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.
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
