Page 31 of We All Live Here
“Let’s not look a gift horse, darling. By the time it’s published you probably will be. And they areagogfor tales of sexy cougars having fun now that they’ve shed their boring partners. I said yours was absolutely chock-full of romantic adventures, and after the success ofThe Rebuildthey’re considering putting in a pre-empt.”
Lila shifts in her brightly colored chair. “Even though they haven’t seen anything?”
“You’re aSunday Timesbestseller, darling. They know you can write. And you’re about to give them what they want. Now obviously they’re going to want to see the first three chapters. How far have you got?”
Lila pulls a thoughtful face, as if she’s done so much she’s having trouble with exact recall. “Um…not quite three chapters.”
“Well, I suggest you finish chapter three as fast as possible. It’s a sizzling topic right now, and we want to strike while the iron’s hot. So if you could get something to me by the end of the week that would be amazing. We could have a deal by halfway through October.”
“How much are we talking?” says Lila.
“Oh, definitely six figures,” says Anoushka.
“Six figures?”
Anoushka smiles warmly. “Like I said, it’s what everyone’s looking for. We might even be able to get you a US deal. Actually, if you could put a little bit in about how you fit your assignations around looking after elderly parents that would be the icing on the cake. There are so many women having to look after both ends of the family these days. And you’ll be a shining example of having it all.” She holds up a hand.“Stairlifts, School Runs, and Sexytimes: How I Became a Midlife Minx. I can see it now. If we’re lucky we’ll get it serialized in theMail. They pay terribly well for those pieces.”
“I’m not quite a midlife—”
“You might have to wear one of those terrible cobalt blue dresses that they always make women wear, and some horrible wedgie sandals, but it’s a small price to pay.”
“Right,” says Lila, who is thinking about the last emergency-plumber bill. “Six figures.”
“Men like your very naughty Dan will be screaming that they ever let their wives go. You’ll be doing a public service. Wonderful! Shall we say Friday?” Anoushka leans forward conspiratorially. “Now tell me honestly. Does my office smell a bit vomity? Gracie hoicked up her breakfast again this morning. Didn’t even make the bin this time. I swear we’ll have to move offices at this rate.”
•••
Six figures. Sixfigures would get her out of trouble. It would make Dan’s reduction in their money less catastrophic, pay to get the bathrooms redone, give her a financial cushion, even if it did come in installments. Six figures would mean she was still in the big-time. Lila thinks about six figures the whole way back to the house, and is so lost in allocating her imaginary cash that she almost walks into Jensen, who is standing in the passageway that runs from the front garden to the rear with a wheelbarrow full of shrub clippings, their tendrils waving gently over the metal edges like the arms of an octopus. He stops when he sees her, shielding his eyes from the sun. He has the messed-up sandy hair of a schoolboy and a fine crescent of soil is lodged beneath each of his nails.
“Bill has gone to his. He said I’d be fine starting work anyway. Hope that’s okay.”
“That’s fine,” she says. She tries to make it sound friendlier than she feels. She is still not sure how she feels about a memorial garden, or that Bill is now making decisions about her house.
“Oh, and we have a bit of a situation in your shed.”
“What?”
He starts to pull a face, the kind of face tradesmen pull when they’re about to cost you a large amount of money. The shed will need pulling down, and a more expensive one will be recommended. The concrete apron is cracked and dangerous and will need replacing. It is housing a large family of rats that will need an expensive exterminator. Lila makes a split-second decision. Not right now, not when the prospect of financial salvation has just been dangled in front of her. Not now.
“I don’t want to know.”
Jensen straightens a little. “You don’t want to know?”
“No,” she says briskly. She has had two calm days and a good meeting. She, more than anyone, knows that you have to protect the small wins when they come. “Thanks, though.”
As Jensen stares at her, she lets herself into her house.
Oh, the absolute bliss of a silent house. Lila stands in the hallway for a minute, absorbing the complete stillness in the air, only disturbed by the gentle wag of Truant’s tail as he snakes his way delightedly to meet her. She crouches, rubbing his ears, feeling suddenly, unexpectedly happy. There is nobody in her house, and she has four hours in which to write the chapters that will launch the next stage of her life. Everything is doable.
Fifteen minutes later she is sitting at her desk, mulling over her first chapter. Should she write aboutThe Rebuild? Should she acknowledge everything that has happened to her? Lila knows too well that women’s disastrous love lives are catnip to readers. Nobody wants to read about a woman having it all: it just makes them feel they didn’t try hard enough. They want to read about how it’s impossible, about heartbreak andromantic catastrophe, to goggle at it as they sail past en route to happier destinations. Success is annoying. A life of pratfalls and disasters is…relatable.
Two years ago, she begins,I wrote a book about what I thought was my happy marriage. Two weeks after that book was published my husband left me.
She stares at the words, her fingers pausing on the keys. If she does this, she thinks, Dan will be very angry. He will hate her for dragging his personal life into the public sphere. The girls may be angry too. It is so personal, so close to the bone. She cannot write about her marriage without making reference to the children. But what else do I have? She remembers a quote she had once read on the internet:If you didn’t want me to write shit about you, you should have been nicer to me.She takes a breath.
There is not much that is more humiliating than inviting the world into your marriage to teach them the lessons you’ve learned about maintaining happiness, only to discover that everything you had put out there was a lie.
Suddenly the words are flowing, surging into her head and out through her fingertips in a relentless stream, unstoppable, alive. She picks and discards metaphors, writes dry, humorous references to her own hubris. She disappears into a world occupied only by her screen and her keyboard, lost in time.Thisis what she needed to write: a catharsis. Words have always been how she processes the world and now she realizes she needs them to process this. She writes a thousand, two thousand, three thousand words. She stops briefly to make a mug of tea and lets it go cold on her desk, lost in her own meditations. By the time she stands up again she has written 3,758 words and has her first chapter.
