Chapter 21
21
JESSE
Now
Jesse sat on a bench, sketching a giant anteater in the Amazon-Guyana biozone, eating a Mars bar and wondering whether his dad had ever actually been to Paris Zoo.
Why set the book here if he hadn’t?
He tried to picture his dad, tall and strapping, tanned and lithe, silver-blond hair sticking up, chambray shirt sleeves rolled, walking the zoo’s trails and paths, thinking of Ida and imagining a story just for her as he looked at the animals Jesse was now looking at.
Jesse’s dad Lars was a crime writer, whose detective stories were bestsellers both sides of the Atlantic; three of them had been made into films, and Lars had taken his wife and son to visit various film sets in London, Los Angeles, Cape Town and Mysore.
Lars had been resolutely and roguishly single for most of his adult life, travelling the world and writing from chateaus in France, ramshackle hotels in Cuba and farmsteads in Australia, until he’d met Caryn and felt the strange sensation of wanting to put down some roots.
Caryn had been a young features writer, working for the Sunday Times , when she met Lars. She wasn’t even meant to interview him that day she met him for a working lunch at Scott’s. The books editor Geoffrey had food poisoning and sent Caryn, who was making a name for herself as a tenacious interviewer, not fazed by a politician’s reputation or a celebrity’s tetchy PR. Caryn did love a deliciously dark crime novel, and had read all of Lars Lightning’s, so she had to remember not to fangirl during the two hours in which they ate fillet of cod Proven?al and fell in love.
They got married when Caryn was twenty-two and Lars was forty-two; Caryn was only twenty-five when she had Jesse, and they were living between a house they had bought in Claygate in Surrey, a cottage in the Black Forest, and later, the house in the South of France, moving there permanently when Jesse went to college.
In the thirty-five years they were married, Caryn Lightning interviewed a host of celebrities for the Sunday Times – although never her husband again. She also helped Lars plot and plan; listened to his ideas and improved them. Read through his drafts, his proofs, his contracts and helped organise his book tours. She was, as Lars called her, his everything .
Jesse looked at the anteater and reflected that his father had been slowing down. Observing more and writing less. Doing less yoga. Talking less enthusiastically about wine. He used to write a book a year but the rhythm of his publishing schedule had slowed to a book every three years. After the pandemic, Lars stopped doing public appearances, preferring to Zoom from the French farmhouse than take all those ghastly internal flights across America to promote his books. Now there would be no new books. No book tours. A children’s book perhaps, if Jesse’s drawings were up to scratch. He felt an emptiness in his chest and a guilt coursed through him: he’d never got round to doing this while his dad was alive. Jesse had never told Lars how much he loved Remy the red panda. How touched he was that he had written a book for Ida. One he thought Jesse capable of illustrating.
He looked at the enclosure in front of him. Had his dad sat on this bench and got inspiration from the anteater and his haughty nose? Or was it purely his conversations with Ida that inspired him?
Jesse wanted to ask his mother, although that would acknowledge that he hadn’t done anything with the book while his father was alive. He had to tell her soon, he imagined. It was odd not to have told her in his regular phone calls.
Did he come here? Did he sit on this bench?
Jesse looked around and remembered a conversation he had had with his father, on the release of his last book. A thriller set in Alaska. Jesse couldn’t remember Lars having visited Alaska, neither in a research trip nor a family holiday, but the book felt so real, so barren, so raw. He’d asked his dad if he had been there on one of his tours. Had that inspired The Icicle Twist ?
‘Shakespeare never travelled to Verona you know,’ Lars had replied with a wink.
Maybe he hadn’t sat on this bench. His work had all come from his brilliant brain and his lovely heart. He had been to India though, researching The Pondicherry Pursuit ; it was on that trip, about eight years ago, he’d brought back the Saraswati keyring and given it to Jesse. Dropping it from his curled fist into his son’s palm and clutching it. ‘She is the goddess of knowledge, art, wisdom and learning. Keep her close.’
‘Thanks, Dad,’ Jesse said, slightly bemused by his dad’s dalliance with Hinduism and Jainism. Lars would often obsess about something he’d researched for a book. He learned cross- country skiing for The Viking’s Curse . He learned how to play the didgeridoo when he was researching The Red Centre , and he became obsessed with Mozart while writing Salzburg Spies . His passion for Indian culture had lasted more than most of his obsessions though, and he had even given up eating Indian’s holy cow, by his seventieth birthday. Sadly, it hadn’t helped his heart.
Jesse sighed.
He wished he could get Saraswati back. He wished he could have his dad back.
He looked at the anteater, its funny face rummaging in the termite mound, and felt consumed by a grief he had packed away for six months. In the chaos of work. In the busyness of Ida’s bustling life. In the distractions of Hannah’s duplicity. In the heartbreaking hugs when he had to peel Ida off him when it was time to truly go. In the strength he needed to show his mother now more than ever, so as not to worry her. Every draining emotion Jesse had parked since December came flooding out and his body shook so much with sobs he could barely breathe.