Page 51 of The Typo

To: Amy Cameron c/o Edinburgh Variety, Edinburgh

Dear Amy,

I’m sending this to you from Port Lockroy, home of the world’s most remote public post office. The staff here tell me it’ll take a few weeks to reach you, if this is even the right address to find you. Anything could happen in that period, and we’ve only been writing for a short time, but I’m taking a chance sending this now because despite the marvels of this trip, your emails are proving to be the real highlight. I’ve never been one to believe in fate, but it feels like there was some kind of force working behind the scenes to introduce us to each other, and now I’m hoping that our correspondence can turn into something more. I’m running out of space, hence the increasingly tiny handwriting. Meet me? 1st March 1pm Edinburgh Castle.

With love,

Cameron x

I ran my fingers over the postcard. Although I knew it would have passed through many hands since it left his, I still felt a thrill knowing that I was touching something which he had held too. I traced the ink of his neatly looped blue script, trying to read beyond what the written words were spelling. They say you can tell a lot from a person’s handwriting. My own almost illegible scrawl would reveal that I’m mostly in a rush, and perhaps even hint at my recurring fear of making my thoughts heard. But Cameron’s writing was clear and relaxed, giving no sense of hastiness or doubt. Did it perhaps reveal a man who was confident in his choice to make himself vulnerable, his decision to put his hope for something more out there?

‘It feels like there was some kind of force working behind the scenes to introduce us to each other.’ In that sentence, he had articulated what I had been struggling to define to myself. The feeling defied all logic but it was there nevertheless, and he sensed it too. I clasped the postcard to my chest, and imagined him standing in one of those wooden huts pictured, carefully choosing every word and making the most of the small space he had to write in. Had he checked over what he’d written, holding the card close briefly, just like I was doing now, before attaching the stamp and posting it in the world’s most southerly red post box?

I still didn’t know what he looked like, so the film playing out in my head had me watching from a distance, Cameron a silhouette in front of one of the windows of the Port Lockroy post office hut, his features undefined. How I wanted that Cameron to turn around so I could see the warm smile which I knew would be on his face when I called his name. What would that first meeting be like?

Although Cameron had alluded in his emails to posting cards from Port Lockroy, he’d never mentioned that one of them had been sent to me. He must have clocked the address when I accidentally mentioned the Variety’s name in an email. I looked at the date on the postmark once again. The card had been posted at the end of January, less than a month after we’d started emailing. He really had taken a chance, both on whether our correspondence would continue, and whether the postcard would actually arrive in time for the suggested meeting. And I was so glad he had. For a few moments, I basked in the glorious sensation his words inspired in me, warm and happy at the prospect of finally being able to meet him, and full of anticipation of how our relationship might develop from there. Never had anyone deemed me worthy of such a romantic gesture.

And then the floaty sensation of sheer happiness abruptly vanished as I had a horrible realisation. The postcard wasn’t really intended for me at all. It had been written for the alternative version of Amy, the one I’d promoted at the beginning when I had spun so many little white lies with the false tales of my amazing life. It was telling that he’d not repeated the invitation to meet in any of his more recent emails when I had taken on my policy of telling the truth about what I was up to. Would he still have sent the postcard if he had known the real me? And what if he had changed his mind about meeting up since he’d sent it?

ChapterTwenty-Six

Iallowed myself a few minutes of spiralling down negative ‘what if’ scenarios before I forced myself to get it together. I couldn’t change what I had done. My only option was to come clean. I needed to be honest with him, tell him about the real Amy, and hope that in spite of everything, Cameron would still want to come to Edinburgh and meet me.

He'd suggested meeting on the first of March. I still had time to try to make things right. He needed to know the truth before he got on the plane to Scotland. And if telling the truth meant he chose not to make that journey, it was only what I deserved. He was probably still at sea, but I had to try to get hold of him and talk things through. I picked up my phone and dialled his number, closing my eyes and sending positive thoughts into the ether that he would answer my call. I waited to hear the international dialling tone, my heart thudding nervously, but nothing happened. I hung up and then tried calling again, but still no response, no dial tone, no cheery voicemail message, nothing.

I pulled open my laptop. This whole thing had started with an email. I hoped it wouldn’t end with this one.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: 20 Feb, 11:49

Subject: Confession

Dear Cameron,

You may be wondering about the subject line and the strangely formal start to this email. All will become clear soon, I hope. One thing that I would ask of you is this: please read to the end. However you feel, whatever reaction my words provoke in you, please can you promise me that you’ll finish the email? I know I don’t really have the right to ask it of you, but I’m hoping that you’ll do it anyway. To be honest, I wish I was telling you this in person rather than writing it down. I love our exchanges, and hearing from you makes even the toughest of days good. But I’m also very aware that when important stuff is written down, it can still be open to interpretation. Vital things like tone and expression are missing, and that can turn words into weapons. What could seem like a straightforward comment to me, could come across as a barbed dig to somebody else. I know this is probably sounding pretty melodramatic, but bear with me. Please don’t judge me hastily on the contents of this particular email. I’m trying to explain something very difficult, something I’ve been struggling to understand and articulate to myself, so I hope you’ll forgive the long preamble.

