Copyright

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.’

Jack Buchanan laughed; it suited him. He had a face that was made for happiness. ‘My stepmother does a bit of writing.’

Incredible. ‘See what I mean?’ I looked at my watch. Half the day had gone already and I had work to do. ‘I’d better go. I’ve got to find myself a hero.’

‘And I’ve got to go back and do some firefighting.’

That was interesting. ‘You’re a firefighter?’

‘Metaphorically speaking. I have an IT company. Tell you what, you can write about me, if you like,’ he said helpfully.

I grinned. ‘No offence, but you’re not hero material.’

‘Why’s that?’ He looked hurt.

‘Sorry.’ As usual I wished I’d kept my thoughts to myself. ‘I didn’t mean it to come out like that. You seem perfectly nice and …’ I couldn’t point out that he was also scruffy and worked in IT and was worried about his stepmother, so I took another approach. ‘Are you fearless? And incurably romantic? Are you self-assured to the point of arrogance?’

Jack Buchanan rubbed his jaw and thought about it. ‘No. Not really.’

‘Mmm. Worth a shot, though. And I appreciate the offer,’ I added, and finished my drink. ‘Good luck with your stepmother.’ I stood and picked up the Tesco bag. It was heavier than I remembered, but my head was clear.

‘Hey, Lana?’

As I turned back, he shielded his eyes from the sun and looked up at me. In the shadow of his hand his eyes were a cool, clear grey. I couldn’t read the expression in them.

‘So, that’s what makes a good husband, is it?’ he asked. ‘Being fearless and stuff?’

I hadn’t thought of it like that before. ‘Probably not, except in books.’ The Tesco bag was surprisingly heavy as I cradled it in my arms. ‘A hero and a husband are entirely different things.’

CHAPTER THREE
Reflections

If we could edit our own lives, there are plenty of things in mine that I would delete and rewrite, but looking back, the way I said goodbye to Mark is the main one I would change. It was more than a year since we’d first met up while I was travelling. We’d been living together for almost four amazing months and for me, our relationship was still exciting and new. But the day he was due to leave for his assignment in the Bahamas I was part of a panel of authors at the British Library, so we said our farewells at the flat. His blond hair was still wet from the shower and he kissed me long and hard and as I looked into his brown eyes I was thinking, I really have to go now. Mark never closed his eyes when we kissed and I kept mine open too because the kiss was deeper that way. It was a kiss to remember him by.

But my mind was more on the time than the kiss, because I was nervous and I didn’t want to be late for the panel. I loosened the hug but he was still holding me tight.

‘I wish you were coming with me,’ he said into my hair.

‘Yes.’ I should have said me too, but that would have been hypocritical. I’d chosen to stay behind because I had Love Crazy to promote and the book meant everything to me. Being a novelist had been a lifelong dream since the age of six when I’d self-published a slightly derivative story on coloured paper, which my mother had immediately ruined by correcting the mistakes in black felt-tip.

We had one final kiss before I hurriedly left the flat, but at the door something made me turn back. I told him reassuringly, ‘It’s not as if you’ll be away for long.’

He nodded.

It turned out to be a clear example of dramatic irony.

I’d forgotten what it was like, being alone. After living with Mark, the solitude was more empty than I remembered and I missed him more than I’d imagined. It wasn’t just physical; I missed his presence too, and without his energy I felt lethargic and aimless, as if I was ill. To begin with, we spoke to each other most days but when I went to Penrith to do workshops for the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s conference, we messaged instead. I used my time productively and wrote drafts of short stories, planned the outline of my next novel, updated my blog and received humorous tweets from my followers on how to keep busy while Mark was away.

I counted down the days until finally it was time to get my legs waxed, my eyebrows threaded and my hair blow-dried and, feeling good, I took the train to Heathrow to welcome him back. The idea was to surprise him.

His flight was due to land at 11 am and I got there earlier than I’d expected so I bought a sandwich and a coffee. As I ate my sandwich I studied the people around me on my side of the barrier; the drivers holding up names, the girls checking their phones, the family groups distracting bored children, the parents watching hopefully. I watched the passengers coming into the arrivals hall. Some looked tanned and energised, others were tired, doggedly pushing trolleys, but happiest of all were the eager travellers who came through knowing somebody was there to greet them.

And as I watched, each reunion almost brought tears to my eyes. I imagined what it must be like to get off a long flight and see someone who loved you waiting to welcome you home.

For Mark, that someone was me.

Glancing at the indicator board, I saw that his flight had landed and I felt the thrill of excitement. I threw away my cup and sandwich wrapper, wiped my hands with a lemon wipe and edged nearer to the barrier until I found myself standing next to an elderly man in a navy blazer who was holding a bouquet of lilies. Their heavy sweet scent was so strong that I turned to look at him.

He smiled back at me. I had a warm feeling of connection; we were two different generations there for the same loving purpose.

I could see the faint shape of people beyond the sliding doors and suddenly the travellers were coming through in a rush with their Virgin Atlantic tags. The old man and I pressed ourselves against the barriers, scanning faces. My heart was beating hard as I searched for Mark and the people came through in wave after wave and then the cabin crew came through with their wheelie bags and the crush around us gradually eased as the drivers met up with their passengers and the divided families became whole again and after a while, out of the original welcoming committee, it was just the old man and me.

We gave each other a wry, philosophical shrug. Well – it hadn’t gone the way I’d imagined but I thought about it logically. The airline could have lost Mark’s bags and he could be still in baggage claim. Or maybe he’d left his passport on the plane and then had to be accompanied back to look for it. Or I’d missed him in the crowd. Of three possible options, I considered that was the worst scenario, the one that ruined everything.

With a beep-beep-beep, an airport golf cart came through the automatic doors carrying an old lady with fierce red hair and my elderly companion knocked his flowers on the barrier as he ducked under it, showering me with pollen, and greeted her with a kiss.

