Chapter 9 #2
“I’d pay a lot,” confirms Levi, who’s been blatantly listening in. “Like, I already have a copy of every edition they’ve ever released, obviously, but a signed one trumps them all. D’you think he’ll do a Q a ghost of his old smile, but a smile nonetheless.
“I don’t know, Elliot,” I say frostily. “You tell me. What was that this morning?”
“Uh, that’s… that’s what I just asked you?” he points out, not unreasonably. “Or did I just imagine that? I was asking what you were doing, honking your car horn at me?”
“I wasn’t honking it at you,” I reply indignantly. “I was honking it because of you. I, um, just happened to see you, that’s all. Coming out of that house. With that woman. First thing in the morning.”
There’s a good chance I could go on like this forever, in short, staccato sentences that come out sounding more like accusations than statements.
Luckily, though, Elliot steps in to stop me.
“Katie,” he says, his ghost smile fading. “Her name’s Katie. Katie Hunter.”
He looks at me as if this should mean something to me, but it doesn’t, so I simply nod, not knowing what else to do with this information.
He’s not denying that he was coming out of this ‘Katie’ woman’s house so early that it suggests he must have spent the night there.
Then again, I don’t want him to think I care about who he spends the night with.
Because I don’t. I definitely don’t. It’s nothing to me. It’s…
“How’s your ankle, by the way?” Elliot asks, in a change of subject so abrupt that it almost gives me whiplash. “That’s the main reason I came in.”
“It’s fine, thanks,” I reply. “It was just a sprain. I put frozen peas on it.”
“Peas. Right.”
Elliot isn’t listening. He’s stepping a little further inside the store now, gazing around and ignoring the three musketeers over there, who are lined up on the sofa gaping at us over their giant mugs of coffee.
“This place is looking great,” he says, sounding like he means it. “Really. It’s different, but the same.”
“We have you to thank for that,” says Dad, ignoring the warning glance I shoot at him and getting up to join us. “This is still our biggest seller.”
He reaches out and picks up a copy of The Snow Globe from one of the displays. There’s a long and very painful silence as we all stand there looking at it.
This moment should have come with a trigger warning.
Elliot Sinclair should come with a trigger warning.
“Well, great,” says Elliot unconvincingly. “I’m glad it’s helped.”
“Oh, it’s helped alright,” I hiss, unable to stop myself. “If by that you mean it’s helped me become the village laughingstock.”
Elliot’s head jerks backwards as if he’s been slapped. Dad silently places the book he’s holding back on top of the pile and backs away slowly.
“A laughingstock?” Elliot says, frowning. “How so?”
I stare at him incredulously.
“You wrote a book about me?” I tell him slowly, amazed I’m having to explain our personal history to him. “About us? It got turned into a movie?”
There’s a moment when it occurs to me that I might have got it wrong; that maybe he based the love story in his book on some other English girl he met in some other small town, in some other December. But then he nods, and I’m an annoyed mixture of emotions once more.
“I did,” he confirms solemnly. “I did do that.”
We hold each other’s gaze; me wondering how it can possibly be the case that he looks so the same, when everything else about him is so different.
“I knew it,” I hear Levi mutter from position on the sofa, followed by a soft whump, which I imagine is probably Paris hitting him with a cushion.
I don’t look around to confirm it, though. I’m too busy watching Elliot and wondering what he’s going to say. How he’s going to defend himself.
“You didn’t like the book, then, I take it?” he says, shrugging in an ‘aw, shucks’ kind of way that fails to mask the hurt I can see in his eyes.
I open my mouth and then close it again.
In the imaginary versions of this conversation — and there’s been quite a few of them, over the years — I’ve always known exactly what to say to Elliot on the subject of his book.
But now that the opportunity has finally presented itself, I find myself suddenly struck dumb.
It’s stupid, but I don’t want to hurt him.
Even after all this time, I can’t bring myself to hurt him.
