Chapter Eight Venice Tuesday 9 January 2018 #2
‘She’s the love of our lives, little Darcie,’ said Beth. She proceeded to show Olivia dozens more photographs, all of which Olivia felt required to coo over.
‘How did you get into reading, Beth?’ she asked, once they came to the end of the photos. ‘Did you start early?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Beth replied. ‘I learned to read at age three, and I’ve never looked back.
’ They all leaned from the table as their main courses arrived, the waiter solicitous, and making two trips to bring everything.
Amidst it all, Leo returned to the table, bringing the cold air in with him and a thoughtful, preoccupied expression that made Olivia wonder about that phone call.
‘I started with Peter and Jane, graduated to Goldilocks, and after that there was no stopping me. I’m talking about my reading history,’ she explained to Leo.
He nodded, phone back on the table, engaged once more. ‘And which do you prefer?’ he asked. ‘Thrillers or romance?’
Beth looked thoughtful. ‘Hard to say. I love a twist, but I also really love a happy ever after. Don’t we all?’
There were smiles around the table.
‘Ah, the HEA,’ Leo mused. ‘Olivia’s department.’ He looked at her kindly. ‘Reading all of her books must have made you an expert on them.’
‘Oh, I don’t think anyone’s read all of my books,’ Olivia chipped in.
‘Yes, I have,’ said Beth proudly. ‘Each and every one, from The Stylist on Sydney Square onwards.’
‘Ah, but that wasn’t my first book,’ said Olivia.
The waiter appeared again with more bellinis, and Leo turned to him and started asking about how Harry’s mixed their drinks.
‘The first was The Florist on Fenton Street. I mean, it wasn’t that good.
It just scraped by into being published.
’ She was glad Leo was preoccupied with the waiter.
‘Well, in that case, I’m delighted I still have a book of yours to read!’ said Beth.
They sipped their bellinis. Olivia could hear the others talking about negative reviews and how authors stopped themselves from reading them.
‘Which was the first book you ever reviewed?’ Leo asked Beth, the waiter now gone.
‘Romeo and Juliet,’ Beth replied. ‘For school.’
‘And what was your take on it?’ He picked up his fork and eyed his steak. ‘What did you say about it?’
‘I can’t remember, exactly. I’m sure I said I liked it.’ Beth grinned, and they began to eat. ‘These days I’m a bit more analytical. I like to think about arcs,’ she said. ‘The steps the characters need to take, and whether the author gets that right.’
‘Oh, interesting.’ Leo leaned forwards a little, and Olivia remembered all the times he had leaned across a table towards her.
The times they had got close, the times they had nearly made it.
Until they had both been too Leo, or too Olivia.
Spoken so far out of turn they had wrenched themselves off the road.
‘Yes, I’ve been thinking about the steps a lot lately,’ said Beth.
‘How a hero and a heroine get from the beginning of the story to where they are at the end, how they change. The steps they take to get back to each other again. Or in the case of Romeo and Juliet, the steps they take to destroy themselves.’
‘Do you know all these steps to love, Olivia?’ Leo asked her, and she could not read his face. Was he curious? Teasing? There was a warmth in his eyes she didn’t trust.
‘I’ve never really boiled them down,’ she replied cautiously.
‘Oh, I’ve studied them,’ said Beth proudly. ‘I know them all.’
‘Should I make a list?’ Leo made to get his notebook from his bag.
‘No, I can tell you!’ cried Beth, looking thrilled, her face lit up under her specs.
‘So, in the case of a couple coming back to one another again, let me detail the steps. OK, what the hero – and the heroine, it works both ways – needs to do, if there’s been a “rock bottom” or an “all hope is lost” scenario in their relationship, is several things.
The first is to start talking, open up a dialogue, but don’t chase, stay busy, be approachable.
Listen, think about what needs to be done, what needs to be apologised for – and sometimes there are massive things that need apologising for, obviously.
’ She took a breath. Olivia didn’t dare look at Leo.
‘Show that you’re a better person, that you’re different now.
Don’t be jealous. Be confident, responsible, kind’ – she counted these things off on her fingers – ‘but also vulnerable. Dance a little.’ She smiled.
‘Dancing always helps. Then make a move, but the timing has to be spot on. If the move is made too soon, it can be disastrous. Suggest something romantic. Take them somewhere romantic, kiss in an unexpected, romantic place. And then, when the time is right, make that apology, put things right, declare your love. And the very last step is to promise to be with them forever, but this has to be both of them. A proper and lasting commitment.’
‘Sounds complicated,’ said Leo. He frowned, like he couldn’t compute all of that, like his head was suddenly full of clouds.
The clouds were behind Olivia’s eyes, too.
All hope had been lost between her and Leo three years ago.
Surely there were no steps to bring it back?
‘Does that tally with your books, Olivia?’
‘I suppose it does,’ she conceded. ‘I suppose all those things are there somewhere in my books.’
‘But the most important thing,’ Beth continued, ‘is that a character must be ready. Both of them must be ready to have the other person in their lives. That’s the key. Whether that involves forgiving each other, or forgiving themselves for something . . . all of that stuff needs to be resolved.’
‘They must be ready . . .’ echoed Leo. ‘Yes, I get that.’
Beth looked from Leo to Olivia and back again. ‘Or maybe they could just reminisce about a meal they once shared . . .’
‘You don’t have all of this in your crime novels, Leo,’ Olivia commented breezily, setting her tumbler down on the table.
‘There’s no real character arc, is there?
Just a crime, the solving of it . . .’ She was swerving on to safer ground, when there was no safer ground here.
Just shifting earth and fractured memories.
‘But there is an arc for Ben Midnight this time!’ protested Beth. ‘He really learns something by the end of the book. Yes, he loses Martha, but he gains such important knowledge about himself!’
‘He loses Martha?’ Olivia wrapped her fingers around her glass.
‘Yes, he does,’ Leo replied, looking straight at her, and there was a sudden note of sadness in his eyes, something she hadn’t seen for a long time.
‘But he hopes to get her back. And, wow, Beth, you should be a book reviewer or something . . .’ The sadness from him gone, he turned and winked at Beth, making her blush.
‘Ha. I just really get into this stuff,’ she said, all proud. ‘I love the arc, the set-up, the pay-off. The last-minute sting in the tail. But I guess I like the stuff in the middle the most. Especially with romances.’
They were interrupted then, by Anthony turning to Leo with a loud laugh and asking him about the best first sentence he’d ever written, and a lively conversation ensued, with everyone talking over everyone else and laughing together, and glass tumblers being clinked merrily in boisterous toasts.
Spirits were high, and they were kindred spirits, these members of the Book World, the secrets of reading and writing and publishing binding them together, cover to cover.
The visitors to Harry’s Bar, old-time regulars and puffa-coated wide-eyed tourists, coming through the legendary doors, must have stared over at the riotous table at the back and wondered who these people were having such a good time there in the heart of Venice on a cold winter’s day.
And they may have even noticed the woman in the corner, smiling and laughing, but with regret and longing in her eyes.