That just left me.

My mood had changed completely by this time; I was dulled by the anticlimax. Even if Mark had just at that moment come through the doors I could only have managed to express relief. The thrill of the surprise element had gone. So I phoned him.

When he answered, he sounded groggy. ‘Hello?’

‘Mark, where are you? Are you okay?’ I asked urgently.

There was silence. It seemed to go on forever. I recognised it as the silence of a storyteller wondering where to start.

‘Yeah,’ he said finally. ‘I was going to call you.’

I didn’t like the sound of that at all. ‘I’m at Heathrow,’ I said indignantly, as if it would make a difference.

‘Okay,’ he said warily. ‘What’s the time?’

I looked up at the indicator board. ‘Ten past twelve.’ A new crowd of meeters and greeters was gathering and I edged my way through them towards the relative quietness of a bureau de change. ‘Ten past seven, your time,’ I added, because at that point I knew without a doubt that he was still in the Bahamas and that he hadn’t caught the flight after all. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’m staying on here a bit longer.’

I felt so instantly bad, so painfully crushed by unhappiness that I just wanted to know the worst so that I could stop feeling this utter dread about what he was going to say. But at the same time, I was terribly scared to hear it.

‘Mark, just tell me, is this it?’

Again, the long pause.

I waited helplessly for the judgement.

‘Look, I’ll call you later,’ he said finally, and he cut me off.

Back home, waiting for the call, I obsessively went through his texts and checked his Instagram and Facebook pages and studied the pictures he’d posted of the free-diver, Helga. I rang his parents, Judy and Stephen, hoping that they could tell me what was going on, but although Judy greeted me warmly she was vague and said she believed he was working. I left messages pleading with him to phone me.

He finally did get in touch, jolting me awake from a restless sleep a couple of weeks later. From the background noise it sounded as if he was in a bar. He was remorseful, but he told me he was staying in Long Island a bit longer because this was a good assignment, and it might turn out to be one of his best.

If he’d left it there, it would have been easier to live with. But he went on to say that there had been too much pressure on us being the perfect couple and he didn’t like the way people assumed they knew him because of Marco in Love Crazy. He said I’d written things that were meant to be private. He needed some space because we’d rushed into living together, he said, forgetting it was his idea in the first place.

I listened to his familiar voice against the drunken tumult of the background noise and stared at the shadows on the ceiling.

‘So it’s my fault?’ I didn’t say it indignantly but more out of self-knowledge. I couldn’t make people like me, and the fact that he’d left me didn’t come as a surprise. My pillow was damp. I hadn’t realised I was crying.

‘I’ll call you when I get back,’ he said.

But as the time went by, every buzz and ping of my phone ignited hope and then plunged me back into a depression which drained the colour from my life. When I first wrote in my blog about his non-appearance at the airport the supportive messages helped a lot, but people don’t have a great tolerance for relentless misery. Love Crazy was in the bestseller lists and the vitriolic responses I got for ruining the dream of happy ever after resulted in my total withdrawal from social media. I gave up the blog and poured my emotions into Heartbreak.

And look how that worked out.

As I closed the door to my flat behind me, Mark’s black and red Trek bike cast its shadow on the wall like a Banksy stencil. I hung my red jacket on the handlebars. I’d bought the bike for him when I got the first payment for Love Crazy and it was currently my most expensive coat rack.

I was in the hall, still standing by the bike, still holding the heavy Tesco bag and listening intently because I sensed something strange about the flat; something off-kilter. I crept towards the lounge, caught a glimpse of movement, a flash of blue and red, and I froze. But no. It was the reflection of the Tesco bag. Still, I waited and listened.

Despite what thriller writers want you to believe, no woman in her right mind goes into her flat, senses something suspicious and calls out, ‘Hello? Anyone there?’ No – the thing to do is to be alert, and at the faintest sound, run back out of the door as fast as you can. This is writing what you know. However, I want to point out that writing what you know doesn’t mean everything you know is worth writing about. I was holding the evidence right here. Just because a story is true doesn’t make it a good story.

I looked out onto Parliament Hill Fields. I could hear the distant repetitive thwok from the tennis courts. My desk was cluttered with pens, mugs and pages, just as I’d left it that morning when I was full of optimism. The table was clear. The cushions on the lemon sofa were plumped. All seemed as it should, but it felt wrong.

I put my typescript on the table and went cautiously into the shady bedroom. Duvet crumpled, blinds still shut. And suddenly I realised what was different. When I’d left that morning, Heartbreak was a literary tragedy that was going to support me and help me pay my bills. Now it was a worthless cliché. I’d been dumped by a guy; simple as that.

Here I was, surrounded like Miss Havisham by the relics of our love story – his unwanted bike, his discarded clothes, the last fumes of his aftershave. Stripped of literary worth, they were meaningless. No story here; nothing to look at, stand back, stand back.

Writing Heartbreak, I’d imagined Mark reading it and rushing back, begging for forgiveness, appalled at the pain he’d caused me. Now I realised he would have resented me for making him feel bad. Who wants a book that makes you feel bad? As Kitty said, that’s the sort of thing we can do for ourselves.

Well, I’d finally got the message.

It was like taking yellow sunglasses off and seeing the dull hue of reality.

House keys, bike, clothes, me.

Who leaves all that behind? Someone who doesn’t want them any more, that’s who.

CHAPTER FOUR
Catalysts for Change

Next morning I woke up, hungover, with my pillow over my head, fighting for air. I’d slept badly all night, just on the edge of unconsciousness, and rolled over, relieved to see dawn bleeding into the room. I felt shabby, with a pounding headache that made me squint. Even with the curtains closed, the room seemed unreasonably bright.

