Page 13 of The Island Villa

And today was going to be a low.

With a sigh, she answered the call.

“Hi, Daphne. How are things?” She asked the question, even though she already knew the answer. Things weren’t good, and she knew that Daphne would have been steeling herself to make this call.

“Catherine! Good to hear your voice.” There was a pause. “So—I have news.”

Not amazing news, or incredible news. Just news.

Catherine sat down hard on the chair. How was it possible to feel this bad after such a long and successful career? But she did feel bad. She felt terrible. Her heart was racing. She felt sick, even though she hadn’t heard the words yet. And when the words came, she only heard a few of them—difficult market... supply chain issues... factors outside our control... unlucky that the latest Miranda Patterson had been released at the exact same time. She’s hot right now and she hit that coveted number one slot on the list.

Catherine thought, I hate Miranda, and then felt terrible because she’d met Miranda a few times at various literary events and liked her as a person (not her books. She hated her books because the heroines always died tragically). Even if she hadn’t liked her, she would have still felt terrible because Miranda was on her second round of treatment for breast cancer and everyone knew that when one part of your life was screwed, you deserved the rest of it to go well. Miranda deserved that number one slot. That was the law of the universe. If Catherine needed evidence to support that theory, then all she had to do was look at herself.

After years of upheaval and trauma in her personal life, things were finally perfect. She was in love with a man who loved her back and understood her. In a matter of weeks, she’d be getting married right here, in the place she loved most. Her beloved Cassie would be joining them, and so would Adeline. And although she knew that wouldn’t be an easy encounter, Catherine desperately wanted her older daughter to come. Finally, she would fix their relationship and free herself of the terrible guilt that came with knowing that while she’d been a good mother to Cassie, she’d been an awful mother to Adeline.

She sometimes wondered if it might have been easier to cope with her guilt had she been an awful mother generally. She could have told herself that some women just weren’t meant to be mothers, and although that wouldn’t have made her deficiencies any more acceptable, at least her failings would have been consistent. Instead, she had to live with the uncomfortable nagging knowledge that she was a good mother to one child while being the very worst to the other. It was something that for years she’d been unable to rectify but finally she was confident that she could, if only Adeline would come to her wedding.

It was ironic that now, when her personal life was finally near-perfect, her career was falling apart. Once again, the universe had proved its ability to take the edge off any celebration so that it was impossible to become complacent or too self-congratulatory. Life had a way of diluting good news, with bad news. Everything going well for five minutes? Let’s ruin that for you...

Some of Catherine’s lowest points in her relationships had coincided with the high points of her career.

Daphne was soothing. Yes, Catherine’s sales for this book had been lower than expected—but disappointing wasn’t the word she’d use. (Catherine was using many words, all of which would have been flagged by a copy editor: consider not using language that offends your reader.) Daphne assured her it was one of those things. A reflection of a difficult market.

Catherine was trying to get her head around the idea of being number two—second—when Daphne broke the news that a male thriller writer had bagged the number two slot.

For the first time in decades, Catherine Swift was number three.

Three! Maybe she could have coped with being number two (she knew she wouldn’t have coped with being number two), but three? Three wasn’t disappointing. Three wasn’t “one of those things.” Three was failure. Three was disaster. Three was the beginning of the end.

She felt her confidence wither and shrink.

Her insecurities, kept at bay for years by the sturdy barrier of success, started to reemerge.

Three was personal—couldn’t Daphne see that? It was no good telling herself that she’d written the best book she could and the rest of it was outside her control. The truth was that the book-buying public had chosen a love story that ended in tragedy, and a crime story that began with tragedy (dead women, so many dead women) over an uplifting Catherine Swift. They’d chosen the unhappy ending and in doing so had delivered an unhappy ending to Catherine.

Her readers had spoken.

She considered throwing her phone into the pool, as if by submerging it she could drown bad news.

Here, finally, was the evidence that she was past her peak. Her career was on the slide.

She was standing in paradise, but she felt nothing but pain and panic.

Below her, she could see Andrew securing the boat to the jetty. In a few minutes, he’d come bounding up that path, full of energy and eager to celebrate another Catherine Swift number one. He’d hear the news and immediately brace himself to be positive. He’d try to persuade her that there was still plenty to celebrate, that their wedding was just a few weeks away. She’d pretend that it was all that mattered. That it was enough.

She snatched a quick breath and paced across the terrace and back. She gave herself a sharp talking to. She was lucky. She had all the things that mattered. She still had a career, even though it had taken a sharp nosedive. She had two healthy daughters, even if one of them did loathe her. Most important of all she had Andrew. Andrew who understood her. Andrew who knew. It should be enough.

It wasn’t enough.

She hated herself for feeling this way. What was wrong with her? It wasn’t as if she needed the money, although her insecure childhood had left her with a determination to be financially independent.

It wasn’t as if she needed the adulation of strangers. She was loved. Truly loved by a good man, and that was something she hadn’t expected at her age. Not after everything that had happened.

Three marriages, and each time she’d been sure. What did that say about her? She could be generous and tell herself it said she was an optimist with a huge capacity for love. That she was a person who never gave up, even when life punched her to the floor. Or she could be harsh and admit that she was a bad judge of character. That her creative brain didn’t clock off when she stopped writing and somehow shaped her vision so that she saw what she wanted to see and not what was really there. That she’d fallen in love with her idea of who someone was rather than who they really were.

But her real failing, if it really was a failing, was her desire to be loved. Maybe that was a result of the lack of emotional security in her childhood, or maybe it was something inside her (nature or nurture? It was a question she constantly asked herself when she was creating her characters). But whatever the cause, it was a fact. She wanted to be loved. Truly loved, for herself. And not only romantic love, but the love of friends. And not because she was well known, and not because she was wealthy, but because of who she was as a person.

And it was harder now, of course, because you never knew whether someone’s sudden desire to spend time with you came from the fact that you were sparkling company, or the fact that a friendship with Catherine Swift came with the same perks you’d expect from a five-star hotel.

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