’s not on TV, it’s the internet.’ I breathe in slowly. It feels like a moth is fluttering in the core of my chest, tickling up my throat until it’s between my teeth, ready to be spat out.
‘Yes, well, near enough.’ Mum rubs her eyes. ‘Go on then, tell me.’
‘We’re going to have our DNA profiles revealed,’ I say, my heartbeat pulsing in my neck. Mum dangles a tea towel in front of her. Pickles lazily bats it with his paw. The kettle flicks off, but she doesn’t move to pour it. ‘Max and I posted samples to a lab. Well, so did everyone, but we were chosen to lead the feature.’
‘What does it tell you, this test?’
‘Err, well, something to do with our nationality based on shared genes.’
‘Oh!’ Mum flicks the tea towel onto a worktop and picks up the kettle. ‘Fashion changes all the time. I expect the feature won’t age well with the rate that trends move on these days.’ She puts a mug down on the table and screeches. ‘Ah! That bloody animal! Shoo! Go on, off!’ She swats a hand in front of Pickles, who howls and shakes his paw, having stepped on a sticky leaf that he’s now wearing like a ski.
‘No, not like that. It’s DNA stuff. The science-y bits that make up a person. We find out … we find out—’ I stutter, tiptoeing around the edge of a conversational landmine. ‘We find out where our DNA is traced to, so there’s a chance that my paternal data is—’
A rapping noise turns our attention to the back door, where Ginger is just visible through the window. I can tell she’s on tiptoes; the strain is visible in her eyes, wide, wet, and husky blue.
A throaty squeak breaks through chugging sobs that accompany her entrance. Ginger shrugs herself out of a faux fur cape and lets it drop to the floor before collapsing into a kitchen chair with renewed trumpet-like sobs.
‘Ginger! Whatever is the matter? Oh, Ginger! Let me get some wine. Ava, a bottle of white. Ava?’
I open the fridge and slide a bottle off the top shelf as Ginger tries to talk through guttural tears. ‘I’ll get out of your way,’ I add, not quite loud enough to be heard above the cooing and sobbing coming from the table. Going by the state of her, I can safely assume that I’ve won the sherbet Dip Dab this time, but I’ve missed my last chance to ask Mum about my father before tomorrow.
I leave them to it and plod upstairs, take off what little remains of my make-up, and practise my ‘camera face’ in the mirror whilst I sweep rosewater serum over my neck. An article I’d read on Refinery29 said that three litres of water a day and botanical toners would get rid of the dark circles under my eyes, but even after buying every product listed and teaching myself Japanese facial techniques, I haven’t seen a change.
‘No way, that’s unreal! Like, so cool …’ I whisper to my own reflection, trying to make my delivery sound detached and aloof like the fresh-from-the-womb media graduates that Duncan insists on hiring. ‘No, I’ve never wondered about him,’ I say, unconvinced by my own smile. ‘Not for a minute.’
Chapter 2
‘Are … are you sure this is what Duncan asked for?’
‘Yep,’ replies the stylist with a curt nod. I blink beneath false eyelashes so thick I feel like I’m about to take off. My hair has been scraped back into what I have been reliably told are called ‘space buns’, giving my eyebrows an arched quality thanks to eye-watering tension at my scalp. The headache that I slept off last night has reappeared with renewed vigour, aided by white lights framing the mirror I’ve been wheeled in front of. Not only do my eyes hurt from the brightness, but I’m now reacquainted with every long-lost pore and blemish on my face. Nice.
‘He’s gone for an edgy, youthful look, y’know? Imagine you’re the kind of person who gets drunk tattoos and shags a member of One Direction whilst listening to Billie Eilish on repeat.’
Right, so that explains the facelift I’ve been given courtesy of Natalie’s brutal work with a metal comb and an entire packet of Kirby grips. ‘I know it’s meant to make me look younger—’
‘Youthful,’ interrupts Natalie with a self-satisfied nod. She shakes a can of hairspray and blasts it in an arc above my head. With no warning, I inhale most of it.
