Page 37 of Happily Never After
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‘Now, I realise that can’t be true,’ Darren continued in his ominously saccharine tone. ‘I mean, where would you go? Who would even want you? But you’ve been keeping secrets from me, Claire, and that’s a problem. You know how I feel about secrets.’
‘Let me make your tea,’ she said, turning back to the kettle as it clicked off. Her mind was such a maelstrom, working feverishly to come up with a plausible lie, that she barely registered the telltale scrape of his chair on the kitchen floor as he got up. Before she knew what was happening, he was on her, grabbing a fistful of her hair and yanking her head back so hard it felt like her neck would snap.
‘What were you planning –argh,fuck!’
He released her as quickly as he’d seized her, and she was momentarily confused until she saw the kettle in her hand. She’d just gripped the handle when he’d attacked, and she’d obviously brought her arm up in a protective reflex, hitting him in the head with it and spraying him with boiling water in the process.
‘I can’t see! What have you done?’ he bellowed, clutching at his face as he staggered in the direction of the sink, reaching blindly for the tap.
What happened next was a blur. As Darren bent over the sink, Claire felt almost detached from her arm as it brought the kettle down hard on his head. She was oblivious to the pain of the water scalding her hand and wrist as she dropped the kettle in the sink and reached towards the knife block. She felt as if she were an observer, even though it was clearly her hand plunging the knife into his neck. He tried to fight her off, but she seemed to have been imbued with almost superhuman strength as she stabbed him again and again, only stopping when the knife was so slick with his blood that she was unable to grip it properly.
It seemed like an age before Darren’s lifeless body slumped to the floor, even though it couldn’t have been more than a minute or two. All Claire could hear was her ragged breathing. Dropping the knife, she sank down until she was curled up in a kind of squatting foetal position as her gulps of air turned into full-on sobs.
What the hell had she just done?
‘Lunch, everyone!’ Cara’s voice calls across the garden as I try to picture the scene in my head. This is one of those tricky moments where I need to get the descriptions completely accurate, because there’s nothing readers like more than pointing out an inconsistency to prove how clever they are, and they can be forensic in their quest to find something wrong. Everything matters, from the relative height of attacker and victim, to whether the attacker is left or right-handed. I once received a lengthy diatribe on Larry’s Instagram page from a reader who explained in huge detail how the murder as I’d described it was physically impossible.
Finn is waiting for me on his bench and gets to his feet as I approach.
‘I owe you an apology,’ he says as he falls into step next to me.
‘Really? Why?’
‘I’ve been a terrible conversationalist. I’ve only talked about me so far, so I want to put that right over lunch. Why crime?’
I consider the question for a moment. ‘I think it’s important to write in a genre that you’re passionate about,’ I tell him. ‘The very first crime novel I read wasThe Surgeonby Tess Gerritsen, and it gripped me from the start. I binge read all of hers before moving on to Stephen King, Patricia Cornwell – you get the picture. It never even occurred to me that I’d write anything else.’
‘It’s hard though, isn’t it? Lots of research.’
‘Yes, but that’s one of the things I love, getting deep into the detail.’
‘How do you research something like that?’
‘Well, as I said, the first part is reading lots of other books in the same genre. But I’ve also got books on human anatomy, police procedure, and it’s amazing what you can find online.’
‘Good point. I’m surprised your browsing history hasn’t fired up a red flag somewhere. Tell me about your book.’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘What’s happening, where’s it going, all that stuff.’
I smile. ‘You might steal my idea and sell it to a publisher.’
‘Unlikely. You’ve got insurance because I already told you about my idea for the show. Let’s agree to stay in our own swim lanes and I’m sure we’ll be fine.’
‘OK, so I’m about halfway through and my main character, Claire, has just killed her coercively controlling and abusive boyfriend, Darren,’ I tell him.
‘How?’
‘She stabbed him in the neck with a kitchen knife.’
‘Nice. Hang on, though. Does the reader know it’s her who killed him?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought the whole point of these types of books was that you didn’t know who the killer was until the last moment. Haven’t you kind of given that away?’
