Canada. I pretty much spent my twenties bouncing from one thing to the next trying to work out what I wanted to do.’
Who I wanted to be.
‘And then I found it: writing. It just clicked. I felt stupid for not recognising it earlier. The moment I started to write, I fell in love with it. I didn’t know if I was any good at it, or whether I could ever make my living from it. All I knew was that I loved it.’
That is the truth.
I answer half a dozen more questions, then take a sip of water and glance at the clock.
‘Time for just two more questions today. Amy Werden asks, Do you have any writing rituals? PS You have the perfect life!’
‘Perfect life? I’m obviously using too many filters! With regards to writing rituals, something that is important to me is writing down my early ideas by hand. There is something about the germ of an idea, when it feels too precious, too delicate to be tapped into a computer screen and locked there. I like the curve of words on the page, a lack of uniformity, the scratch of a pencil on cream paper. The ideas can flow and find their rhythm.’
If Fiona is watching this, she’ll be rolling her eyes.
‘The final question is from Booklover101.’ I immediately recognise the username. The accompanying profile picture is of a bike, its wicker basket filled with books. Booklover101 has followed me from the very beginning, commenting on almost every post I write. She tweets me, sends me direct messages, has sent me handwritten cards via my publishers.
‘As your no.1 fan,’ I read now, ‘I’m interested to know, does an author need to have a dark mind to write dark books?’
I should have skipped it – chosen a different question.
I keep my face set in a smile.
‘What you need,’ I say slowly, giving myself a moment to think, to get it right, ‘is an enquiring mind. To be able to look at any situation and see the possibility for shadows. To always ask, What if?’
I leave it there. I thank everyone again for tuning in and remind them that I’ll be live again next week.
My face disappears from the screen.
I sit for a moment, taking several deep, slow breaths. Almost pitch-perfect, I think. Jane will be pleased.
Then I push to my feet, moving away from the desk, and I open the window wider. Hooking a finger under the neckline of my top, I shake it to let air circulate to my flushed skin.
I stand there, gaze mapping the waves, waiting for my heartbeat to settle.
Sitting in the passenger seat of her mother’s old Renault, Elle turned the silver star stud through the cartilage at the top of her ear. Around and around she twisted it, like a rosary, as she ran through each of her worries. Would her new housemates like her? Would she be homesick? Had she chosen the right course? Was her outfit okay?
She didn’t know then, as she wound down the window, pushing her face into the salty, marshy breeze as they crossed the Severn Bridge, that none of those questions were the ones she needed to ask.
The event that would change everything was marked out for later. For a time when she was settled and happy, her life ready to bloom.
That’s when it would blindside her.
Elle arrived first. They pulled up on the pavement, leaving the hazard lights blinking as they trooped back and forth with Elle’s belongings: a duvet spilling from a torn bin liner, a cardboard box heavy with food raided from the cupboards at home, a lava lamp wrapped in a towel, a duffle bag bulging with clothes, two posters rolled into tubes that had bent in the car.
She didn’t mind the dreary pebbledash student house that backed onto a trainline, or the stretch of damp on the wall behind her bed. She looked at her student house and saw freedom.
Her mother helped her tack up posters of Bob Marley and Lenny Kravitz, and postcards from Fiona who was interning at a news desk in Santiago.
‘You’re going to be so happy here,’ her mother said, holding Elle’s face in her hands. ‘I’m so proud of you. I hope I tell you that often enough.’
Elle could sense the emotion brooked in her mother. It was the first time in two decades that her mother would be returning to an empty flat.
‘You know, Mum, you could do this, too. Study. Make more time to write. You could get a student loan …’
Her mother had waved a hand through the air. ‘This is your time. You enjoy every moment of it.’
And Elle would do.
Until she met him.
In the moon-streaked dark of one a.m., I twist onto my side, pulling the covers under my chin.
When I was a girl, if I couldn’t sleep, I’d slip into my mother’s bed and ask her to tell me a story. She’d pluck ripe characters from the branches of her imagination and I’d lie on my back, eyes open, a forest of snow leopards or daisy fairies dancing across our ceiling.
It’s been four years since she died, yet some nights, it’s still hard to believe that she’s gone.
In those awful first weeks after her death, when Fiona and I were both reeling, I’d read everything I could about sepsis. I’d pick up the phone, outraged to tell Fiona: Did you know, eight million people worldwide die every year from sepsis? How, how have we not heard of it? How can our mother no longer be alive because of something that began with a urinary tract infection?
I flick on the light, too agitated to sleep. From my bedside drawer, I pull out my copy of Wild Fear, and turn to the front.
I read the dedication.
For my mother.
I run a fingertip beneath those words.
Your mum would’ve been so proud, a reader once said at a book signing.
They were wrong.
*
Wind funnels along the side of the house as I step from the back door into the morning’s cold bite. Beneath bare soles, the paving stones are ice. Tightening the cord of my dressing gown, I feel the glossy kiss of my swimsuit beneath.
At the end of the pathway, private steps carve into the rock face, which I share with Frank and Enid’s property. I concentrate on each footstep, avoiding the puddles of seawater pooling in grooves, the rock edges furred with seaweed.
Last night I only managed to snatch an hour or two’s sleep. It felt like there was an axle out of alignment in my mind, causing my thoughts to over-steer, almost imperceptibly, in one direction so that, no matter how far I travelled, eventually they’d turn a circle and I’d arrive exactly where I started.
Out here though, buffeted by the blast and sting of salt air, my head begins to clear. Reaching the beach, the sand is compact, cold against my feet. Whitecaps rise and crumble beneath blustering clouds.
‘You’re mad,’ Fiona always tells me whenever she hears I’ve been in for a winter swim. ‘No one knows you’re out there. You don’t even wear a wetsuit. What if something happened?’
‘It won’t,’ I reply, confident in my ability to judge conditions, to know my own limits. I’ve always loved to swim, but there is something intoxicating about swimming in the depths of winter. When I moved here, I made a bargain with myself that I’d get in the water