Chapter Twenty
From: [email protected]
Subject: Talk to pupils about writing
Dear Miss Gregory
I’m thrilled that you have offered to come and talk to the children of Great Leys School about your writing career. As Mr Hill has, I hope, informed you, we would be delighted to see you on Friday afternoon, from 12.30 onwards. Please come to reception and you will be escorted into school. As you write for adults, we trust that you will keep in mind the young age of your audience in school and understand that sales of your book within the classroom would not be appropriate.
Thank you for giving up your valuable time in the interests of education.
Yours
Neil Moore
Head Teacher, Great Leys Primary School
From: [email protected]
Subject: I don’t know. Embarrassment?
I know, I know. Believe me, I feel like a total tit right now. All that bollocks I spouted before about ‘taking things slowly’ and ‘just being friends’ and one glass of wine and I threw that lot over the wall. See why I don’t drink often? I pushed it too far, pushed you too far. I suppose . . . I suppose what it was I wanted you to know is just how hot you really are; I never meant it to go to the wire like that.
You’re hot. You are a totally lovely woman, and I think hormones just got the better of both of us for a while, didn’t they? And, yes, I totally get why you pulled back on me. I should never have even got that far and feel like a complete bastard for letting things get out of hand the way they did, especially if it compromises anything. What we’ve already got is enough, honestly; your friendship is worth so much to me and to Scarl, so if I’ve done anything to jeopardise that then I might as well gnaw off my own balls right now. It wasn’t right, I knew it before I started, know you don’t feel ‘that way’ as the problem pages coyly have it, about me. I can see it in your eyes and, hey, don’t worry about it, not a big deal, like I said, friendship is more valuable than any amount of meaningless banging when you’ve got a small child in the mix.
Ultimately. Point of all this rambling. You did the right thing. I was a mindless, cock-driven bastard last night, and I am so glad, in this cold light of day, that you stopped me. I like to think I behaved with dignity and grace under pressure, but you know, if you never want anything to do with me again, I’ll do my best to come to terms with it, but please, please, Winter, don’t.
Alex
I got up late from a night of bad dreams. Dreams in which I’d been in bed with Alex but turned over to find he’d morphed into one of the faceless, nameless men that I’d slept with until I’d met Dan. And then he’d become Dan, teasing smile, dark eyes and open arms and the metal bedstead had clanged like a bell with all the sighing and turning over I’d done, but I fell into proper, dreamless sleep around dawn.
The laptop was still on. I crouched in front of it wrapped in the duvet from the bed and checked. Yep, all the work from yesterday was still there. And still good . I raised my eyebrows at it and tried not to notice the slight slick of stubble burn that adorned my chin from last night. Alex might have thought he’d shaved but he had the ‘outdoors’ approach to being clean-shaven rather than ‘city man’, which was so smooth I always suspected they slept in a silk bag.
Yep. Words, lots of them. Tentatively I sat down and doubled the duvet around me while I typed a few more sentences, and the next thing I knew the light was vanishing from the window and there was someone knocking at the door.
‘Margaret, hello. Hi, Scarlet.’ Margaret’s frock du jour was a slightly startling bird-print but as I was wrapped in a duvet and still had bed hair, I really wasn’t one to start pointing fingers today.
‘Hello, Winter. Are you poorly?’ Margaret looked me up and down. I couldn’t return the favour without it looking as though her dress was taking flight, so I just smiled.
‘Working. Got a bit caught up.’
‘Bobso had babies,’ Scarlet said, sounding sulky. Her school uniform was creased and there was a small rip in the hem of her chequerboard dress. ‘But Granny says we have to give them away.’
‘Well,’ I said, gamely, ‘I’ll have one. And I bet you won’t have any trouble finding takers if you ask around at school. They’re so cute, just like miniature guinea pigs!’
‘They are miniature guinea pigs,’ Margaret said, stepping down into the living room and giving my biscuit-strewn workstation a sideways look. ‘If you think about it.’
‘I suppose they are. Would you like a biscuit, Scarlet?’
Scarlet accepted a HobNob, still slightly sulkily, and sat on a chair to eat it. ‘Alex showed you the babies,’ she said, her mouth looking as though only the biscuit was preventing it from pouting. ‘It’s not fair. I wanted to show you Bobso’s babies!’