My failure crowded me in and I got out of bed, walking on a lean. Glancing at the empty bottle and the greasy pizza box, depression clung to me like a cold, wet cleansing cloth.

The letterbox rattled and there in the hall lay a letter from my publishers, forwarded to me by Kitty.

I tore it open, hoping that the publishers had made a mistake and they wanted Heartbreak after all, but no. Still, it was the next best thing. It was a royalty cheque.

For five pounds and seventy-one pence.

I studied it carefully. How could that be right? I pointed at each word as I read it, hoping I was delusional. But no.

How had this happened? I was now officially broke.

Fresh panic made my heartbeat thud chaotically around my skull like a squash ball.

I held my head in my hands to steady it and I sat at the table and suddenly recalled that I’d had some drunken inspiration for a new plot. Trembling, I checked my notebook in case I had become Stephen King under the influence. I’d written: Mopeds. Virgin. Stern letter. £10,000-ish. There might be a story there somewhere but I couldn’t remember what it was.

I got dressed and decided to address the main problem, insolvency, by going to visit my bank.

I had to wait to see an advisor. I sat on one of three seats by a low orange partition that acted as a wall for the desks behind it. The light buzzed like a bee in a jar. Although there were three desks set at angles, only one was occupied so I settled down to wait, and with nothing else to do I watched the advisor, a thin man with vertically gelled hair, greet his client, an old, bald Asian guy with an anxious expression. He sat down cautiously and pushed a paper across the table.

‘Is this your name?’ the advisor asked him.

The old man leant forward and confirmed it in a low voice.

‘What’s your address?’ the advisor asked, studying the screen.

The old man sensed my interest and glanced at me crossly. He turned back to the advisor and huddled further across the desk, like a man with something to hide – an exam paper, for example.

‘In Hong Kong?’

The advisor paused. ‘No, UK.’

‘No address in UK,’ the old man said sternly.

‘There’s nothing here under this name. But then how—’

The old man scribbled something down. ‘Try this way,’ he instructed.

Triple-tapping of the keyboard, and then … ‘Sorry. I’m not finding it. If you have your account number—’

‘I give you my money! Hundreds! Thousands!’ the old man cried out in panic.

Imagine that! What a nightmare! Putting all your money in a bank and suddenly they’ve got no record of you.

A slim, blonde woman stood over me. ‘Are you waiting to see an advisor?’

‘Yes,’ I said, so I don’t know how the story turned out.

Better than mine, I hope.

We walked over to one of the empty desks. ‘How can I help you?’ she asked warmly as I sat down, which led me into a false sense of security. She reminded me of Meryl Streep, with her glasses and her up-do, so I told her the whole sorry story about my book being turned down. As the horror of it came back afresh, I asked her for an overdraft to keep me going until I wrote another novel and got my advance.

She turned her attention from me to the screen. ‘You already have an unauthorised overdraft which is costing you five pounds a day,’ she said blandly.

‘Five pounds a day? No wonder I’ve got no money. If you could just authorise that overdraft so that I don’t have to throw money away, that will be great.’ I was showing her how astute I was, financially speaking.

‘You have already exceeded your overdraft limit.’

‘Well, I’d like to extend it. It’s just temporary, until I get my advance.’

‘What date are you expecting to receive that?’ she asked, fingers poised so she could type it in.

I was starting to feel uneasy. ‘I don’t have an exact date because I have to write a new storyline first but I’ll do it as soon as possible, obviously.’

She frowned and I remembered I didn’t actually like Meryl Streep much.

‘Approximately how long will it take?’ she asked. Her voice was a couple of degrees colder.

‘Well …’ I began, getting panicky – it was giving me writer’s block just thinking about it, ‘I actually know two authors who’ve written a whole book in a fortnight.’ One of them is a woman with an overactive thyroid. If I ever have to have an illness, that’s the one I’d choose because it revs you up – the body is working perpetual overtime and you can get a lot done with that spare energy. An overactive thyroid is like natural cocaine. On the minus side, like cocaine, it makes you more prone to having a heart attack, but I’m just saying, if.

She lowered her fingers and turned her attention from the screen to me. ‘You’re saying you’ll only get paid once you’ve written a new book?’

‘Yes.’ I shouldn’t have poured my heart out to her – bad mistake. I thought she’d feel sorry for me, but here she was holding it against me already.

She looked at her screen again. ‘You currently don’t have sufficient funds to cover your direct debits.’

‘Exactly! That’s why I’m here.’

She was so frosty you would have thought I was asking her to lend me money out of her own pocket. Where was the compassion, the eagerness to help?

After a bit more tapping and clicking, she said, ‘As you have reached your overdraft limit, we can’t extend it. A limit is a limit,’ she explained, enunciating clearly.

It was the way she said it that annoyed me. ‘Hey, I know what a limit is! Words are my life!’ Knowing how ridiculous I sounded, but I was desperate. This wasn’t going at all the way I’d imagined. I hadn’t realised that banks love you when you have money, and they go off you when you don’t, like the worst sort of friends. ‘So what do I do now? If you stop my direct debits I won’t be able to pay my rent and I’ll be homeless. Is that what you want?’

‘I would like to remind you not to raise your voice.’ She pointed to a sign by the window which read: Abuse of advisors will not be tolerated.

I’d always wondered why that notice was there, and now I knew. I jumped to my feet in frustration.

‘Well you’re not getting this,’ I said, waving my royalty cheque. Impulsively, I tore it up and threw the bits over the table. My heart was pumping hard as I walked towards the stairs.

One day’s overdraft money lost in a pointless gesture. I immediately regretted it.

Back home, I lay on the lemon sofa and realised to my dismay I was going to have to ring my mother for help. She lives in Loano, Italy. (Literally, the last resort.) She can detect laziness even over the phone so as I pressed her number I sat on the edge of my desk so as to sound alert and also to enjoy the view which in all probability wasn’t going to be mine for much longer.

