Chapter Three
Daniel Bekener @EditorDanB
@WinterGAuthor
How’s the book going?
Dan Bekener — Winter Gregory Author Page
Hey, how are things? You’ve not been in touch lately. I know I’m not your favourite person right now, but it would be great to hear from you.
From: [email protected]
Subject: How are you doing?
Hey, Bethie
Glad to see that voice recognition kit is working out for you. Let me know if you need a more up-to-date package and I’ll grab one, Greg won’t mind. He sends his love, by the way, everyone at Shy Owl says ‘hi’ and me . . .
No, I’m doing okay. And, before you start nagging, yeah, I’ve tried to get in touch with Winter. She’s back in the country, so I guess she’s working but I’m not getting involved any more than I have to, hey, only so much punishment a guy can take, right? Right. But you know something? Yeah, course you do, you’re the only one who really ‘got’ what I had with Win, so I don’t need to put it here, do I? Jeez, I miss her, Bethie. I miss her like someone put a twelve inch spike through my gut . . . but I couldn’t do it. In the end, it wasn’t me she wanted, I wasn’t enough for her, I guess.
Anyhow. Mum says the meds are working for you and you’ve got a new chair. Hope next time I come round you’re gonna race me round the yard like when we were kids . . . and, for the record, I know you used to let me win.
Love ’n stuff
Danny Boy
Alex Hill LIKES Winter Gregory Author Page
‘Daze?’
‘You should be asleep. What time is it over there? Three? Four?’
‘Half three. I can’t sleep.’
‘What’s up? I told you, you shouldn’t read those books before you go to bed, all those ghoulish goings-on in graveyards . . . wow, that is a really good sentence, you can have that one.’
I rolled over in the bed. In keeping with all the other furnishings in the cottage, it was about three-quarter size. I was beginning to feel like Alice blundering about among all these tiny things. ‘I was talking to a little girl today about when we had Jack, the pony? Just remembering what fun it all was; how long the summers seemed to go on for. Oh, and you falling off that time you tried jumping without stirrups and crying all the rest of the day.’
‘Winnie, I’d broken my wrist. It’s no wonder I cried all day.’ Daisy sighed. ‘And, yes, looking back is all very well but you mustn’t dwell.’
‘Am I dwelling? I don’t think I am.’ I drew the covers up around my shoulders. September was getting well dug-in and this far north the frosts came early.
Another sigh. ‘You are, of course you are.’ My sister’s voice became faint for a moment, then strengthened. ‘And it’s only because the writing isn’t going well, and you know what you need to do about that. You need to talk to Dan.’
‘I can’t not talk to him, he’s my editor.’ But my hands were sweaty at the thought, and the hair at the base of my neck prickled. ‘But I don’t have to see him again. Do I, Daze?’
She ‘humphed’. I could picture her right now, sitting in her second-floor apartment which was strewn with fabric swatches, the Australian spring sun putting her in a warm spotlight of colour and texture. Her long legs, with those bony knees that caused both of us many hours of anguish as we tried to find tights that wouldn’t make us look as though we were built of hinges, would be drawn up and she’d be fiddling with her toes. ‘Don’t expect me to tell you what you should do, Win, you already know. Now, I have to work and you need to sleep, go away.’
Now it was my turn to ‘humph’. ‘Charming.’
But she’d already gone, and she was right. The pressure was on to come up with another winner, the follow-up to last year’s Book of the Dead , a book I’d come up with on the spur of the moment, pitched and been commissioned to write all within a matter of weeks, because Dan . . . I tossed my head on the pillow but the image remained . . . because Dan had had faith.
Dan. In his perpetual long black coat and motorcycle boots, hair that stuck up from his head like a dark aura. The hands of an artist, the soul of a poet and the business sense of a well-tuned laser; lover of indie rock music, snowstorms and sunset colours. The man who had taken my hand and told me I could be something.
The man who had made me choose . . .