Margaret did the ‘adult over the child’s head’ face. ‘I told him not to tell her, but Alex has this “honesty” thing. Very admirable, of course, but I dread to think what would have happened if his father and I had been honest with him at times,’ she said. ‘But it’s upset Scarlet dreadfully.’
Scarlet’s lip was wobbling now, despite the HobNob. ‘You’re my friend, Winter. It’s not fair Alex showing you Bobso and the babies — Bobso is mine too!’
Well, she did have a point. And Alex had sort of used Bobso as a lure to get me round there, so I was conceding that she was entitled to be a bit cross. Blimey, this was a tricky one. I gathered the duvet more closely around me. ‘I’m sorry, Scarlet. I should have let you show them to me, of course. But what about Daniel? Has he seen them yet?’
Scarlet brightened a little bit. ‘No! He was out yesterday so I didn’t get to tell him, and he didn’t come back to Granny’s last night.’
I felt a tiny flicker inside me. Where did you go, Dan? Back to London?
‘I told you, Scarlet, he went down to Lincoln, he’ll be back later tonight.’ Margaret looked relieved. ‘Maybe you could show him the babies then.’
‘Can I show them to you as well, Winter?’ Scarlet finished the biscuit and the prospect of having someone new to appreciate Bobso’s offspring had clearly cheered her up.
I don’t think being in the same place as Dan and Alex is a great idea at the moment. There may be some kind of critical mass achieved. ‘Maybe another day. It can’t be good for Bobso to have lots of people poking around with her when they’ve only just arrived,’ I said, thinking fast inside my duvet-sausage. ‘Show them to Dan and I’ll come and see them . . . how about Friday? After I’ve talked to you all about writing.’
Scarlet bounced. ‘Mr Moore said he was going to ask you to come on Friday. We had an assembly about it this morning and we’re to think of sensible questions to ask you!’
‘Just don’t ask Winter if she earns as much as J. K. Rowling,’ Margaret said, darkly. ‘Mr Park asked a visiting author that at one of the book club meetings, and there was “an incident”. Probably partly to blame for his wee problem, now I come to think of it.’
‘Where’s Light Bulb?’ It suddenly occurred to me why Scarlet looked a bit less occupied than usual. ‘Did you have to leave him at home again today?’
Margaret and Scarlet exchanged a look. Margaret’s expression was nine-tenths exasperation, while Scarlet cast her eyes down after a few moments’ contact with her grandmother. ‘Lucy is fixing him again,’ she said very quietly at last. ‘His head came loose.’
A sudden memory of Light Bulb’s increasingly-lopsided and psychotic grin. Lucy mends him, does she? I thought it was Alex trying out some amateur embroidery skills. Lucy must be fond of Scarlet then, which bodes well if they ever try a rapprochement.
‘Scarlet was using him as a weapon,’ Margaret semi-hissed at me. I had no idea why she bothered. Scarlet had no hearing problems that I knew about.
‘Maybe things will get a bit better when everyone at school knows that you really do know a writer,’ I suggested. ‘Then if anyone is horrible to you, you can tell them that I’ll make them a baddie in my next book.’
Scarlet’s incoming smile went a bit ragged. ‘But you write about dead people,’ she said. ‘Can you make dead people into baddies? Or . . . or . . .’ Sudden enthusiasm crashed in. ‘You could write about evil ghosts!’
‘I blame children’s television,’ Margaret said. ‘When Alex and Ellen were young it was all Blue Peter and Doctor Who , now it’s drugs and evil monsters and whatnot. She’s eight, she shouldn’t know about evil ghosts!’
Scarlet and I shared a suppressed grin of complicity. When Daisy and I had been eight we’d been given an Oxford Book of Ghost Stories and had happily scared one another stupid for the next eighteen months with tales based around those we read. ‘I don’t know. They’re good preparation for when life really does get scary,’ I said without thinking.
Margaret sniffed and, on her bosom, a flock of flamingos took off. ‘Let’s get you home, Scarlet,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘Alex will be wondering where we’ve got to.’
I waved them goodbye, Scarlet now looking a lot more cheerful than she had when they’d arrived.
