My black holdall looks incongruous on the solid oak floor. I kick off my shoes and leave them discarded. Yours, I see, are placed neatly beneath the oak settle.
I walk through the entrance hall, which leads straight into the spacious kitchen. The walls are a warm shade of white; I think the paint has been chosen with light-diffusing particles so that it feels as if the walls are breathing air into the room. The splashes of colour – chalky pastel shades – come from the painted wooden cabinets, the well-chosen artwork, the pottery carefully displayed.
The style is graceful, calming. It’s as if a handful of sea-bleached pebbles have been gathered and used as the basis for the palette. The modern, sleek lines of handle-less cabinets and a granite work surface have been married with a beautiful old farmhouse table, the wood ring-marked and age-worn. A long bench seat is set against the wall, strewn with hessian cushions. It’s a table for a family, or for dinner parties. Not a table for one.
I smile to see that the high chair, as requested, is placed at the end of this table, although it won’t be used, of course. On the kitchen counter there is a small bunch of wildflowers in an old honey pot, tied with brown string. Leaning against it is a handwritten card addressed to Joanna and family.
A thoughtful touch.
I pick up the card, tracing a finger across the elegant handwriting, but I don’t open it.
Setting it back down, I move past an aged dresser painted duck-egg blue, where earthenware mugs hang from neat iron hooks. Seagrass-speckled pots are stacked artfully between mason jars containing nuts, pulses and attractive spirals and ribbons of pasta. I slide open the dresser drawer and, as I reach into it, I experience the sharp sensation that someone is going to snap the drawer shut on my fingers, a child caught snooping.
I feel like a trespasser. Yet, in my pocket, I’m aware of the small but solid presence of the front door key resting against the top of my thigh.
I am no trespasser, I remind myself. You let me in.
‘If you’re going to throw a ticking bomb into the story, light the fuse at the beginning, and let us hear it tick.’
Author Elle Fielding
In the charcoal-coated dark of three a.m., I am awake. The cut to my heel throbs; my pulse seems to tick there.
Over the years I’ve tried a wealth of tips and tricks to soften insomnia’s grip: a soak in a lavender-scented bath; listening to an audio book; blackout blinds; a warm, milky drink before bed; that sodding meditation app that I’d thought was the key but eventually stopped working, too; no screen time; no sugar after dinner; sleeping pills; homeopathic remedies; acupuncture. Everything. I’ve tried everything.
People don’t understand that it’s not falling asleep that’s the problem. It’s staying asleep.
If only there was just a switch for my mind, some way of turning it off, or at least turning down the volume; instead, as the night draws deeper, worries begin to stir, stretch, wake. Harmless, innocuous happenings take on a different shape – the shadows they cast, stretching.
The chef I used to work with when I was waitressing in a pub called them the heebie-jeebies.
‘Don’t trust any thoughts you have between two a.m. and five a.m. It’s like listening to your drunk self.’
Reminding myself of this advice doesn’t settle me tonight. I inhale and exhale slowly, following the path of my breath.
But I can still feel it: the ice-sharp point of that shard of glass as it pierced my skin.
*
I lean against the kitchen counter, listening to the low gurgle of the coffee machine as the water begins to heat. What would I do without coffee? I finally stumbled into a deep, dreamless sleep at around five a.m., but now I feel thick-headed, disjointed.
Beyond the window, mellow white clouds blanket the sky, thin swatches of blue glimpsed beyond. A kayaker is powering across the bay, the paddle lifting and dipping with pleasing fluidity.
On the shoreline there’s a lone birdwatcher, collar pulled to their chin. They are standing with their head tilted back, binoculars raised towards the cliff. There’s a stillness about them that I admire – lovely to be so enraptured by bird life that you’d want to dedicate hours of your day to simply observing it.
I follow the direction of the birdwatcher’s gaze to see if I can locate what they’ve spotted.
As I follow the angle of their binoculars, unease trickles down my spine. Their gaze isn’t focused on the cliff. It is set higher.
They are watching my house.
A memory, match-bright, flashes through my thoughts: his slow smile; the dark, knowing eyes that followed me, hawk-like with exacting focus; the pleasure in his voice as he said my name.
I extinguish the memory with a blink, yet feel the shiver it leaves behind.
Course they’re not watching the house, I tell myself. The binoculars must be trained on a bird; sand martins nest nearby, and there are rare but occasional sightings of a pair of peregrine falcons.
The stranger’s hair is covered by a hat pulled low to their ears, but something about the way they stand, the straightness of their posture, a narrowness of shoulders, makes me wonder if it’s a woman.
The stranger seems to become aware of me at the window, as they lower their binoculars and, just for a moment, our eyes meet. There is a beat of time – no more than a matter of seconds – when we are looking at one another. Then the stranger turns, moves on.
Sliding my mobile towards me, I see my editor’s name flashing.
I adjust my face into a smile. ‘Jane. Hi.’
We exchange niceties about my writing retreat and Jane’s visit to the Frankfurt Book Fair, and then Jane takes a breath, signalling the inevitable slide from small talk to business.
‘So, I just wanted to touch base and check we’re on track for next month’s deadline.’
My shoulders stiffen. The book is already months overdue. I’ve cited house renovations and marriage difficulties – and in fairness to Jane, she has been understanding, extending the deadline twice. Her patience, however, is starting to thin – and I can’t blame her. A final deadline has been set for the tenth of December and, if the new novel isn’t handed in, I’ll be in breach of contract.
During the writing retreat, I’d made time to think about the novel I am writing – or more accurately, am not writing. I’ve been switching between ideas for months, with so many false starts that I’ve lost my confidence, my instincts. The ideas aren’t big enough, aren’t exciting enough to carry a reader through. If I’m not inspired or excited by a story – why should readers be?
Second novel syndrome, David, one of the other tutors on the creative writing retreat, had called it.
‘If you have a big success on your hands,’ he’d said, while spreading sun-warmed brie onto a cracker, ‘then it’s like all those generous words of praise from reviewers and readers are stacked up in front of you. Your debut was an international bestseller – it scooped every bloody award going. Readers are desperate for whatever’s coming next. It’s hardly surprising that every time you attempt to write, the expectation towers over the page. You’re writing in a book shadow.’
Book shadow,