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She lowered her fingers and turned her attention from the screen to me. ‘You’re saying you’ll only get paid once you’ve written a new book?’
‘Yes.’ I shouldn’t have poured my heart out to her – bad mistake. I thought she’d feel sorry for me, but here she was holding it against me already.
She looked at her screen again. ‘You currently don’t have sufficient funds to cover your direct debits.’
‘Exactly! That’s why I’m here.’
She was so frosty you would have thought I was asking her to lend me money out of her own pocket. Where was the compassion, the eagerness to help?
After a bit more tapping and clicking, she said, ‘As you have reached your overdraft limit, we can’t extend it. A limit is a limit,’ she explained, enunciating clearly.
It was the way she said it that annoyed me. ‘Hey, I know what a limit is! Words are my life!’ Knowing how ridiculous I sounded, but I was desperate. This wasn’t going at all the way I’d imagined. I hadn’t realised that banks love you when you have money, and they go off you when you don’t, like the worst sort of friends. ‘So what do I do now? If you stop my direct debits I won’t be able to pay my rent and I’ll be homeless. Is that what you want?’
‘I would like to remind you not to raise your voice.’ She pointed to a sign by the window which read: Abuse of advisors will not be tolerated.
I’d always wondered why that notice was there, and now I knew. I jumped to my feet in frustration.
‘Well you’re not getting this,’ I said, waving my royalty cheque. Impulsively, I tore it up and threw the bits over the table. My heart was pumping hard as I walked towards the stairs.
One day’s overdraft money lost in a pointless gesture. I immediately regretted it.
Back home, I lay on the lemon sofa and realised to my dismay I was going to have to ring my mother for help. She lives in Loano, Italy. (Literally, the last resort.) She can detect laziness even over the phone so as I pressed her number I sat on the edge of my desk so as to sound alert and also to enjoy the view which in all probability wasn’t going to be mine for much longer.
‘Pronto!’ she answered impatiently.
‘Mum? It’s me. Lana,’ I added for clarity.
‘Oh, this is a surprise,’ she said.
She’d been a teacher, and then a head teacher, and after the divorce she’d taken early retirement and gone to the Italian Riviera to boss a whole new country around for a change. I can spot a teacher a mile off. They’re the ones telling people off.
I took a deep breath and once again I felt the burning shame of failure. ‘Listen, I’ve got something to tell you. My new book got turned down yesterday.’
‘Got? You mean it was turned down.’
See?
Now that she’d corrected my grammar, she waited for me to go on.
‘Well, that’s it,’ I said. ‘That’s what I wanted to tell you.’
‘Oh,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps now is a good time to think about doing something else.’
‘But I don’t want to.’ My voice started to rise. Right. Be calm. Regroup. Clear throat. ‘I didn’t call you for advice. The point is, without Mark, I can’t afford next month’s rent.’
She was silent for a long moment. ‘You’re calling to borrow money?’
‘Yes, please. It’s just until I come up with a new story.’
‘Why don’t you try asking the bank?’
Desperation made me flippant. ‘I have tried them, and now I’m trying you.’
‘I see.’ She managed to put a surprising amount of disapproval into that short sentence.
When I was little, someone gave her a book by Libby Purves called How (Not) to Be a Perfect Mother, and she’s stuck rigidly to the concept ever since.
After a long silence, she sighed deeply. ‘Do you want to come and stay here for a while?’
Did I? It wasn’t the solution I would have chosen, but it was still a solution and I grasped it, trying not to sound too eager.
‘I sort of do,’ I said.
‘Sort of do?’
‘Is that not grammatically correct?’
‘Come then, if that’s what you’d like.’
Honestly, no wonder I prefer making things up to real life. ‘But would you like me to come? You know, with enthusiasm?’
‘You’re my daughter,’ she said, which wasn’t really an answer.
I probably expect too much of her. She’s never been a Cath Kidston, cupcake-baking type of mother. If I went to stay it would like having twenty-four-hour private tuition from her. And from her point of view, she would be wasting her teaching skills on a bratty and reluctant pupil. We love each other but we don’t get each other in the slightest.
I’m guessing this was going through her mind, too. ‘Why don’t you go back to journalism?’ she suggested.
‘Definitely not! I hated that job. I hated visiting people when they were at their worst. I hated court reports, and seeing the looks on their families’ faces as their men were described as being of “bad character”. I loathed the whole Crufts Doc in Dog Collar Shock thing. Yuk!’
‘In that case, have you thought about teaching creative writing?’ she suggested.
‘Hah! Those that can’t, teach,’ I said bitterly, managing to insult us both in one sentence. I’d turned down a job as tutor at the London Literary Society a few months previously on the grounds I was too busy writing my sequel. Well, I’d had money then; I could afford to.
‘Actually, you make a far better teacher if you can do a thing,’ my mother said, ‘and despite your current setback you’re a published, successful author. Capitalise on it.’
