Chapter 16
Kate lay in bed, watching the clock count down to midnight. She’d spent the day getting book-prepped and polished, staying busy to keep her nerves in check.
Her social media pages were awash with glowing excitement from reviewers who’d already read the book, teasers and competitions to build anticipation, shots of her fingernails painted to match the cover, and the towering stack of books other publishers had sent her to read and review in the hope of a cover quote.
It was all about building the buzz, and right now she felt as if she lived inside a beehive, curled into a fetal position around the book to protect it at all costs.
“Eleven fifty-seven,” she whispered into the darkness.
It had been ten days now and H still hadn’t replied, which troubled her greatly.
She’d agonized over what she might have said to cause offense, whether to send a follow-up email, if she should seek advice from Charlie.
She hadn’t done any of those things so far, cautioned by Liv to just hold her nerve.
Why wasn’t there a handbook for all of this debut author stuff?
The pressure of waiting to see how the world would treat the book sat like an elephant on her chest.
Eleven fifty-nine. Sudden surety that she should never have taken the job pinned her against the mattress, cold sweat on her forehead.
She wasn’t up to the grade. She wasn’t good enough for the book.
She was going to say the wrong thing, post the wrong image, offend someone crucial, alienate the actual author.
She kicked the quilt away and sat up, too hot, queasy.
Midnight. Zero hundred hours. She clutched her mobile in the dark room as a message popped in from Liv.
Here we go! Congrats sis, love you lots. Tomorrow, champagne! Xxx
She read it twice over, allowing her sister’s excitement to seep in and become her own. It wasn’t publication eve anymore, any final chance to back out was officially gone. Rehearsals were over. It was opening night.
—
She slept in fits and starts, a combination of sickly nerves and mixed-up dreams of Alice.
They were together under the shade of a palm umbrella in an Aussie beach café, sand warm under the soles of her bare feet.
Alice ordered for them; the owners seemed to know her, they shared a familiarity and inside jokes Kate didn’t understand.
A guy appeared. She didn’t get a clear look at his face but when Alice stood to greet him, Kate belatedly realized her daughter was heavily pregnant.
Sun-streaked gold had lightened her hair and sand clung to the back of her tanned legs beneath her denim cut-offs.
A slim wreath of tattooed flowers circled her ankle, and she laughed as she cradled her bump and stood on tiptoe to kiss the guy.
She didn’t turn to introduce him to Kate, and she didn’t glance back as they wandered away toward the sea.
Kate rose through the layers of sleep, fighting to stay under to call her daughter back. She didn’t need a psychologist to decipher that particular dream; it may as well have flashed up “Talk to Alice” in huge neon letters.
Her phone burst into frantic life when she flicked it off night mode: a barrage of messages from various members of the publishing team; separate ones from Liv and Nish because he was away on a work trip.
An avalanche of social media notifications too, well wishes from readers all clamoring to let her know they finally had their hands on the book and couldn’t wait to read it.
“Kate, you decent? Let me in regardless.”
Liv’s voice carried up the stairwell, and by the time Kate opened the door her sister was waiting outside it, slightly breathless with her hands full.
“Celebratory breakfast.” She held a brown paper bag up as she came in. “Fancy pastries from that new shop down the road and coffee strong enough to wake the dead.”
“I just made one,” Kate said.
“Instant is so not the vibe for today, Katie.” Liv laughed as she took the lid off her cup and blew on it.
No one except Liv called her “Katie,” and rarely now they were all grown up.
“Will you take my coffee lid off too? I’m terrified of damaging my nails,” Kate said, holding them out in front of her. Liv’s nail technician friend had based the arty design on the book cover to ensure her publication-day hands were on point for photos.
“Cinnamon roll as big as my head.” She pulled it from the bag and held it up beside her face for comparison.
Liv snapped a photo. “First one for your publication-day reel,” she said, breaking the outside edge from one of the pastries.
“Is this going to be an everyday thing now I’m a published author?” Kate said, nodding toward the breakfast.
“Only if you’re paying,” Liv said. “I had to take a small mortgage out for these. Nish would have a heart attack, he keeps sending me fake-away take-away posts so the kids won’t want to order food.”
“I won’t breathe a word,” Kate said. “God, they’re good, though. I feel as if I’m in Paris.”
“You might be, when the book goes big! Imagine, a world tour. Can I come? You absolutely cannot do New York without me.”
“I think you might be getting just a tiny bit ahead of yourself,” Kate laughed, distracted as more messages flew in on her mobile. “Oh, Liv, look,” she whispered, putting her coffee down. “H has just emailed. I’m scared to open it.”
“Well, they better not rain on your parade, not today of all days,” Liv said. “Want me to check it first?”
Kate shook her head. “I’ll do it.”
Dear Kate,
Publication day at last, enjoy every moment. I’m sorry not to have replied sooner.
To answer your question regarding publication-day rituals, the truth is I always left those plans to someone else. I was lucky enough to live with a born planner, everything an opportunity for a party or a surprise dinner.
I’d suggest setting your expectations low, that way you can’t be disappointed. It can feel something of an anticlimax after all of the build-up and anticipation, even more so when you’ve seen the process through from blank page to publication.
I have come to think of it as release day rather than publication day.
The book is released from you, a flock of birds taking flight and settling on shelves and bedside tables, migrating across oceans to places you may never visit in person.
But a piece of you has—your book has been to beach bars in Bali and hospital wards in Germany, kept insomniacs company in L.A.