“It’s not so much the book I didn’t like,” I mutter, even though it definitely is the book. “It’s more… well, the attention I’ve had because of it. I don’t like the attention. You know I don’t like attention.”
“The attention?” Elliot’s blue eyes scan the store, which is, of course, currently empty of customers, for what has to be the first time in days. “I saw the globe thing, outside,” he goes on. “Is that what you mean?”
I look at him wordlessly. It’s crazy to me that this man, who I once thought knew me better than anyone, even despite the short amount of time I’d known him, can be so completely unaware of what my life has been like since he last saw me.
Then again, how would he know? It’s not like we stayed in touch.
“That’s one part of it,” I say evenly. “But then there’s also…”
The lies you told about me. The fact that you ghosted me, then made it sound like it was my fault. The way you broke my heart.
“I don’t think I’m really cut out to be the main character in a book,” I say. “Or a movie-based-on-a-book, even. I think I was always destined to just have a supporting role. It’s … it’s strange, is all. It’s been strange.”
The silence that follows this statement is so acute I can almost hear Levi and Paris exchange disappointed glances, having expected more drama from me. Elliot, meanwhile, just stands there, shoulders slumped slightly, looking like I’ve just told him his baby’s ugly.
Which I guess I have, in a way.
“You were always the main character for me, Holly,” he says at last. “Always.”
Across the room, Paris lets out a gasp of delight.
“Oh my God,” says Levi, in a stage whisper.
Drama delivered.
And now I guess the next line is mine.
I just have no idea what it should actually be.
To hide my discomfort, I reach for the laptop that’s sitting open on the counter in front of me, and start tapping away at it importantly, my fingers moving on auto-pilot as I stare determinedly at the screen.
You were always the main character for me.
Why did he say that when we both know it’s not true?
“Okay,” says Elliot, when it becomes clear that I’m not going to give him whatever answer it is he wants from me, because this is Holly he’s talking to — not Evie Snow, whose lines he can dictate.
“Right. Well. I guess I’ll be going, then.
How’s Martin, by the way? I was … surprised to see him with you last night. ”
The email from Harper Grant is on the screen. I open it, just to make myself look busy, then click again to open the contract attached to it, for good measure.
“Martin? Martin’s fine,” I reply vaguely, distracted by the contract, which is several pages long and written in the kind of legal jargon I’ll probably need a translator for. “He took me home.”
Elliot opens the door (Deck the Halls sounds very out of place when you’re in the middle of a stand-off with the ex who once wrote a book about you, just in case you were wondering…) and stands there for a moment, as if he thinks he might still be able to rescue this scene if he just gives me a chance to try to stop him from leaving.
I don’t, though.
Because, as I scan the document in front of me, one eye still on Elliot in the doorway, a familiar name catches my eye.
I scroll back up, now fully focused on the screen in front of me.
No. That can’t be right. I must have misread it, surely?
But I haven’t.
There it is, in fourteen-point Times New Roman:
This agreement is made and entered into on [Date], between Vivienne Faulkner (‘Author’) and Holly Hart (‘Ghostwriter’), collectively referred to as the ‘Parties,’ for the purpose of writing and developing the work [Title TBC]…
I blink several times and read it again, the words starting to swim before my eyes. I feel like I’ve just had a double-shot of Levis’ extra-strong espresso, shortly followed by a ride on a particularly twisty roller-coaster.
Vivienne Faulkner.
The author I’ve agreed to ghostwrite for is none other than Vivienne Faulkner; queen of romance, and the person responsible for a large percentage of our non-Snow Globe related book sales every month.
It doesn’t seem real. It can’t be real.
I, Holly Hart, have somehow managed to land the ghostwriting gig of a lifetime.
It’s an actual Christmas miracle.
And I’m not allowed to tell anyone about it.
Which is just fine, as it happens: because when I finally look up from the computer screen, my fingers still trembling on the keyboard, I find that Elliot Sinclair has already gone.