‘Pronto!’ she answered impatiently.

‘Mum? It’s me. Lana,’ I added for clarity.

‘Oh, this is a surprise,’ she said.

She’d been a teacher, and then a head teacher, and after the divorce she’d taken early retirement and gone to the Italian Riviera to boss a whole new country around for a change. I can spot a teacher a mile off. They’re the ones telling people off.

I took a deep breath and once again I felt the burning shame of failure. ‘Listen, I’ve got something to tell you. My new book got turned down yesterday.’

‘Got? You mean it was turned down.’

See?

Now that she’d corrected my grammar, she waited for me to go on.

‘Well, that’s it,’ I said. ‘That’s what I wanted to tell you.’

‘Oh,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps now is a good time to think about doing something else.’

‘But I don’t want to.’ My voice started to rise. Right. Be calm. Regroup. Clear throat. ‘I didn’t call you for advice. The point is, without Mark, I can’t afford next month’s rent.’

She was silent for a long moment. ‘You’re calling to borrow money?’

‘Yes, please. It’s just until I come up with a new story.’

‘Why don’t you try asking the bank?’

Desperation made me flippant. ‘I have tried them, and now I’m trying you.’

‘I see.’ She managed to put a surprising amount of disapproval into that short sentence.

When I was little, someone gave her a book by Libby Purves called How (Not) to Be a Perfect Mother, and she’s stuck rigidly to the concept ever since.

After a long silence, she sighed deeply. ‘Do you want to come and stay here for a while?’

Did I? It wasn’t the solution I would have chosen, but it was still a solution and I grasped it, trying not to sound too eager.

‘I sort of do,’ I said.

‘Sort of do?’

‘Is that not grammatically correct?’

‘Come then, if that’s what you’d like.’

Honestly, no wonder I prefer making things up to real life. ‘But would you like me to come? You know, with enthusiasm?’

‘You’re my daughter,’ she said, which wasn’t really an answer.

I probably expect too much of her. She’s never been a Cath Kidston, cupcake-baking type of mother. If I went to stay it would like having twenty-four-hour private tuition from her. And from her point of view, she would be wasting her teaching skills on a bratty and reluctant pupil. We love each other but we don’t get each other in the slightest.

I’m guessing this was going through her mind, too. ‘Why don’t you go back to journalism?’ she suggested.

‘Definitely not! I hated that job. I hated visiting people when they were at their worst. I hated court reports, and seeing the looks on their families’ faces as their men were described as being of “bad character”. I loathed the whole Crufts Doc in Dog Collar Shock thing. Yuk!’

‘In that case, have you thought about teaching creative writing?’ she suggested.

‘Hah! Those that can’t, teach,’ I said bitterly, managing to insult us both in one sentence. I’d turned down a job as tutor at the London Literary Society a few months previously on the grounds I was too busy writing my sequel. Well, I’d had money then; I could afford to.

‘Actually, you make a far better teacher if you can do a thing,’ my mother said, ‘and despite your current setback you’re a published, successful author. Capitalise on it.’

‘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.

I was anxious, restless with adrenaline and at a loose end. I wanted to move time on, to fast-forward to happier days when all would be well again. I wanted the hard stuff to be over. I wanted to leave the flat now and move somewhere safe. I wanted it all done with and finished.

In this restless frame of mind, I wandered into the bedroom and opened Mark’s end of the wardrobe for the first time in months.

His clothes queued calmly on the brass rail in tasteful, ice-cream colours of cream and beige. His Paul Smith suits, shirts, moleskin trousers, khaki cargo pants, all radiating the faint smell of his aftershave. My throat tightened and my heart softened. Mark’s stuff. I’d loved those clothes when he’d loved them. I’d loved them when he loved me.

I took a shirt out of the wardrobe and held it up – it was creased around the tails, where he’d tucked it in. I sniffed it and then put it around my shoulders and tied the arms around my neck, as if he was hugging me from behind. The sleeves were cool and soft. I could smell his deodorant on them.

Angry at my self-indulgent sentimentality, I dashed into the kitchen, tearing a bin bag off a roll. I unhooked his clothes, setting the coat hangers jangling, and stuffed them into it like the rubbish that they were. I put my coat on, slung the bag over my shoulder and headed to the Oxfam Clothing Bank near the Forum in Kentish Town. Shifting the heavy bag to the other shoulder, I passed the school, still lit up. On the top floor, a man in a high-vis jacket was operating a floor-polisher with one hand. I slowed down by the rug shop – the Orientalist has a life-sized model of a camel outside. It’s been there for years and nobody has stolen it or vandalised it or even put a traffic cone on its head, which tells you something.

My destination, the recycling bins, were surrounded by interesting stuff – a folded buggy, a clothes airer, and some lengths of pine which, reconstituted, could be a bookcase. Refusing to be diverted I opened the lid and, with a grunt, hoisted the bin bag up to stuff it in and hesitated on the brink.

Just do it.

Listened to the thwump of its soft landing.

I flexed my shoulders and caught my breath. Then I looked inside the bin, suffering from sudden separation anxiety, but the bin bag was lost in the dark. Too late.

CHAPTER SIX
Plateau

I had reached what publishers call a plateau. I couldn’t write. My worries took up all the space. Time was going by and I still had no story.

Little did I know I was about to experience a turning point. Publishers like these – the more the better.

It was sunny, one of those autumn days when the sun is still warm on the skin but the shadows are chilly, and I thought the fresh air might stimulate my brain. I was walking on the Heath, distracted from my reflections by a parakeet screeching overhead like a haunted door in the kind of horror film that goes straight to DVD.

