Chapter Six #3
moments with her authors. They were to be savored. Not that a good debut necessarily heralded a stellar career, of course,
and sometimes the weight of expectation with a big first publishing deal could be crushing.
Petra turned the page, and her eye was immediately drawn to a “Where are they now?” article. Echoing her thoughts, it outlined
how six authors with big contracts had fared after their keenly awaited debuts. It wasn’t all bad. One of them was now adapting
their own books into screenplays. Another had produced a second novel to a tepid response and had finally, the article reported,
returned to teaching English with their tail between their legs. Another broken dream.
And then, the last, brief, example the article writer had chosen to follow up was a novelist called Ross McCloud.
As soon as she read the name, Petra instantly remembered the book he had written.
How could she forget? It was a sensation that summer and was widely agreed to be one of the most accomplished debuts the literary world had ever read.
It was a novel called Destiny, and its simultaneous storylines and multiple protagonists all tracked over a single twenty-four-hour period, up to the end
of the book, where—as the reader knew all too well—their lives devastatingly converged at the 7/7 London terrorist bombings.
The year it was published, it became one of the novels she had most often noticed people reading on the Tube—always a litmus
test of a book’s penetration into the market. It meant big sales. Huge. And big sales were not a given: Sometimes even the
major literary prize-winning books somehow failed to translate into actual money. This was just one other reason why writing
books was the most absurd way to earn a living.
Petra stared into the fire, remembering. She tended to resist reading the books that everyone else was yammering on about,
stubbornly seeking out the books for her “to be read” pile that hadn’t caught the public imagination quite so well. It had
always felt like a tiny gesture to remedy the capriciousness of it all, the horribly unfair element of luck, on top of talent,
that dictated a writer’s career. But for Destiny she had succumbed to the hype and made an exception. She still remembered the gorgeous but spare language, the writer’s skill
at giving a different voice to each character, their inner monologues shared with the reader as their secrets and motivations
were gradually revealed. It had been an experimental but accessible book. The Holy Grail. Turning back to the article, she noticed this—unlike the others—was the briefest of notes,
and then she saw why.
A second novel from McCloud is eagerly awaited but has not yet appeared.
Our journalist enquired, but McCloud’s agent, Veronica Bampton, of the Bruce Bampton Literary Agency, declined to give an update.
The agency also declined to confirm whether McCloud was still represented by them.
Enquiries directed at the publisher went unanswered. Mr. McCloud could not be traced.
Well!
Petra sat back and blew her bangs out of her eyes. Five years and not a peep? Something had clearly gone horribly wrong . . .
Had he died? No, they would have said . . . How old even was he? She had never been particularly interested in how old the writers who approached her for representation were, even less
what they looked like; physical appearance, background, gender, and age mattered less than the writing. The writing was everything.
At least to start with.
Curiously, she picked up her phone and googled “Ross McCloud.”
What she saw made her throw her phone across the room in astonishment.
She skittered to retrieve it from the hearth and scowling back at her were multiple search results showing the same photograph—a
brooding, handsome man, with that lock of dark hair falling over his face, and those cheekbones accentuating the eyes with
their thousand-yard stare. It was a moody black-and-white image. But Petra knew those eyes were green.
Milton man. Not just “Ross,” the man with the insanely beautiful cheekbones, but “Ross McCloud,” a writing luminary rising high and bright before disappearing from the world altogether. Or so it had seemed.
And here he was, hiding out in Portneath of all places. And Petra had found him. Damn it, she would love to find her copy
of his book, but most of her possessions were still in her little flat in London.
Too hyper to stay sitting by the fire, Petra leaped up and thundered down the stairs to the used books section. Thumbing impatiently
through the shelves to find the Ms, she scanned along and—yelping with glee—pulled out a copy of his book.
She recognized the cover instantly. It was the hardback edition, just like her own copy, still with its dust jacket intact
and here—on the back flyleaf of the dust jacket—was the same moody black-and-white photo she had just seen on her phone.
No wonder she kept feeling like she had seen him before. The question now was, would she ever see him again?