Remy #2
It wasn’t that I’d remembered anything, more like a realization had hit me.
Ishir’s panicked eyes, his hesitance, his fidgeting, his stalling, they were all mirror actions of my own response.
It was so immediate, so obvious that Ishir didn’t want to do this, yet I’ve been dragging myself along for months now, making excuses for the same clarity Ishir has just exhibited.
He didn’t want to be a dad, but he could do it if he was forced to.
But how good could any reluctant parent be?
I’d once thought I wanted the option that I gave to R: to one day discover that the guy who ghosted you had, in actual fact, believed you’d ghosted him . He was, then, not only brave enough to reach out and risk rejection a second time, but brave enough to accept life-changing news and run with it.
R was thrown and uncertain about Isaac’s proposition to have the baby, but she was mostly relieved to not be alone. She was comforted, and finally, she felt like she could breathe.
I would love to breathe.
But seeing Ishir today, I accept that, not only is he not Isaac, I am not R.
When I open my laptop the same evening, I pull Untitled S one of them has lost her best friends and the other has never had any.
Both are harboring their own secret. S is a sex worker who is estranged from her family and R is pregnant and must decide whether she’s ready to be a mother.
Can S help R make one of the most important decisions of her life and can R help S recover what she’s lost?
A life-affirming must-read about the restorative nature of female friendship.
Doesn’t that sound good!? It’s all very timely and all very sellable.
I’m still in New York but both your TFF editors are here at the fair, and I’ve floated this synopsis to them, along with your first chapters which I tidied up a bit, and to a few other editors (just in passing) and everyone wants to read more!
I’m so glad this has come through because I was beginning to worry about you, Remy.
Anyway, there’s a lot of editorial changes we need to make and storylines that need to be ironed out; it’s very disjointed at the moment and we have a lot of fleshing out to do, but the premise and the characters are there and that’s good enough for now.
Keep writing and we’ll talk when I’m back.
Tara x
P.S. The agent is hilarious—am I really that bad??? Ha!
A few minutes after reading Tara’s email, I’m still staring at my laptop screen. I only blink when the screen blacks out and I’m confronted by the reflection of my uncomprehending eyes, mouth hanging wide open.
I rush back to my inbox to click on the sent folder. There’s clearly no misunderstanding the situation, but I have to make sure.
And there it is, evidence that I hadn’t sent my story about Britain’s first Black queen and instead sent the random, unedited, for-my-eyes-only Untitled S Tara sets up a Zoom call and when we both join, she sighs deeply. “What exactly is the problem, Remy?”
Since we’re doing away with pleasantries, I also dive straight in. “Look, Tara, I didn’t mean to send you that story,” I tell her. “It’s not even something I’m working on; it was just to get me through a writing block.”
“And it worked,” Tara says slowly. “So, again, what is the problem?”
“I know S,” I tell her. “S is a real person. She has a family, she teaches at Linwood Primary, she has a real life!”
Tara squints as if trying to visually see the issue.
“So were your friends in TFF ,” she says.
“They were real people, too. They came to your book launch; you did an Instagram live with them on publication day. Oh , do you think S would be interested in joining the press tour?” She sees the look on my face.
“It’s okay if she’d rather stay anonymous. ”
“No, Tara, listen, the girls knew I was writing about them in TFF . Simone doesn’t know about this.”
“Right…” Tara nods. “And you’d like to tell her?”
“Well, I’d have to.”
“Do you?” she asks. “You don’t mention her by name, and we’re going to change the names anyway. I’ve no doubt you can create enough distance and that will make it all even easier. I’m assuming not everything you’ve written is true?”
“Well… no,” I admit. “But I did build around some—”
“There you go!” Tara exclaims, her mind already moving on. “You’re worrying about nothing, and with a lead-title slot on the line, you can’t afford to worry about nothing. Do you remember what we spoke about at lunch?”
I bite my lip. “I do.”
“Good.” I can see the reflection of Tara’s inbox in her glasses.
“Look, how about this as a compromise? You finish writing this thing and at the end you take a good look at it and decide if it’s worth telling S about.
If it is, then we go from there. I won’t share it with anyone else in the meantime. How’s that sound?”
I nod slowly. “Okay, I guess… so long as it’s not going anywhere, that’s—”
“Great! Listen, I’ve got to hop off now but keep going, see where the story takes you and we’ll take it one step at a time.
” She laughs. “Honestly, you poor thing! When you answered this call you looked like you’d broken the law!
” Tara removes her glasses and points one of the arms at me.
“Remy, every story in the history of the world is about someone.” She winks. “Remember that, okay?”
I begin to feel better after my call with Tara.
She promised the chapters aren’t going anywhere, and I still don’t know if I can even make it into a story.
I’ve had so many book ideas that started off strong but ran out of steam when I only had a few chapters carrying it.
People say anyone can write a book, but what they mean is anyone can have an idea.
To develop that idea to the tune of seventy thousand words?
Much harder. So, I might not even get to the point where I have to tell Simone anything.
Even if I do and Simone hates it, there may still be something in those chapters to write about.
That had been the entire point of Untitled S authenticity lends to a better reading experience, I suppose.
I didn’t think much of my confession, but as the interviews and book clubs continued, more often than I expected, people asked me about grief and death.
It was never out of morbid fascination, but because after the pandemic, loss and grief had emerged as one of the most relatable themes in These Four Friends .
While readers loved the female friendship angle, more were able to relate to losing a relative than to having three amazing best friends.
So, I continued to speak about my grandparents during the day when asked; then I went to bed and cried over their memory at night.
I shouldn’t forget about the R in S&R. In those chapters I have written about my anxiety, depression, period pains, my misgivings around dating, being ghosted by Ishir, and my pregnancy. Those are all things that people will want to talk about.
But as I stare at my laptop, I think about whether I can put myself on the page like that again.
And whether I should have ever, even for a moment, considered doing the same to Simone.