Parakeets are everywhere now, flying around with their long pointy tails and screaming hysterically, but really, it’s all show because they have little to scream about. Parakeets in London have no natural predators. Is it because they’re green and look too vegetarian for raptors? I walked past the boating pond. The ducks were fighting over a M&S prawn sandwich. You know that research that concluded ducks prefer kale? Not in London, they don’t. London birds prefer fast food. But only the gulls eat chilli.

My phone rang and it was Kitty, asking how the writing was coming along.

I watched the ducks moving their squabbles into the reeds. ‘I’m still at the planning stage,’ I said.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘keep at it. The reason I rang is, I got a call. Someone’s looking for you.’

‘Who?’

‘He didn’t give his name. He said he was your hero and you’d know who he was.’

I felt as if I’d been Tasered.

And then I felt a sudden rush of euphoria.

Thank you, God! ‘Did he leave a number?’

‘He did. Shall I text it to you?’

‘Yes please.’ I stood on the Heath flooded with happiness and laughing to myself. Mark was looking for me. I’d changed my phone number but he’d tracked me down. He cared! I stared at my phone and when the message pinged it was like having a winning lottery ticket in my hand.

I’d known this was going to happen!

It was preordained and I was generous in my happiness, gloating over my good fortune, smiling at people as they passed me. It felt like the glory of life had suddenly been revealed to me! I walked up Kite Hill and the grass was greener, the sky bluer, the passers-by more glamorous than they’d ever been before. I was seeing everything with new eyes.

I leant against a tree, feeling the cold bark through my jacket, filled with gratitude at my good fortune. I thought of Mark’s Trek bike fondly. What amazing good luck it was that I hadn’t sold it! I realised at that moment that I’d misunderstood my motivation. I hadn’t kept it because it was his; I’d kept it for him.

I dialled the number. The phone rang, once, twice; my heart was thundering and then:

CHAPTER SEVEN
Turning Point

‘Jack Buchanan.’

What the? Who?

What kind of trick was this?

My glittering bauble of happiness shattered into bits, irrevocably broken.

I squashed my bag against my face and screamed into it. It had all been a delusion. I was such an idiot. The worst thing about losing an imaginary future is that the lights go out and you stare into the blackness and you can’t see anything there. There’s no destination. It is a bleak and frightening feeling. Time heals, they say, without adding that it moves in a slow and arduous way, like sludge, and the only way to time-travel is to sleep.

‘Hello? Hello?’

‘It’s Lana Green,’ I said, unable to hide my frustration. ‘My agent said you were trying to get hold of me.’

‘Yes! I don’t know if you remember me – I met you at the Edinboro Castle. You’re a writer in need of a hero. I’m the dark-haired guy in the orange sweatshirt. I put that in Rush-Hour Crush. Don’t you read the Metro?’

‘What do you want?’ I asked, too disappointed to make an effort, watching dogs snuffle past my line of vision.

For some reason my lack of interest and gloomy tones didn’t put him off.

‘I emailed you on your author’s website but when you didn’t reply I called your agent because she was in the acknowledgements. Listen. I’ve been paragliding.’

‘So?’

‘So, if you’re still looking for a hero, I’m reapplying for the role.’

‘I don’t want—’

‘I’ve never done anything like that in my life. I’ve never felt so alive! Or,’ he added soberly, ‘so close to death. Look on YouTube if you don’t believe me.’

‘I do believe you.’ I just don’t care.

‘Well look at it anyway. By the way, just want to reassure you I haven’t suddenly grown boobs – that’s a water balloon down my shirt.’

It was like being licked by a labrador. ‘Jack, I’m not—’

‘Yes, I know, you’re going to say that going paragliding once is not enough.’

‘Actually that’s not what I was going to say.’

‘Good! Let’s pick a date. I’ll try my best to be aloof. What are you doing on Saturday?’

There is nothing worse than a person who is trying to engage you in conversation when you don’t feel like talking. Just at that moment I would have given anything for aloofness. It’s what gave Mark an air of superiority.

Women think that the one quality they want in a man is someone they can talk with. Bad mistake. Nowhere in the whole history of romantic fiction has a woman fallen in love with a talker. Talking is what girl friends are for. My advice is, always go for a man you fancy the pants off, it’s as simple as that.

However – what was there to lose? He might even buy me lunch and I’d get a free meal out of it.

‘All right,’ I sighed. ‘I’ll bring my notebook.’

‘Great! Twelve o’clock at the Edinboro Castle,’ he declared. Then he added in an undertone, ‘How did that sound?’

I smiled despite myself. ‘Decisive and masterful,’ I said.

CHAPTER EIGHT
Words, Words, Words

Some people never forget a face. I’m not one of them. I couldn’t remember what Jack Buchanan looked like, other than the general impression of a person who’d just got out of bed. But when I got off the bus in Delancey Street he was leaning against the white gatepost of the Edinboro Castle. He was wearing a lime-green jacket, his dark hair ruffling in the breeze.

‘Hey!’ he said, taking his hands out of his pockets.

‘Yeah, hey!’

‘You came!’ He grinned at me.

I was surprised that he thought I wouldn’t. It wasn’t as if I had anything better to do or any other invitations, but there’s nothing quite as satisfying as exceeding someone’s expectations.

‘How is your new book coming along?’ he asked.

‘Basically … not well. To get creative, you need to be ill or bored.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Andrew Motion drinks Lemsip when he’s writing. It’s to fool his mind into believing he’s got a cold.’ Just behind Jack I could see the menus pinned to the gateposts in gilt frames. I have a lot of faith in a menu in a gilt frame. ‘Are we going in?’

‘Well, what I thought was, we could walk to the Hub Sports Pavilion, have a coffee and then go to the boating lake and hire a boat. I’ll row.’

I fancied a glass of wine and something to eat in the pub, but I had to give him credit for coming up with a plan.

