One Small Mistake(17)

‘Will that make you happy?’ he asks. ‘Or would you be giving up writing and going back to marketing to make other people happy?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Can you do both – can you write and work in marketing?’

‘Not really. My career was all-consuming. There just aren’t enough hours in the day. Besides, that job was slowly killing me.’ I glance at the green vase on my chest of drawers. ‘I don’t want to die having never done something I love. And being an author is one of the very few careers where you’re essentially leaving a part of yourself behind even after you’ve gone.’

‘Then you need to pick. Life is too—’

‘Short,’ I finish for him. ‘Yeah, I know, life is too short to be unhappy.’

He smiles. ‘Actually, I was going to say life is too long to be unhappy.’

‘Too long?’

‘Yeah, if someone told me I had to be unhappy for a year and then it would all be over, I could handle that. But if someone told me I had to be unhappy for the next fifty years, I’d have to make a change.’

‘Only you would see it that way.’ Sometimes I think his mind operates on a different plane to the rest of us mere mortals.

‘Am I wrong?’

I smile. ‘No.’

‘Okay, so choose to do what makes you happy. Not anyone else.’

‘I love writing but the rejections are so soul-crushing. You don’t get it. You’ve never wanted something so much it’s a physical need.’

For a beat, he doesn’t answer. But he leans into me, lowering his head so I’m caught in the blue of his eyes. ‘Haven’t I?’

And with those words, and the intensity in which his gaze is fixed unwaveringly on me, the air crackles. I feel myself tilting my head up, my mouth only a breath from his. Then Seefer meows loudly and jumps from the bed. I turn away from Jack to watch her pad towards the door. She isn’t keen on Jack and doesn’t stick around long when he’s here.

When I lift my gaze to his, that unnameable electricity is dispelled. The moment, whatever it was, is gone.

‘Anyway,’ I say, trying to keep my voice light. ‘You have everything you want. You wanted to own your own house before you were thirty, and you did. You wanted to be an architect, and now you are. You want sex, you stroll into a bar.’

He raises an eyebrow. ‘Thinking about me having sex, Fray?’

I blush like a schoolgirl. ‘No. Don’t be an idiot. I mean, if you let a girl stay long enough to have a coffee in the morning, you might have something meaningful.’

‘If that’s what I wanted, yeah, probably.’ He shrugs, then takes a second croissant from the paper bag. ‘You’re taking these rejections so personally – it’s a rejection of the idea, not of your writing. Not of you.’

‘But it feels like a rejection of me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because a manuscript is a piece of you. It’s every experience you’ve ever had that makes your voice yours.’

‘You need to think about why you’re doing it. About why you started writing in the first place. If it still means something to you then you shouldn’t give up yet. If it doesn’t then you have your answer.’

And even though it isn’t a question, he waits patiently for me to offer an answer. ‘But it’s stupid.’

‘It won’t be. Come on, Elodie.’ He nudges my leg with his elbow. ‘Why do you write?’

I think of Noah and glance at the vase again. Since he died, the only thing that’s made me feel even a flicker of happiness is writing, and maybe if an editor takes my manuscript and turns it into a book with binding and pages and that paperback smell, my happiness will no longer be a flicker from one of those cheap flimsy lighters, but a roaring bonfire instead. Chasing this dream makes me feel close to Noah. But it isn’t wise to admit this to Jack.

‘My dad,’ I say. ‘I mean, he’s not the easiest guy to talk to. He doesn’t say much. But he used to laugh a lot with Ada. They were both into trains. He used to take her to steam fairs and showcases.’

‘Trains? Ada was into trains?’

I nod. ‘Oh yeah. I tried to be interested too but I think he knew it wasn’t genuine. Then, in primary school, I won my first writing competition. It was a story about a cherry tree that devoured small children. I told my parents, but they didn’t seem that interested so I just left it on the dining table. But when I came down in the morning, the margin of my story was littered with handwritten notes.’

‘Your dad?’

‘Yeah. There was something really special about him reading what I’d written. He’d taken out his dusty work pen and jotted down praise and musings, and that was it, I’d found something for us to bond over, to connect – something that was just ours. Every week after that, I’d write a story, leave it on the dining table and, as if by magic, the next morning Dad had written all over it.’

I see a flash of something in his eyes, but he looks away quickly and I worry I’ve upset him. Fathers are a touchy subject. Despite Kathryn trying to nurture a good relationship between Jack and Jeffrey, organising for the two of them to spend quality time together at Wisteria every Easter, their relationship remained hostile right up until the day he killed himself. Jeffrey often hit Jack, and Jack acted out in return. All for his father’s attention. Hoping it wouldn’t lead to the violent end it always did, but to a conversation, a connection. Jack was eighteen when we found Jeffrey’s body, and although it was an awful time, Jack pulled himself together, turned over a new leaf. It’s not easy to admit, but with his dad gone, Jack was a better person.