Winter Gregory Author Page
Well, finally the new book is nearly finished. Here’s a couple of pictures of some of the gravestones that are going to be featuring this time round — some fascinating stories have come out of being this far north.
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Comments:
Cerys Grey: LOVE those pictures! Spooky
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J D Roxburgh: When’s the book out?
Winter Gregory Author: June, hopefully.
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I saw his reflection in the glass before I saw him. A dark head, broken and distorted by the patterned glass in the door, seeming to be staring down at the ground. He hadn’t knocked, but I opened the door anyway.
‘Hello, Dan.’
‘Hey.’
He looked a little bit better today, and I didn’t know whether that made me glad or not. ‘Saw your Facebook message and I reckoned the coast was probably clear for me to drop by.’ A pause and then he looked up. ‘You’re done, then?’
‘Yep.’ Even I could hear the pride in my voice. ‘It’s going to need a bit of tidying up, obviously, but . . . yes, I think it’s pretty good.’
He stayed where he was, making no attempt to come inside. ‘Okay.’ Then, words coming out with a bit more of the ‘Dan-style’ about them, ‘Look, I’m sorry. About everything. I never meant it to go this way, I never meant you to . . . I never meant to hurt you, Winter.’ Now he looked up and met my eye. ‘Seriously. You are . . . you were something special to me, and now the book is done and it’s finally all over and everything . . .’ He tailed off and his gaze slid back down to the step at his booted feet. ‘I just wanted it said. No unfinished business, you know?’
My body felt curiously heavy. As though the finality of his words had a weight that they’d laid on me, as though this ending was a thing of gravity that could be passed from one person to another. ‘Do you want to come in?’ was all I could think of to say.
‘Probably not a good idea. I mean, I should . . .’ This hesitancy wasn’t like Dan either. It was almost as if another man stood in front of me, one who looked like Daniel, who spoke with his voice but whose thoughts didn’t run like mercury through a head filled with impossible ideas but rather moved more at human speed. ‘This is it, Winter. Email me the manuscript, I’ll work on it back in London and get the edits to you, you never need to see me again. We’re done.’
There was a dryness in my mouth and a fizzing sort of grey inside my head, almost as though I’d had a shock. Dan’s going. But Dan was always going to go. You’ve done what you said you’d do, the book is finished and now so are you and Dan as any kind of entity. Connection broken. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?
‘Can I ask a favour? Before you go.’ Before it’s really all over. My fingers were tight on the door handle, sweating around the brass knob so that it slid like soap under my palm.
A faint smile from him now. A lightening of that terrible darkness that had drawn his brows down over his eyes and made his mouth look as though he’d recently eaten something mouldy. ‘Anything I can do, Win, you know me, always ready to help . . .’ He tailed off as though he thought his words might be misinterpreted and cleared his throat. ‘Yeah, I mean, if I can.’
‘Come with me tomorrow to Scarlet’s school. I’m giving my Authorly Talk to the kids there, and I’m not really sure that I’m enough to hold their attention. If you come and talk about books and what an editor does and everything, together we might raise Scarlet’s stock enough to make sure that she never gets bullied again.’ The words came in an unconsidered rush, almost bypassing my brain on their way to my mouth.
He put an arm up against the brickwork of the house, leaned against it. All the lines of his body relaxed and the smile on his face became softer. ‘Wow. You want me there? Or did they ask you to bring me?’
It’s an idea I’ve only just had , I didn’t say. ‘I just thought . . . Scarlet likes you, she’d love you to be there too, and I’m not a hundred per cent sure that I’ve got enough material to talk to kids for an hour, I’m more used to speaking to adults and everything. I’m sure the school will let you in, they’re all geared up for having one person, so I’m sure they could stretch to both of us on the premises, and you could maybe give them a bit of an idea of what an editor does, in case any of them are ever misguided enough to want to go into writing as a career.’ Inside my head I tried to unpack what I’d said. Had I over-justified? Or had I made a reasonable case for it being a good idea to have my editor there as backup for my talk?
‘Has she shown you the baby guinea pigs yet?’