‘Or,’ he said, ‘we could hire a pedalo, but that doesn’t seem the kind of thing a hero would do, right?’

I thought it over as we turned the corner and walked past the flower shop through the scent of lilies. A train rumbled beneath us.

‘True. A hero would have a jet ski.’

He laughed. ‘Yes. I read your book.’

‘You did? I can’t believe you bought it!’

‘Well … I didn’t exactly buy it. My stepmother took it from the library. But it has given me a rough idea of what you’re looking for in a hero.’

The suspense was killing me. ‘So what did you think of it?’ I asked casually.

‘Time-consuming,’ he said. ‘Not the book – I mean, love in general.’

I looked at him curiously. ‘You’ve never been in love, have you?’

‘Me? No. All that uncertainty, does she love me or not, and then the misunderstandings and other complications … I thought you got the title perfectly: Love Crazy – I like the way you identified it as a kind of insanity that makes people behave completely out of character. I’m more of a logical thinker. I like things to be straightforward.’

‘You got all that from my book?’

‘Nah. Mostly from life. My parents broke up when I was young.’

‘Yeah? Mine too.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Eighteen. You?’

‘Eight. It killed my mother.’

Mine, too, I almost said but then I looked up and his face was expressionless, as if he didn’t want his thoughts to show, so I held back my comment in case he meant it literally.

Of course, when I asked him what he thought of the book, what I actually wanted to know was whether he’d enjoyed it. Writers are strangely needy that way. Last year I went to the Radio Four book club and sat next to a woman named Minna Howard, who was also a writer (it was research, in case we were ever asked to do it ourselves), and the highly acclaimed guest author David Mitchell responded to her praise with such warmth and delight that I was convinced he was her ex-lover. Turned out she’d never seen him before in her life. He was just deeply grateful for her kind words.

We crossed at the lights and stepped into bright sunlight at Gloucester Gate. The sky was a pale, frigid blue. Attached to the railings was a plaque showing St Pancras being attacked by pumas. We crossed at the stone grotto drinking fountains where Matilda the bronze milkmaid posed with her bucket and he asked: ‘So, what happened to Marco Ferrari?’

I blushed. Well this was uncomfortable. When I’d written Love Crazy I’d assumed Mark and I would be together forever so I’d never imagined this situation arising – going out with a guy who knew all about my past.

I’ve always been obsessed with telling the truth and, although I see it as a positive character trait, other people don’t necessarily see it as a good thing. But I’ve stuck with it because it’s become my way of rebelling. No one can argue with the truth.

The way I looked at it, this meant that I was also going to have to explain that Mark had dumped me and it was way too soon to disillusion him – I always prefer people to get disillusioned with me in their own good time.

However, the habit of a lifetime is hard to break.

‘We broke up,’ I said, and glanced up at him, blinking – in the sunlight his lime-green jacket was hard on the eyes.

‘I knew it!’ Jack said. ‘So, what happened? Did you get bored with all that adventure and the excitement?’

I liked the way he assumed I’d been the one to end it. ‘We’d always kept our independence; I guess it was an extreme version of that.’

He pressed the button on the crossing. ‘Independence to the point of separation?’ He gave me a look that was both incredulous and empathetic at the same time. ‘And now you’re looking for a new hero to write about.’

I wanted to say something witty and trivial in reply. We crossed the road and while I was working on it, Jack said, ‘So, with the pedalo you really need two to pedal, that’s why I thought we could get a rowing boat and I could row you by myself.’

‘Have you rowed before?’

‘No, but I watch the boat race every year and I think it’s all about the rhythm. Brisk and steady.’

I laughed. There was an endearing quality about him; something normal and nice, and trust me, they weren’t attributes that I ever thought I’d rate in a guy. We walked in step alongside the Zoological Society of London’s railings, keeping a respectable distance away from each other.

Ahead of us was the park. In the golden glow of the autumn sunshine, the grass was bright green, and the trees striped it with muted shadows. A glossy brown boxer dog bounded across our path chasing pigeons and two children raced their brightly coloured scooters towards us with speed and aplomb. Joggers overtook mothers pushing buggies and I thought about Jack’s comment that love was time-consuming. I was just going to ask him about it when his phone started to ring right at that moment.

He took it out of his jacket, stared at the number and frowned. For a moment I thought he wasn’t going to answer it. He let it ring a couple more times and then he sighed.

‘Sorry, Lana, I’d better take this.’

‘Go ahead.’

I did that polite thing of staring at the horse chestnut trees in the distance and pretending not to listen as he said, ‘Hello? Nancy. Slow down – what do you mean, a lot of men? John the police officer?’ He flicked a glance at me. ‘Okay, okay, put him on. Hello? Yes,’ he said irritably, ‘I can hear that she’s fine. No, I’m not worried.’

He turned his back to me as he looked across the park. ‘A sex offender? What’s he done? What do you mean you can’t tell me? Okay. Put Nancy back on. Hi, Nancy, it’s Jack again. Listen, I’m out with a friend at the moment. I’ll call you later.’ His face was set as he turned back to me and tucked his phone away.

Obviously I was intrigued by what I’d heard. I hadn’t been a journalist for five years without knowing a good story when I heard one.

‘Problem?’ I asked lightly.

‘My stepmother’s had a drink with a sex offender. That’s all they would tell me.’

‘How did she know he was a sex offender? And how did the police get involved?’

‘Don’t ask me.’ He shrugged. ‘This always happens,’ he said grimly. ‘Every time. It’s as if – anyway, forget it, let’s crack on. Do you mind if we miss out the coffee and go straight to the boating lake?’

He strode off up the Broad Walk without waiting for an answer and I hurried to catch up with him as he cut across the grass.

I grabbed his arm. ‘Look, Jack, we don’t have to do the boating thing. We can go another day, I don’t mind.’

