is how it was meant to be.
‘It’s going to be fine,’ I say aloud to the empty room, my voice unnaturally bright. ‘You can do this. You just need to focus, stop doubting yourself. Don’t overthink this, Elle. Just write.’
Team talk to self.
Jesus Christ, all this silence. No wonder I’m talking to myself. I play some music, turning it up loud. Then I flick on the large overhead light, too. There, that’s better, I think, pacing.
If someone is in the bay tonight, they could look straight into this room, see me up here, alone.
I pick up the paperweight from my desk, pressing my thumb into the jagged crack. I can almost feel the sharp point of the missing shard as if it’s still embedded in my heel.
That feeling, the hot breath of fear.
I lower myself into my chair, placing the paperweight beside me. The lamplight bounces off it, throwing my image back at me, distorted by the curvature of the glass.
I know the story I need to write. I think I’ve known it all along.
I’ve got it all here, in me. I see that now. My characters are already alive, living under my skin. I just need to get them on the page, pin them there.
So I picture them, I tune into their voices, I invite them in.
And then I start to type.
Elle’s second mistake came later.
Glancing up, she checked the librarian was still focused on unstacking her book trolley, then continued deconstructing a Crunchie, biting off the top layer of chocolate before sucking the honeycomb until it turned sticky in her mouth.
Her housemate, Louise, who was sitting opposite, was whispering her plan to spray-paint a roll of bubble wrap and fashion it into a dress for that evening’s space-age party.
Louise halted mid-sentence, her eyes fixing on something beyond Elle’s shoulder.
‘There he goes.’
Elle removed the Crunchie from her mouth, twisting in her seat.
Luke Linden was crossing the library with long, easy strides, a newspaper tucked underarm. A ripple of attention followed him. At a table to the left of theirs, a group of students waved him over. He paused mid-step to listen to a question, nodding lightly. He delivered his answer into the hushed silence and then, a moment later, continued.
As he passed the table where Elle sat, his gaze lifted, met hers. He smiled, his mouth curling to one side. Then he moved on, disappeared.
Placing her elbows on the table, Louise whispered, ‘I’m going to have to do an MA, just so I can look at him for one more year.’
‘Take a photo. Less debt.’
‘You can’t tell me you’re not in love with him.’
‘I’m not in love with him.’
‘But you’d sleep with him in a heartbeat, yes?’
She shrugged.
‘You would, of course you would!’
Later, Elle would wonder about what she’d said next. Whether she’d meant it, how it changed things. She would want to go back, edit the memory. Rewrite that tiny detail in her story, because – although it was only a sentence – it would become pivotal.
It would become the hook from which she would hang.
But in that moment, Elle was just a teenage girl, hair to her waist, skin unlined, still bright with the promise of how her life was about to flower.
Elle held Louise’s gaze as she finally answered, ‘Yes, I absolutely would. In fact,’ she added, her mouth spreading into a grin, ‘maybe I will.’
In the black-velvet darkness of four a.m., I twist onto my side. The sheets are a hot tangle around my waist. The snake in my brain is alive, wide awake.
I listen to the house. I want there to be noises of other people – the purring snore of a child asleep in the nursery, the cast-iron creak of the log burner opening, a hunk of wood fed to the flames.
But it is just me. My breathing. My heartbeat, rapid.
And then my thoughts. They are not silent, but loud and rowdy, like a bad drunk. They seem to echo in my mind, filling my head with their noise and spite.
You invite your story, your characters, into your thoughts – but what then if they won’t leave?
I sit up. Eyes open in the darkness.
*
I feel raw this morning, empty. It’s that strange depleted feeling you get after you’ve cried. I wrote five thousand words last night. I couldn’t switch off. I still can’t. The last thing I feel like doing is giving a library talk. I want to stay here, get this story down.
Pulling on my winter coat, I pause in the hallway, examining myself in the mirror. God, I look terrible. My skin tone is uneven and there are purplish blooms beneath my eyes.
I glance at my watch. One hour until I’ll be standing at the front of the library talking about my great life as an author.
Why did I agree to this?
But of course, I know why. I need to start getting more involved locally, putting down roots. Demolishing the original fisherman’s cottage hasn’t been a popular decision, and I’m sure people think I’m just another city blow-in. I want to make friends here, make Cornwall home.
I need this.
Opening the clasp of my handbag, I check for the second or third time that my notes are tucked inside my novel.
Anticipating the cold beyond the front door, I draw my coat snug to my throat. Something’s wrong. My fingers meet the empty space at my collar where a brooch is always pinned. It belonged to my mother – a silver swift in flight – and I never remove it. It was here the last time I wore this coat. That was the day I left for France. Since then the coat’s been hanging right here in the hallway. I crouch, searching the line of shoes beneath the row of hooks, shaking each one – but they are all empty.
There isn’t time to search thoroughly now, but I don’t like leaving the house without it. It’s unsettling, a bad omen.
As I get to my feet, an image of Joanna slinks into my thoughts: a pale hand travelling over the collar of my coat, long fingers meeting the silver wing of the bird, then the lightest of movements as the brooch is unpinned, cool metal