As though he hadn’t declined my previous invitation to come inside and had instead been waiting for some magic word, Dan stepped past me and down into the living room, where he slouched down onto one of the chair-shaped items of furniture. ‘Oh, yes.’ Feet kicked up onto the mantelpiece. ‘Seen them, named them, we’ve even brushed them, even though I’ve told her that Bobsina will take care of all their personal hygiene needs.’ A flash of animation. ‘Maybe Alex should have got her something a bit more robust for a pet. Alsatian, Shetland pony, elk, something that way.’
‘She’s got a lot of love to give, that’s all.’ I went through into the kitchen and put the kettle on. ‘But Alex is afraid for her. I think he’s terrified of something happening to her, otherwise why not just get her riding lessons and have done with it?’
‘Insight, you’re making progress,’ Dan said, enigmatically. ‘Tea, one sugar, loads of milk. Why don’t you take her riding? I’m sure Alex would trust you, after all, you and he are a bit tight, aren’t you?’
I stuck my face above the kettle to let the steam give me a reason for the hot blush. ‘We’re friends, that’s all.’
‘Seriously?’ Dan sounded as though he’d made a face. ‘Thought he’d be your sort of thing these days, all shirt off and muscles and the stammer . . . buff and flawed, isn’t that the kind of thing that all women dream of?’
A momentary image of Alex’s naked body covering mine, a firmness of flesh so unfamiliar. ‘We’re just friends,’ I said again.
Dan was quiet, and when I came back in carrying two mugs of tea I saw that he’d moved to sit in front of my laptop and was reading the manuscript from the screen. He’d got his ‘editor’s’ head on. I could tell from the way his lips occasionally moved as he tried a phrase out, or twitched a cheek in a wince at a misspelling or casual use of grammar. I started to drink my tea, trying not to watch him through the spiralling vapour over the mug, but Dan snagged at my eyes like a rough piece of silk on a nail. His angular face with its cat-like cheekbones, those dark eyes like wormholes into another, more chaotic, universe. So capable of a sort of existential wildness and yet able to turn himself into a listening stillness when it was needed. A man built of mercury, of beating hearts and of lead.
‘This is good.’ He finally looked across at me. ‘Really. Think you might have outdone Book of the Dead with this one.’ Without even seeming to locate it consciously he reached out and picked up the mug of tea, draining it down in one long gulp. ‘Knew you could do it, if I wound you up enough. Mail it over. I’ll come to the school tomorrow and then head back to London in the evening, get this printed up and give it a proper once-over.’ A tilt of the head. ‘What’re your plans now, then?’
I don’t know. I couldn’t see any further than finishing the book. I’ve been living here in a stasis field, every day the same in this unchanging place, surrounded by landscape that’s been the same since the Ice Age gave up and went home, and I managed to convince myself that this was all there was.
‘I . . .’ My hand shook a little and my mug dribbled some tea down the side. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘Okay. Well, keep me up to date, girl, because we’re going to need you for publicity come Christmas — winding up to the final push when the book comes out. Don’t leave the country, hey?’ Dan pushed away from the table and stood up, looking for a moment, in his whirling coat, like the centre point of a tornado. ‘I’m glad you got there in the end, Winter,’ he said, softly. ‘Knew you could do it.’
He reached out a hand and took mine, turning it over so that the tattoo flashed on his wrist and my fingers curled, unresisting, into his palm. With his other hand he removed the mug from my grasp and put it on the table. ‘This is an effing stupid idea,’ he said, quietly, ‘but, hell’s teeth, I have missed you so much.’ Then he stepped a fraction nearer, caught my chin and held it while he lowered his lips down to mine.
A fraction of a second of the taste of him was all it took to plummet me backwards through time to the first time we’d kissed, sitting on the Embankment in London in the chilly spring sunshine. That had been a kiss of hope, of anticipation; a cautious getting-to-know kiss that had the brevity of melting ice creams built in. This kiss was its diametric opposite, a kiss of farewell, of longing. Of nostalgia for something that would never be again, a sad kind of sweetness. When Dan stood away again without speaking, I felt the tears choking their way up from the bottom of my throat.
He didn’t even look back, just opened the door and walked out onto the crowded pavement and was gone in a flicker of black, as though the pale sun couldn’t reach him, wherever he was.