‘No,’ he said stubbornly, ‘it’s fine. I’ve planned it.’ But he stopped walking, his eyes narrowed with indecision. He rubbed his hands over his face and his grey eyes met mine and held. ‘I’m sorry. You’re right. I should go.’

‘Yes.’ I was more disappointed than I’d expected. He was easy to be with and he made me smile, but I could see the relief in his face and I knew that for once I’d said the right thing. ‘I hope you get things sorted out.’

Behind the railings, through gaps in the foliage, I could see the penguins standing at the edge of their blue pool, bracing themselves to dive, wings held at the ready before taking the plunge. ‘Well, thanks. It’s been—’

‘You could come with me,’ he said.

‘Really?’ Our day out wasn’t over! ‘Okay.’ I didn’t need asking twice.

We turned around and headed the other way, towards the road. The crossing beeped and the cars stood at bay and the green man showed, and we walked over the canal together even though the fake date was over and we weren’t going boating any more.

We caught the C11 bus from Adelaide Road and stood in the wheelchair area, crushed together. He was taller than Mark and I was eye-level with his throat. It was a nice throat; smooth and strong.

‘Your stepmother – did she break up your parents’ marriage?’

‘Yes. She was pretty ruthless about it. And my father was weak.’

‘How did she get to be your responsibility?’

He gave a brief laugh. ‘After my mother died I went to live with her and my dad. Then he died, so now it’s just Nancy and me. She was in her late fifties when she and my dad met so she doesn’t have children of her own.’

I thought about the way he’d said that heartbreak had killed his mother. But despite all that, he was still looking out for Nancy. I tried to imagine being that dutiful towards Jo-Ann and failed miserably.

We got off at South End Green and walked up South Hill Park. The house was four-storey, red-bricked Victorian; it backed onto the other side of Parliament Hill Fields. I could probably see it from my window. A police car was parked up against the kerb. Jack rang the doorbell and a community police support officer answered the door; she had short dark hair and an attitude that indicated we shouldn’t mess with her.

‘We’ve taken a statement,’ she told Jack in the hallway.

To the side of the chandelier above her head loomed a huge oil painting of an old lady with a skinny black and white dog. They were looking into an empty cupboard with some dismay.

It seemed a strange choice of picture. I had built up an image of Nancy as an older woman clinging onto her youth with yoga, Pilates and Botox; I’d imagined she’d go for something more modern, an abstract.

‘She seems fine, but she’s vulnerable.’

‘She’s eighty,’ Jack said.

‘Yes, but she’s got no sense of self-preservation. She started a fight with a police officer who tried to take away her drink.’

I suppressed a smirk – but too late.

‘One day someone is going to hit her back,’ the CPSO warned me.

‘You don’t know that,’ Jack said. ‘You’re just seeing the worst-case scenario.’

‘Trust me, this came close to being that scenario.’

‘I still don’t understand what happened. What’s the big deal?’ Jack asked.

‘I can’t say.’

‘Well now, you can’t tell me and she can’t tell me. Fuh … lipping …’

‘Okay, the guy’s a gerontophile. Rules of his licence – don’t engage with old ladies AT ALL. But they were in a pub having a drink, which is engaging, so we arrested him.’

In the background a lavatory flushed, and then a belligerent voice called out: ‘Who’s there? What are you all doing, conspiring in my hall?’

Jack’s stepmother hurried towards us, dressed in a burst of colour – a yolk-yellow cardigan and a yellow, grey and black skirt.

To my astonishment I recognised her immediately. She was Nancy Ellis Hall, the novelist. My mother and I had gone to listen to her at the Hay Festival when she was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and she had signed a book for us with the inscription ‘Be what you are’; which pleased my mother enormously, although she said it didn’t apply to me.

I could have sworn Jack had just said his stepmother ‘wrote a bit’.

I was suddenly self-conscious standing in the hallway at such an awkward moment, with a police officer and some kind of sex scandal going on – I still wasn’t sure how the police had come into it.

‘You! Who are you?’ she asked me crossly, pointing her finger inches from my face.

‘Lana Green,’ I said, thinking she might recognise the name as she’d taken my book out of the library. I felt a shiver of intense happiness. Nancy Ellis Hall had read my book!

‘What have you come as?’

I didn’t understand the question, but I had a stab at it anyway. ‘A visitor.’

‘Oh. In that case, come on in and sit in the parlour, said the spider to the fly. Not you,’ she said to Jack.

‘Nancy, it’s me.’

‘Oh! Well you’d better watch yourself because they will be after you if you talk to me. I met a nice young man today, and these policemen sprang out of nowhere while we were having a drink and took him away.’

‘VUL-NER-ABLE,’ the CPSO mouthed from behind her.

‘And she’ – Nancy turned and pointed at the officer – ‘was jealous because he was taking an interest in me.’

‘I was not jealous. That man is a known offender,’ the officer said tightly.

‘Don’t be ridiculous! He didn’t offend me in the slightest. And that constable tried to take my glass of wine before I’d finished it.’ She turned to me crossly. ‘What have you got to say about that?’

‘Very bad-mannered of him,’ I said.

‘Exactly. They think they know better, but I’ve been – what have I been?’ she asked Jack.

‘A novelist and a feminist,’ Jack said.

‘Exactly.’ Her mood lifted. ‘I’m awfully good at it, you know,’ she said happily, and as she smiled I noticed the gaps in her teeth.

The officer’s phone rang. ‘I’ll take this outside,’ she said. ‘John!’

The police officer appeared from another room. He seemed to know Jack. He said he’d taken a statement from Mrs Ellis Hall and he raised his eyebrows meaningfully – although exactly what it meant I wasn’t sure – and that they would be in touch.

‘So, this guy you arrested, what’s happening with him now?’ Jack asked.

