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