What I am clumsily trying to say—and the delay in getting to the point is probably a way of me protecting myself—is that I have not been completely honest with you, and I am so ashamed of that and I hope it doesn’t ruin everything that we could have.

The facts are these. I am Amy Cameron. I do live in Edinburgh. And I do work at the Variety. But I’m the marketing and communications manager, working away behind the scenes, not the virtuoso violinist taking the stage by storm that I implied I was. Actually, it was more than implied. I lied, and I’m so sorry about that. I do play the violin, don’t get me wrong. But when we first started communicating, I hadn’t picked it up in two years. The truth is, I was stuck in a rut. There was an incident. Goodness, describing it like that sounds like I had some kind of breakdown, but if I’m being honest with myself, I suppose that’s not a million miles off what did happen. I’ve always been a perfectionist, somebody who strives to do their best in everything, and who feels like a failure if something isn’t one hundred percent perfect. Ever since I first picked up my sister’s violin, I knew that being a musician was my calling. I trained for years, spending all my free time outside school working away at my craft, then going to university to study music, gradually building up my repertoire and pushing further still after I graduated.

But the closer I got to that goal of turning professional, the louder the self-doubt grew. I’d chosen to perform as Amy Rose (my middle name) hoping that having a stage name would give me confidence, but it made me feel like even more of a fake. My imposter syndrome constantly told me that I wasn’t good enough, that I’d only made it that far by accident. I believed everyone else recognised me for the failure that I was, and that they felt sorry for me, wondering when I would face the truth and accept my mediocrity. Self-doubt is a cruel beast which knows how best to wound and destroy.

When the chance of a big break finally presented itself, of course I completely blew it. The pressure and expectation were too much for me and I buckled under their weight. To be clear, these were stresses I was putting myself under, rather than coming from anybody else. I was so desperate to live up to the impossible goals I’d set for myself that it was inevitable I was going to fail. Looking back now, I wonder if perhaps my recital that night wasn’t actually as bad as I believed it was. But regardless of what really happened versus what my brain told me about the performance, I walked off that stage, put my violin down and left it to grow dusty in the corner of my flat, the silent reminder of my complete inadequacy.

I felt like I’d let everyone down, never mind myself. Trust me, I was at the very bottom of my list of those I cared about. But in some ways, I think I also felt relieved. Because all along I’d been waiting for this to happen, and now that it had, the worst was over. I had proved what I had always feared, that I wasn’t good enough, and now I could move on with my life and not have to put myself at risk anymore and experience the anxiety which came along with that. I settled into a safe existence, going out to work at a steady job in a profession I had no passion for, and returning home alone, my spirit gradually fading to become as uninspiring and bare as the walls of my flat. While the rest of the world carried on as normal, and my friends thrived and grew apart from me, my fear made me retreat into myself. I was horribly lonely, but I felt powerless to do anything about it, scared that opening up to others would make me even more vulnerable.

And then I met you. Or rather, an email addressed to you landed in my inbox and you know what happened from there. I couldn’t believe that someone as accomplished and interesting as you would want to carry on talking to someone like me, trapped in my ways, lonely and stuck. But receiving messages from you became the bright spark in my gloomy days, and I didn’t want them to stop, so I decided to embroider my existence, to make it seem like I was an equally successful, self-reliant and assured person who would be worth communicating with. In our emails I played out the fantasy of what I wished my life was. And as I wrote about it, somehow in real life I started to remember how to take risks, pushing myself out of that protective bubble so I could begin living again. When we spoke on the phone, you told me about your colleague who’d embellished his CV, and I felt terrible knowing I’d done much worse. You deserved better from me, and I promised myself that the lies would stop. I decided to make the tales I’d been spinning become true, and I went out and did it. I’m playing the violin again, and more importantly, I’m enjoying it. I started a ceilidh group, and I’ve discovered a confidence I didn’t know I was capable of. I’ve found my way back to myself, but I know that doesn’t excuse what came before.

I want you to know that our bond, and my affection for you were always real. And after we talked that first time, when the storm conspired in my favour so that you couldn’t see the real me but only hear what I chose to tell you, I started to hope for something more than friendship from you. You obviously felt that way even before our phone conversation because you sent me the postcard. But how could it be possible for anything to develop between us when that initial connection was founded on lies? My lies.

If you’re still reading this, then thank you, it’s more than you owe me. I have one more thing to ask of you. Please still follow through with your plan and come to meet me at Edinburgh Castle on Wednesday. I’m aware that this email hasn’t painted a very nice picture of me and I’m not sure I’ve done a very good job of explaining the situation properly. But I’d like to try. Please meet me. Let’s talk face-to-face, and see what happens then.

With love,

Amy x

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