‘Yee-ees.’ I’ve never fancied teaching because I’m no good at telling people what to do but I didn’t argue because she’d just said I was a successful author – the first time she’d ever acknowledged it. It gave me a bit of a lift, to be honest. ‘Thanks, I’ll think about it.’
‘Good!’
Before I could say anything else, she hung up.
I always forget that about her, that she comes to the end of a call and hangs up. Mind you, it does away with the closing awkwardness of lovely to talk to you, yes, same, see you soon, yeah great, have a good day, call me, I will, lots of love, etc., but it still takes me by surprise.
I stood by the window and imagined getting a job.
It would just be for money, I told myself.
I would still write in my spare time.
Getting a job. The phrase broke my heart; the fading dreams of an ex-writer, the brave face – yeah, but it’s only temporary, I’m working on another book, going for literary this time … dragging that lie out for a few years until people gave up asking me how the novel was coming along.
Still, I was forced to face reality and so I began to update my CV. I was sadly deficient in most employment skills such as bar-tending or barista work, but I was willing to learn.
Shortly after that, my father unexpectedly rang me to tell me the Chelsea score. I only support them because he does, not because I have any particular interest in football, but he used to take me to the home games when we lived in Fulham and I think of those days with a certain nostalgia. Since we had lost touch with the minutiae of each other’s daily lives and we had taboo subjects like Jo-Ann and my mother to avoid, I liked our footballing chats.
He gave me his personal version of the match report and a scathing overview of the incompetency of the manager and, just as we were on our goodbyes, he said, ‘Your mother called.’ He lowered his voice. ‘She’s worried about you. I’m sorry they didn’t like your new book.’
‘Oh.’ I felt both touched by the concern and surprised my parents were on speaking terms since the news of Jo-Ann’s pregnancy, at the age of forty-five. ‘Don’t be,’ I said. ‘It’s probably for the best. I’d have been like Gwyneth Paltrow, telling the world about my perfect life, and then in book two, oh, by the way, my perfect man has only gone and uncoupled me. I’d be that woman at literary parties who people whisper about out of the corner of their mouths – her first book was amazing but he left her, you know, and she never got back on form.’ Tears filled my eyes. Self-pity is seductive, but it makes you pitiful.
‘That’s the spirit,’ my father chuckled. ‘I’m glad you’re staying positive. Look, darling, you can come here until you find your feet.’
My spirits lifted. ‘Really?’
‘Of course. Just a moment,’ he said quickly. He muffled the phone. I could hear Jo-Ann talking indignantly with an offended ‘Excuse me … seriously … don’t I have a say in it?’ and my father replying in a low stern voice, ‘Daughter … bad patch … least you can do …’ Didn’t he know the phone had a mute button?
The truth was, I couldn’t imagine moving in with Dad and Jo-Ann. Nothing wrong with her, and probably they’d grown out of the constantly touching stage by now, but she was home all day and how would I find the space to write?
I was ready to hang up when my father’s voice came clear again. He was slightly out of breath after the argument. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘It’s okay. Thanks for the offer, Dad,’ I said briskly, ‘but I’ll manage.’
‘Oh … well done!’ he said, sighing with relief as if he’d just kicked his work shoes off. Yeah, that Jo-Ann. She pinched. ‘The next game’s on Sunday; Spurs at home. Speak to you then.’
I got off the desk. My left leg had gone numb.
Checking through my emails, I found the one from Carol Burrows at London Lit offering me a job.
I composed a reply and told her I’d been reconsidering her generous offer of tutorial work of a few months previously, and I was now in a position to take her up on it and give something back to the community. (Coming up with a line like this is one of the benefits of writing fiction.)
Carol Burrows phoned me about ten minutes later to ask me if we could meet for lunch, adding apologetically that it would have to be in the college canteen – which was a relief, because canteens I could just about afford, if it turned out I was paying.
The London Literary Society is down Euston Road so I had a quick shower, dressed in the red suit, took a hardback copy of Love Crazy as a thank you, which was all I had to offer, walked to Kentish Town and caught the tube to Euston.
Carol Burrows was waiting for me by the barrier to the car park, wearing a fluttery green print tea dress and a leather biker jacket. She was her fifties and her curly brown hair was cut in a wedge; she looked feminine, stern and erudite, as if she belonged to the Bloomsbury set. After she’d given me a visitor’s pass to hang around my neck we went inside, straight to the canteen. She had a burrito and chips and tea and I had fish and chips and a Diet Coke, and as she paid I helpfully carried the tray to a table.
‘The full-time post of creative writing tutor has been filled,’ she said, drawing up her chair.
‘When? Since I spoke to you this morning?’
‘No, a while ago.’
I changed my mind about giving her my book, but then she said, ‘We’re looking for someone to take an evening course. It’s for writers who want to progress towards publication.’
‘Hmm.’ I opened my Coke can. Pffft!
She smiled, and delicately cut a chip into three with her knife and fork. Her eyes met mine. ‘We all feel it would be a great fillip for the college to have you here.’
Philip? Oh yeah. I felt better already. ‘How much would be …’ I’d caught her way of speaking, ‘… the salary?’
