Chapter Sixteen
Perhaps it was never too late for love, Petra thought, back in the flat that evening as she sat in front of the fire. She
was still two years short of thirty herself. There was loads of time. Although—that said—she hadn’t dated for years: being
a struggling student, then working various low-paid editing jobs, and then as a rookie literary agent, frantically working
and networking in the evenings and weekends. Life hadn’t seemed to allow the time or the energy for romance. She hadn’t even
had time to maintain her old friendships.
No wonder she had been so lonely.
It was hard to be lonely in a busy bookshop, she found. Another lovely thing was how, when the shop was closed at five o’clock,
Petra really did feel the work was done for the day. Life was so much more pleasant even in the little ways, she thought contentedly,
sipping her tea and opening her latest book with pleasurable anticipation.
On Thursday, Petra—locking up the shop after another good sales day—was looking forward to the evening. It was to be the first
time that Capelthorne’s hosted the local writing group.
Alison, the leader of “Write Club” (first rule of Write Club is you do not talk about Write Club) was the only member Petra had already met.
Clearing a space and pulling the chairs into a circle, she suddenly found herself suffering a fit of nervous excitement at the thought of being with actual writers for the first time in ages.
Hearing a knock at the door, Petra was relieved to see Alison was the first to arrive.
“This is so kind of you,” said Alison, looking around the shop nervously, as if expecting someone to be lurking in the shadows,
ready to leap out and tell her Capelthorne’s wouldn’t be hosting the group after all.
Mind you, thought Petra, she hadn’t double-checked with Jules that it was all right. She had been loath to interrupt the honeymoon, but Flo was enthusiastic when Petra mentioned it to her as a fait
accompli a few days ago.
“Mrs. Hamilton at the library was so relieved when I told her we had managed to find another venue,” Alison told Petra, bobbing
her head in gratitude.
Alison was a thin, nervous woman in her sixties, given to wearing anoraks and bobble hats. She reminded Petra of the little
mouse seamstress in Beatrix Potter’s Tailor of Gloucester with her earnest head-forward posture and habit of wringing her hands.
“You are all very welcome,” Petra reassured her. “It was such a shame the library couldn’t continue,” she went on, “but I
know how difficult funding is these days. Here, look, we have some biscuits,” she went on, getting out the tin with the chocolate
biscuits left over from the most recent Beach Reads Book Club, “and all the tea- and coffeemaking bits are in the kitchen
here, so do just help yourselves.”
“Thank you, we will,” said Alison anxiously, “but—I confess—we were also hoping you would stay and give us your thoughts? When I told the crew you were from publishing in London,” she practically put “publishing” in quote marks, such was the majesty she conferred to the word, “we were hoping you would join in?” She screwed up her face as if feeling the request was very significantly too much to ask.
“Of course! I’d love to,” exclaimed Petra, who was secretly hoping she would be asked but hadn’t wanted to volunteer herself.
They were an eclectic bunch, Petra decided, looking around the little circle when they had all convened and were settled with
mugs and chocolate biscuits in hand. They had clearly exchanged material by email in advance and were already leaning in solicitously,
heaping each other’s work with praise as they chatted quietly among themselves.
They all nodded and smiled as Alison made introductions, which gave Petra a chance to apologize for not having read anything
beforehand. At hearing this, they all diffidently handed over sheafs of printouts showing the work they were going to discuss
that evening. Petra promised that Alison would provide them all with her email address so she could study up in advance of
the next session, prompting an outburst of gratitude from them all.
The range of writing projects and styles was huge, Petra discovered.
Simon was a bear of a man who reminded Petra of Hagrid from Harry Potter. He wore a thick Arran sweater that smelled faintly
of sheep and had the facial hair of a grizzled old sea dog. Simon was writing his memoirs of a life spent crisscrossing the
world’s oceans on his single-handed yacht.
“I adored your descriptions of the Balearics,” said Sylvia diffidently. “I thought the use of metaphor was inspired.”
“Melvillesque,” breathed Alison, who had submitted the newest chapter of her romance novel.
“I wondered if I had gone a bit too far on the old descriptions,” admitted Simon modestly, but they all rushed to politely
disagree.
