Chapter Eleven
Elle
An hour later, I had helped Daisy with an English assignment, played Animal Crossing with Sam and Daisy, agreed to meet Alfie and Teddy for tacos this evening, and I had three pink Post-it Notes on my wall, which were the big issues my editor had flagged up.
The bones of the book. All the problems she had with characters and consistency would depend on these main elements being fixed:
And then I had my own mirroring set of Post-its in blue, which showed the only flimsy ideas I’d had to fix things:
A) Love triangle
B) Bring James back and make sure readers realise why he is such a bastard it gets frightened and runs away whenever I try.
So, helping you with your mystery inheritor is perfect.
I get to use my deductive muscles without scaring inspiration away. ’
‘That sounds so insane, I could almost believe it’s true.’
‘It is the truth. I promise you.’
‘Regardless, I don’t need anyone’s help with this. I’ll figure it out by myself.’
I turned and sat on the edge of my desk.
I’d hit a nerve somewhere but now I wasn’t so sure it was just from me leading him on a little at the beginning of the conversation or teasing him.
Maybe he was just the kind of guy who thought he could handle everything?
It would make sense with my theory that he’d interfered with Beth and Nick because of control-freak tendencies.
‘Well, I’ll text you my address. If you change your mind, I’m not doing much tomorrow. We could go out and start the search together.’
‘I’ve already said no, Noelle. Thank you but no thank you.’
‘Ah, fine. I’ll still do it. Send you my address, I mean. I trust you not to post dog poop through my mailbox.’
‘I wouldn’t.’
‘Trust you or post the dog poop?’
‘I guess you’ll find out if you text me your address. Bye, Noelle.’