When she told me, it sounded fair enough, until she added ‘pro rata’.
Whatever happened I realised I was going to have to get rid of the flat and find somewhere else to live. I felt ill again. But at least this was guaranteed money in my hand, I reasoned, squirting ketchup on my plate. And it wasn’t totally a copout. It was still about writing, still creative, and possibly – here’s the smart bit – I might get inspiration from my students.
Readers sometimes feel that taking things from life is cheating, and that fiction should be something a writer has completely invented from some mysterious source deep in the imagination, but the truth is, all stories come from reality. Take Hemingway, for instance. He plunged straight into the action. Married young, fought wars, replaced his wives, insulted his friends and found himself with plenty of material to keep him published for years. Of course, his friends stopped talking to him once they recognised themselves in his books and he made his ex-wives utterly miserable and in the end he shot himself, but that’s not the point. The point is, he got what he wanted, which was fame.
I might also get some new ideas from my students. This is not in any way plagiarism. Plagiarism is the ‘stealing and publication of another author’s language, thoughts, ideas or expressions and passing them off as one’s own’, according to Wikipedia and I’m giving the source so as not to be accused of plagiarism, which would be a horrible irony.
‘There is some paperwork involved with the course in the form of progress sheets and end-of-term assessments,’ Carol said, her delicate hands fluttering, ‘but nothing too arduous.’
‘I was expecting that,’ I lied. Assessments were another name for school reports. ‘I will take the job.’
She spent the rest of lunchtime asking for my professional opinion on books I hadn’t read. Some I hadn’t even heard of. I bluffed and mumbled around my food, pulling adjectives out of the air and even said that one of them was ‘too wordy’, which to my surprise she agreed with.
When we’d finished, she escorted me to the office, took my photograph, gave me my staff pass, showed me the fire escapes and the location of the library as she was contractually bound to do, and by the time we said goodbye I was feeling optimistic.
I’d had a hot lunch and found myself a job. Things were looking up.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_157330dd-3b0f-5cef-9656-531b1acc30c8)
Writer’s Block (#ulink_157330dd-3b0f-5cef-9656-531b1acc30c8)
Despite the trauma and conflict of my private life – like failure, disappointment and penury, which are all the traditional ingredients of a decent book – I still hadn’t managed to come up with an idea for a heart-warming story. And I knew why. The one essential ingredient for writing was missing: boredom.
Boredom stimulates the imagination in a way that nothing else can. The mind hates a void with its intimations of mortality. On the minus side, if unchecked, it can fill itself with any old junk, as I found out the day I booked a session in a flotation tank at a central London spa for creative purposes.
I’d gone there to find my muse.
Trisha Ashley, a writer I admire, has a vain, bad-tempered, leather-clad muse named Lucifer and I thought it was time I got one for myself.
At the spa, surrounded by rolled-up towels, dizzied by rose petals and incense sticks, I listened as Michaela-in-the-white-uniform explained the process to me. The flotation tank was like a large water-filled cupboard. The lights would dim to black, the music would gradually fade to silence, and sensory deprivation would promote vivid colours, auditory hallucinations and creative ideas, the effects of which would last up to two weeks, until it was time for a top-up.
Michaela held the door while I climbed in and she promised to be back at five forty-five.
It was the longest forty minutes of my life.
Alone in the dark, once the music stopped and the white right angle of light around the door disappeared, I lost sense of the walls around me and suddenly felt as if I was drifting alone in a black sea. With sharks. No colour or auditory hallucinations, just the prickling awareness of large creatures biding their time beneath me. Nudging me. Getting a sense of what they were dealing with. To reassure myself, I groped for the walls to get my bearings and got saltwater in my eyes. It stung. I forced myself to relax but as I breathed out deeply I lost buoyancy and sank lower into the water and it flooded into my ear. How much water can an ear hold before it starts to weigh down your head, pulling you under?
Eyes throbbing, mind wandering, I realised I’d been in there longer than forty minutes. The water was getting cold. It had been quiet for a long time. I imagined Michaela forgetting all about me and taking off her white jacket, locking up and going home while I lay uncomfortably suspended in the thick and silent dark. She might only remember me when she was fighting to get on the tube. And what if she had a date? Yes, I was suddenly certain she did. That’s why she forgot about me. If the date went well she might not remember me until morning, when she came in and found me hypothermic in the ice-cold water, half eaten by sharks.
On the scale of panic, from nought to ten, I was at this point about a five. I got to my knees and felt for the door handle, for reassurance. It wasn’t where I expected it to be so I methodically smoothed my hands over the general area, panic rising swiftly to a seven when I couldn’t find it. But why would there be a handle on the inside anyway? Michaela was supposed to be there. She’d promised to let me out.
My perception swiftly altered. I was no longer a tiny soul in limitless space. I was fully grown and locked in a watery cupboard getting claustrophobic.
‘Help!’ I shouted, deafening myself. ‘Help!’
A bright light shone over me.
‘You okay?’ Michaela asked quizzically from behind me.