Sylvia, another member of the group, was a poet, Petra discovered, and she had written some genuinely fine verse, judging
by the one set in the churchyard on the top of the hill, which they were all reading that evening. Her description of imagining
wedding and funeral parties convening at the lych-gate for several hundreds of years made the hair stand up on the back of
Petra’s neck, and she said so, while also admitting she had never worked on poetry in a professional capacity. “There are
so few opportunities to work with poetry in today’s publishing scene,” she said apologetically.
“Oh, gosh, I know!” Sylvia rushed to reassure her. “I’m not even seeking a traditional publisher, although I’ve entered the
odd poetry competition here and there,” she admitted.
“And won some of them too,” Alison chipped in, “although Sylvia’s too modest to say.”
Sylvia blushed. “I confess, I did get excited about a poetry competition Portneath Books set up last year,” she told Petra.
“But then there was a fire, and the bookshop was gone, although I don’t know if Jules and Roman will reinstate the competition
when they get back. Perhaps they will . . .” She trailed off, bright-eyed with hope.
“I know they will,” Petra reassured her, knowing no such thing, of course.
The evening had flown by, Petra mused as she brushed her teeth that night. They were all so lovely. Alison, writing romance, was seriously good, which Petra had not been expecting. In another life, she would have been asking for the full manuscript. She had been surprised to notice how
excited she was to read good work. She had always relied on the physical signs . . . the feeling of something pushing upward
in her throat, like a laugh wanting to bubble up, the sense of wanting to sit up straighter. There were so many things a writer
had to get right: language, plot structure, hooks, topicality with originality, and—when it was all there, or nearly there—Petra had the thrill of the chase, the hunger for acquisition.
But then she gave herself a stern talking-to: She had been a bad literary agent, letting her clients down by not always getting their work sold, and it was no good telling herself—as Alistair
always had—that no agent sells everything. The stakes were high for her writers, and she had failed them. So she knew better
than to listen to the instincts she was feeling again now. The last thing she wanted to do was raise—and then dash—the hopes
of any more writers who were unlucky enough to cross her path.
Ross’s thoughts that evening, sitting alone in his cottage, were—like Petra’s—mixed.
He had had a great day of writing. The sticky middle was as “in shape” as he could get it for now, and the final act was mapped out in some detail, to the exclusion of the ending itself.
Could he really pull off a happy ending for Caliban?
What would that be? It seemed a stretch for him to “get the girl” unless he played it that Miranda, with her courage and optimism, had managed to civilize him a bit.
Otherwise, she really was too good for him.
The happy ending would not be believable, he feared.
No, it was no good. He lacked the writing skill to make it plausible. And he was more than aware of the parallels with his
own life. The Caliban character he was writing was about as autobiographical as he could get. He could no longer ignore that
he was drawn to Petra as his real-life Miranda. But the best thing he could do for her was keep his distance, he told himself
gloomily as he brushed his teeth. Let her escape at the end of the summer and return to her life in London, with a chance
to find someone who would be good for her. Someone who wasn’t a writer—and a complex, damaged, emotionally fragile writer
at that.
On which note, there was one thing he might bring himself to ask her before she disappeared from his life, and that was about
representation. He could not bear the thought of anyone else being his literary agent. And that was another excellent reason
why he needed to detach the two of them from any suggestion of an emotional tie. It was unfair of him to ask her, and selfish
too, but he had no choice: He couldn’t be entangled romantically—or even as a friend—with a woman who was responsible for
his career.
He had made that mistake once. He wasn’t going to make it again.
“Petra!” Ross announced heavily as he approached the front desk where she sat.
“Ross!” she declared, echoing his tone with a grin. “What gives, big man?” He looked anxious, she noted, with dark circles
under his eyes and heavy stubble. It seemed the grizzled look she had first seen him rocking was coming back into fashion.
“We need to talk.”
“We are,” she pointed out.
“Later. Properly.”
Petra put her head on one side, pretending to consider. “That would be very nice,” she said. She tried hard not to show hurt
that he had been absenting himself from their daily chats again. “Beer and peanuts after I close the shop? I may even have
some tortillas and guacamole, if you’re very good?”
“Snacks would not be mandatory,” he bantered back, with visible effort. Rather than his proposing a catch-up between friends,