‘Sure,’ I splutter, ‘but … I feel like it’s accentuating the fact that I’m a decade too old for this look.’
‘It’s just because you’re not used to being on camera,’ she says, giving my shoulder a squeeze. ‘It’s all about lighting. This one actress – she was a Dame or something – wouldn’t do television appearances unless her team could screw their own lightbulbs in. They were turned up so high, right, that the studio was humming. Benedict Cumberbatch sweated through his three-piece. You won’t believe the powder I got through doing touch-ups.’
‘Weirdly, that does makes me feel better.’
***
‘Hey!’
I stand on tiptoes and look over the heads of a small crowd gathered at the collection point of a café counter. A harried barista attempts to steam three kinds of milk in tiny jugs, a backlog of KeepCups lined up beside him. A hand waves, a swimmer in an ocean of hipsters. I wriggle through.
Rory’s fiercely red hair is piled on top of her head and held in place with a huge clip, a loose tendril running over her shoulder like a snake. She pulls me into a one-armed hug; a little uncomfortable owing to the bag of coffee beans wedged between us.
‘Are you buying these?’ I ask.
‘No, they’ve given them to me so I don’t lose my place in the queue. I feel like a right pillock.’
‘I’ll take it.’
‘You’re a peach.’
She handles the bag like a cautious parent with a newborn, transferring it into the crook of my elbow. Manoeuvre complete, she clasps my shoulders and turns me from one side to the other like I’m a patient she’s examining. I frown, my hairline taut. I open my eyes wide to relieve the pressure.
‘Wow. That’s … that’s a look,’ says Rory.
‘Oh, don’t,’ I say, massaging my scalp.
‘It’s very slick.’
‘Hmm, that’s the word for it. She combed so much gel through my hair I thought she was about to insert me somewhere.’
‘You say that, but since I was relocated to A&E I’ve seen some things that truly confront my understanding of human anatomy,’ says Rory. ‘Oh, hang on. Yep, that’s me! I’m coming! Ava, bring the coffee beans.’
We scurry to the front, where I cautiously hand over our beany placeholder, swapping it for a lukewarm flat white. Outside, Rory and I sit on an old bench by the window. With the parquet flooring, painted bricks, and school gym equipment, I get an unnerving flashback to PE lessons, most of which involved Rory and me chucking a musty beanbag to each other at the back of the hall.
‘So glad we could do this, even if it is for ten minutes,’ says Rory, her eyes softening as caffeine slips down her throat. ‘Ah, that’s the stuff. Got a hangover. Before you say anything, I will tone it down from now on. It’s getting silly. Thing is, I can’t bear the thought of having dead time in the evenings. Too many opportunities to think about Myles.’
‘Don’t be too hard on yourself. It’s not been that long. Couldn’t you stay with Ginger for a bit? Use it as downtime?’
‘Absolutely not,’ says Rory, flicking down a pair of oversized sunglasses. ‘Mum’s taken my break-up worse than I have. She randomly wails like Mrs Bennet. The melodrama! She’s one step away from smelling salts, I swear to God. I said to her: “Mother. This stops now. He hasn’t cheated on you, has he?” Perhaps if I’d seen just one example of a healthy relationship between her and literally any of the men she went out with when I was a kid, I wouldn’t be so bloody useless at weeding out the arseholes. I said that to her and all,’ she adds, licking coffee foam from her finger.
‘Wow, that’s brave.’
‘Oh, you know what we’re like: lay everything on the table, get out of each other’s hair for a while, and meet up for a consoling tapas session when we’ve both chilled out.’
I nod, quietly envious of Rory and Ginger’s open – if chaotic – relationship. If I bring up the tiniest grievance to Mum, she reacts like I’ve made a personal dig at her and then bustles off to do some work for one of the various committees she’s on. Later, when she gets home and I’m on the sofa watching Queer Eye, she pretends like nothing’s happened. That’s that. We move on.