So that’s what publication/release day means to me. A toast, and a wish for a safe journey for all of those migrating birds.
Thank you for being the release vessel for those birds, Kate.
I’m sure you’re aware I never intended this book for publication. I turned to writing as somewhere to channel love that suddenly had nowhere to go. I don’t expect that makes much sense, but it was my escape from utter desolation.
It’s taken a fair amount of detachment to come to terms with the idea of publication, but in the end I think the person who inspired the story would get a kick out of seeing it out there in the world. They were fearless, undaunted by anything, curious and kind, mercury in human form.
Thank you for being the book’s guardian angel.
Enjoy today,
H x
Kate finished reading it aloud and then sat for a quiet moment at her small dining table.
“Definitely a guy,” Liv said.
“It could still be a woman,” Kate said. “But yeah, I think it’s a guy too. A very lonely, heartbroken one.”
Liv nodded, sipping her coffee. “At least you don’t have to worry that you’ve pissed him off now,” she said.
“True,” Kate said. It was a relief to hear from H, but heart-aching to hear about his reasons for writing the story.
“I like what he said about being the book’s guardian angel,” she said.
Try as she might, she hadn’t been able to fully shake her lingering sense of unease.
On the one hand, it was a fairly straightforward job—she’d been offered the position as a working actor with the terms and conditions clearly laid out.
Charlie and Prue had explained the behind-the-scenes mechanics of the publishing industry, how pulling the right levers at the right time would get this once-in-a-generation love story into readers’ hands.
But it was only now, reading H’s side of things, that she truly relaxed.
The guardian angel of the book. She could work with that.
“I better get downstairs and open the shop,” Liv said, screwing up the empty pastries bag as she drained the last of her coffee.
“I’ll be down in a while. I need to reply to a few emails and do, you know, social media–type author things,” Kate said, wide-eyed and overstimulated by coffee and relief and the sudden Christmas-morning elation of it all.
—
Heading downstairs a couple of hours later, Kate found herself faced with a wall of flowers on Liv’s small counter.
“Ms. Darrowby is popular this morning,” her sister said. “Not one but two monster flower deliveries.”
Kate plucked the card from a burst of bright summer roses in a glass fishbowl. “From the publishing house,” she said, reading Prue’s congratulatory note. “Don’t they smell beautiful?”
The second arrangement was less formal, hand-tied cream peonies flushed peach on their outer frills, lavender snapdragons, baby-pink anemones, as if someone had wandered through the watercolored countryside and gathered them by the armful.
“This arrived with them,” Liv said, producing a bottle of champagne and a card.
Dear Kate, something to celebrate this momentous occasion in style! My father would have been very proud, as am I. Fiona is too, although she’ll never say it. You’re an indispensable part of something very special.
Charlie x
“Charlie,” Kate said, touching a velvet peony petal.
“Thought so,” Liv said. “Probably lifted straight from one of his rom-com scripts. This is seriously good champagne, though.”
Kate wasn’t sure what to say. Liv was her sister and her best friend rolled into one, yet still she hadn’t found the words to explain her conflicted feelings toward Charlie.
If she had to what-three-words him, she’d choose charismatic-confusing-unsettling.
And every now and then she’d choose Top Gun –hot, quietly inside her own head, after a couple of G she hadn’t expected him to call.
“Happy publication day, Kate.” She could hear the smile in his delayed voice when he spoke.
“Thank you.” She laughed. “What time is it for you? Crazy early or crazy late?”
“It’s an unfashionably early three a.m .”
Unbidden images of rumpled white sheets against suntanned skin blew through Kate’s mind, and she shook them hastily away. “You didn’t wake up just to call me, did you? The flowers came by the way, they’re gorgeous. Liv’s trying to steal the champagne but there’s no chance.”
“Drink it, you’ve earned it. Any big plans for the day?”
Kate looked at her painted nails. “Liv’s closing the shop in a bit so we can head out to spot the book on the shelves,” she said. “And then champagne, now I have some.”
“Are you still feeling okay about Sunday?”
Her stomach turned. She was feeling anything but okay about the radio interview, but that wasn’t the right answer.
“Well, I’ll be glad when it’s over,” she said. “But I’ll be fine.”
“I could ask Fiona if she’s free to come and meet you there?” Charlie said.
“God, no,” Kate said, emphatic. “Honestly, I’ve got it.”
She could well imagine Fiona eyeballing her through the glass booth, drawing her finger slowly across her throat.
“I’ll tune in from here,” he said.
The thought of him listening from L.A. didn’t help her nerves one bit.
“How’s L.A.?”
The expected delay on the line was definitely a few seconds longer than necessary.
“Hot. Relentless. I don’t know how I lived here for so long.”
“You’ll be home soon,” she said. She wondered how he’d found being thrust back into the movie-making community he’d been a part of; if he’d run into his ex-wife, even.
“I’ll raise a glass to you later.” He sounded tired, reminding her it was the middle of the night for him.
“Liv’s locking up, I think that’s my cue to go book-spotting,” she said. “Night, Charlie.”
“Morning, Kate,” he murmured, ringing off.
Thoughts of a bedside lamp being clicked out, a middle-of-the-night hotel room thrown into darkness, spooning into comfort and sleep.
Liv danced across from the other side of the shop, tapping her watch. “Come on, then, Kate Darrowby. Let’s go find your book in the wild.”