‘Sorry,’ John replied. ‘I can’t tell you anything at this point.’ He was interrupted by Nancy Ellis Hall trying to shoo him out of the door with sweeping movements.

‘Off you go! Off you go!’

Once the officers had left, shutting the door firmly behind them, she turned back to look at us with intense curiosity. ‘Are you two sweethearts?’

Jack glanced at me. ‘Potentially,’ he replied.

Unexpectedly, I blushed. Potentially? It’s always nice to get a compliment.

‘In that case, I’m so glad you’ve dropped by,’ she said graciously. ‘I do feel I add to the happiness of the occasion.’

While Jack made the tea, Nancy Ellis Hall took me into her parlour. It was a writer’s paradise.

The room was large and high-ceilinged, with books everywhere, decorated in a dusty pink with polished mahogany furniture bearing silver-framed photographs. My heart leapt to see her posing with Beryl Bainbridge in a cloud of cigarette smoke and sitting in a field at Hay, sandwiched between an elderly Molly Keane and Germaine Greer. She had a leather-bound, gold-tooled visitors’ book. And there was a colour photograph in an oval frame of her cheek to cheek with a young, dark-haired man who looked familiar but whose name I didn’t know.

‘Who’s this?’ I asked her, pointing to it.

‘Yes …’ She picked it up and looked at it closely. ‘Yes, now I’ll tell you exactly who it is. This is a lonely young man that I met in a bookshop. The police officers came in, hundreds of them, and pounced on him, and they tried to take my wine from me.’ She put the frame back on the table and sat in the armchair. ‘Ooh!’ she said, admiring her own yellow-patterned skirt as though she was seeing it for the first time.

‘Mrs Ellis Hall,’ I said. ‘Can I ask you, are you writing anything at the moment?’

‘Yes. Yes you can,’ she replied.

I waited for her to elaborate, but she was still looking at me patiently. ‘Go ahead,’ she prompted.

‘Er – are you working on a new book?’

‘Yes! I have all my notes. I never throw anything away.’

‘What’s your advice on how to start a new book? What’s the secret?’

She didn’t even have to think about it. ‘Words, words, words!’ she said, waving her hand in a dramatic flourish.

Jack opened the door with his foot and came in with three mugs rattling on a tray. The three of us sat on the largest, softest sofa and while we drank our coffee Nancy told us the story of the interrupted drink with a stranger a few more times, with creative variations; editing it in the retelling. Then she began to tear squares from a peach toilet roll, counting each one carefully, like a meditation.

I looked around at the bookshelves, hoping to see the library copy of my own book so that I could ask her opinion of it. I spotted it on top of a small pile of Jiffy bags. Just a minute – was that a photograph of a young Kingsley Amis?

My heart soared. I loved this room. And I loved her. She was an inspiration, and surrounded by literature I was, for the first time in a long while, fired up with the urge to write.

Words, words, words!

Jack was quiet when we left.

The sun was low and golden and it was cold in the blue shadows of the buildings. He turned his jacket collar up and shoved his hands into his pockets.

‘What did you think?’ he asked as we walked past Hampstead Heath station on our way to the bus stop.

‘You didn’t tell me she was Nancy Ellis Hall the novelist; you just said she wrote a bit,’ I said indignantly.

‘I didn’t know if you’d have heard of her. She hasn’t been published for years.’

‘My mother was a fan, being a feminist and things. She signed a book for us once. Wow … So she’s taken to biting people.’

He gave me a strange look. ‘She hasn’t taken it up as a hobby. She just gets frustrated when she can’t find the words. It’s the illness.’

‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘She’s got dementia.’ He pressed his hand over his forehead. ‘It’s here, this is where the damage is. In the frontal lobe.’

‘Dementia.’ I couldn’t associate the word with the woman I’d just met. It didn’t fit my idea of it as a disease that gradually erodes the personality, the sense of self. Nancy Ellis Hall was all personality. ‘Apart from a bit of repetition she seems perfectly fine. I mean – she’s even writing a new book,’ I said.

‘She’s always writing,’ Jack said with a flicker of a smile. ‘She gets edgy when she doesn’t.’

‘I know the feeling,’ I said ruefully. ‘It wears off after a while.’ I couldn’t wait to tell my mother that I’d been in her house. ‘She’s lively, isn’t she?’

‘That she is.’ He looked at me, his eyes troubled. ‘Do you think she’s vulnerable?’

‘Not particularly – I can’t imagine anyone being brave enough to mug her.’

‘That’s the problem,’ he said sadly. ‘She isn’t scared of anyone. And according to the CPSOs, it makes her vulnerable. If she stayed in all the time, being fearful, that would be fine. How does that make any sense?’

I shook my head in sympathy.

‘All their worries are theoretical anyway,’ he went on. ‘People are nicer than you think – they can see that she’s odd and generally they make allowances for her. And that guy she met, she didn’t take him home, they went for a drink in the pub. She’s not stupid and she’s done nothing wrong. Police officers, they see bad things happening all the time and I get that. But most people live perfectly safe lives.’ He glanced at me. ‘You know what the secret is?’

‘No. What?’

‘Always keep under the radar.’

We stood by the bus stop and watched the bus creep slowly down the hill towards us in the line of traffic. I was going home – it was too late to go boating now.

‘Where do you live?’ I asked him.

‘Mornington Terrace,’ he said. ‘You?’

‘Parliament Hill Fields. The other side of the Heath from Nancy’s.’ We were heading in opposite directions.

The C11 bus pulled up alongside us, gusting hot air from the brakes.

‘I’m sorry our fake date didn’t work out,’ he said.

The bus stopped and the doors slid open. I tapped my Oyster card and turned round to wave goodbye. Didn’t work out? He had a famous literary stepmother!

I gave him my brightest smile to remember me by, because: ‘There’s always a next time,’ I said.

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