The Shadow House(97)

Shortly after that, I listened to a podcast about screen addiction, and it made me want to throw away all our devices. I heard about dark-web mystery boxes, a real-life trend from 2017, and it totally freaked me out. I read about a Melbourne family whose lives were shattered when police raided their home one day and arrested their twenty-three-year-old son, who, it transpired, had spent four years in his bedroom building child exploitation websites. His parents just thought he’d been gaming. Okay, yep, I said to myself. That’s much, much worse.

And then, in February of 2020, Covid reared its ugly head and gave ‘worse’ a whole new meaning. I won’t describe it for you; you were there. It was awful. Everyone was scared. Life as we knew it was basically cancelled. Erase, and start again.

Locked down in my house, I tried to be productive. What a great opportunity, I thought, assuming I’d have plenty of time on my hands to write. But, in addition to rising case numbers, the news was full of climate change and shocking acts of racism. Then my family and I lost someone very dear to us, and I couldn’t get back to the UK to be with them. Between fear of the future, grief, isolation and homeschooling, time seemed to bend and shrink. The kids climbed the walls. The same day repeated itself over and over. And when I did get time to write, the words felt … wrong. I’d managed to turn my idea into a first draft, but for some reason it wasn’t working and I couldn’t fix it, no matter how hard I tried. Deadlines loomed, and panic set in.

But, amid all the bad stuff, there was also some good. Lots of people read my first book, and many of them wrote to me to tell me how much they liked it. My sister announced she was pregnant. Despite the painful separation from my family in England, we found ways of staying connected. My kids and husband made me feel very loved, and we all survived both homeschooling and the sudden increase of screen use. We bought a fire pit, swam in the ocean and discovered new bushwalks. My daughter started sleeping through the night. My sister had her baby. My mind was blown by good books, my heart was warmed by the kindness of friends – and, by some happy accident, I discovered an ecovillage down the road: a joyful community of people trying to find new ways to live.

Meanwhile, I was still wrestling with that crappy first draft. One day, after an exceptionally maddening few hours at my desk, I went outside. I wanted to scream – I can’t make it WORK, it’s IMPOSSIBLE, this is a NIGHTMARE – but, fearing judgement from the neighbours, I stomped to the end of the garden instead. I set up a chair under the orange tree, sat down and looked up at the branches. Through tears of frustration, I watched the leaves dance in the wind and tried to breathe. The sun winked at me from above, and down near my foot a bird pecked at the ground. My muscles began to relax. And, as they did, I realised that it was a nightmare. The worst had happened, on both a large and a small scale. A pandemic had swallowed the world; my manuscript did not work. BUT. I was living through it. The sun was still shining, the trees were still growing. Good things were still occurring all around me.

And then something clicked. A new story. New characters. New hope. They seemed to fall on me like rain.

Obviously, my problems were not all magically solved in that one moment, but things did get a lot better from then on. I ran inside, back to my manuscript, and I printed it out. I cut it up, laid the scenes on the floor and moved them around like a jigsaw puzzle. I kept a few, but threw most out. I realised that, in order to move forward, I had to let go of what I thought I knew and allow myself to see things differently. Erase, and start again.

The story I eventually came up with, the story you’ve just finished reading, is of course about fear. How could it not be? But it’s also about looking up. Letting go. It’s about hope. Because, if 2020 and this book have taught me anything, it’s that things can and do get worse, but they also get better – sometimes at the exact same time. (Case in point: as I write these words in July 2021, Greater Sydney is back in lockdown, back to homeschooling. But my novel is now finished, and this morning I saw dolphins at the beach. So there you go.)

Things will get better.

We can move on.

And things that seem impossible are very often not.

If you’re a bit of a worrier like me, you might find those things difficult to remember. I know I will. But hey – we can try.

And, in the meantime, we always have books.





ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS


My deepest love and gratitude to the following people, the Dream Team, without whose help, support, knowledge and expertise I would be lost. Working with you all is an absolute pleasure and one of the greatest honours of my life. Thank you to: Tara Wynne and Hillary Jacobson, my guardian-angel agents, friends and first readers. What would I do without you? No, don’t answer that, it doesn’t bear thinking about.

All the wonderful folk at Curtis Brown Australia and ICM Partners.

Martin Hughes: publisher, editor, anchor. Steadiest of hands and safest of nets. Thank you for raising me up and never, ever letting me fall.

Keiran, Ruby, Laura, Grace, Rosie, Lauren, Kevin and the whole Affirm Press team: you’re all dead set legends. I adore you.

Catherine Richards, for whose endless encouragement and razor-sharp editing skills I am forever grateful. Thank you for believing in me.

Nettie, Joe, Steve and the wider team at Minotaur, who always go the extra mile.

My insanely gifted copyeditor, Nikki Lusk. (Authors, if you ever get the chance to work with this woman, jump at it. She is incredible.) Katie Greenstreet at C+W. Eve Hall at Hodder and Stoughton.