can’t work on an empty stomach,’ she said. ‘I’ve taken the liberty of ordering a selection of cakes.’ He wasn’t saying much. ‘Did you want coffee? I ordered tea for us. Is this place OK for you?’
The rickety chair and narrow table, peculiar art-college paintings on the walls, his knee touching hers, their arms a hair’s breadth apart. This place was perfect.
‘Tea’s just fine,’ he said.
‘Say – a cuppa.’
‘A cuppa.’
‘Sorry – I shouldn’t laugh.’
‘I like it that you do.’
A pot of tea, milk in a jug, cups and saucers and a plate of cakes in front of them. The two of them took it all in.
‘How’s your day been?’ Scott asked, nodding for Frankie to pour.
She tilted her hand this way, that way. ‘Arduous,’ she said. In each of her meetings, she’d sensed Alice beside her, protesting. You’re fibbing, Frankie – you’re a fibber – you haven’t written me a story at all.
‘How so?’
Scott watched her redden a little as she fumbled in her bag. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘I brought you this.’
‘Alice and the Ditch Monster,’ he read before flipping through the pages, lingering over the illustrations, charmed. He looked at Frankie’s author portrait in the back when her hair had been longer and it had been winter, by the looks of her turtleneck sweater. He read the dedication in the front. For Sam who’s braver than brave. Scott felt overwhelmingly proud of her. He turned to her. ‘Wow.’
She shrugged. ‘It’s just what I do,’ she said. ‘I’m not very good at much else.’ Adrenalin suddenly soured the tea.
‘You OK?’
‘I can’t write.’ She couldn’t look up either.
‘But by the looks of this – you can.’ Scott dipped into the book again. ‘Look at all these reviews. Prizes too.’
‘I can’t write just now,’ she whispered. She looked ashamed and it upset him.
‘How long?’
‘Months.’
He thought about it. ‘Anyone know?’
‘The children. My sister.’ She glanced up. ‘You.’
He speared a glazed raspberry from the tart, scooped crème pâtissièrre over it and handed her the fork.
‘I’ve been there, Frankie. I spent six months sitting under my piano, freaking out while everyone thought I was composing. A few years back – but the fear, the shame, is still vivid.’
She’d slumped a little. Gently, he nudged her. ‘It passes. Talent like yours? It evades you from time to time, for sure – but you’ll always have it.’
‘How did you get through it?’ Her eyes had gone glassy. He liked it that he knew exactly what she was feeling.
‘I drank a lot of caffeine,’ Scott laughed. ‘Then I gave it up completely. I tried Valium at night and beta blockers during the day. I got angry. I got sad. I broke a guitar. Two, actually.’
‘I just chew pencils and stare at nothing in particular.’
‘Probably cheaper – but not healthier.’
‘I am genuinely scared, not least because of the state of the industry. With all the discounting and cheap or free downloads, publishers are paying their authors less and less. A wonderful writer I know has had her advance cut by half. She feels decimated.’
‘I can understand that. It’s been the same in the music industry.’
‘But what if I can’t write at all, ever again? I’m the sole provider for my little family. What if that was it – my quota of books?’
It felt to Scott as if Frankie’s eyes were clinging to his for reassurance. ‘Has something happened?’
‘Not that I can pinpoint.’
‘But you’ve had all this upheaval – moving home. Don’t be hard on yourself.’
‘It feels utterly self-indulgent to give myself slack.’
‘I know. I felt that too.’
And it struck Frankie that Scott wasn’t saying any of this simply to cajole her into getting on with it, the way she anticipated her publishers might. It seemed he truly understood and more than that, he cared.
‘Tell me about Alice,’ he said, pouring more tea, reaching for the milk at the same time as Frankie, their fingers touching, their eyes connecting, time stopping.
‘Alice?’
‘Don’t say it like that – like you blame her. Tell me about the Alice you know.’
Frankie thought about her and suddenly felt a little contrite, as if she’d been impatient with a child who was irritating simply by being a child, just a little kid.
‘She’s a monkey,’ she smiled. ‘She lives in the countryside outside a village called Cloddington and, at the bottom of her garden where the hedge grows thatchety and the ditch is dank, He lives.’
Scott smiled. The colour was starting to come back to her cheeks and her eyes glinted. ‘The ditch dude?’
Frankie nodded.
‘Is he a euphemism? Did you consign your ex to a life in a quagmire?’
Frankie laughed, she really laughed. ‘Miles? Oh God – I wouldn’t dignify him with life in a ditch! I wouldn’t enlarge his sizeable ego with a character based on him. Actually, Miles is just Miles, a law unto himself. For one so smooth he has a lot of rough edges but he’s just Miles. Frustratingly, maddeningly Miles.’
‘You been apart long?’
That direct bluntness again. ‘Far longer than we were ever together.’
‘So if the ditch guy isn’t Miles, who is he?’
Frankie grinned. ‘He’s not anyone I know. He’s lovely – in a slightly unnerving way – a contradiction between being inept and clumsy but sensitive and gentle. He’s hideously ugly but really rather beautiful. He helps Alice and she helps him right back.’
‘Is he an imaginary friend?’
Frankie shook her head earnestly. ‘No. He isn’t. He’s real. But only Alice knows about him.’ She thought about it. ‘You could say they have a co-dependent relationship.’
‘One of those, hey?’ Scott said darkly but with a wry smile. ‘And Alice herself?’
‘Alice is Alice,’ Frankie said.
‘She’s not Annabel?’
Frankie shook her head.
‘Your artwork is gorgeous,’ Scott said. Confident, quirky line drawings bloomed over with washes of watercolour. ‘Is she always this age?’
Frankie nodded. ‘Ten-ish.’ She glanced at her drawing. She didn’t see it as being from her hand. It was just Alice, clear to her as a photo.
‘If Alice had a favourite song – what would it be?’
Frankie had never thought about it. ‘I don’t know.’
White chocolate striating the strawberries on crème pâtissière, atop a biscuit base. She loaded a fork and passed it to Scott. ‘Her favourite song would be – oh God, if I’m honest, most likely something by One Bloody Dimension.’
‘You know it’s Direction, right?’
‘I