Love Your Life(100)

Winter had a few bone-chillingly cold days, to be fair. And some wet spells. Rain clattered down outside while I wrapped myself in blankets and lived in my sheepskin boots and huddled by the fire every night. But it was still magical. And it was worth it. It’s all been worth it for this moment.

The End, I type carefully, and feel a knot of tension unravel deep within me. I rub my eyes and lean back in my chair, feeling almost numb. Eighty-four thousand words. Six months. Many, many hours. But I’ve done it. I’ve finished a first draft. A rough, scrappy, patchy first draft…but still.

“Finished, Harold!” I say, and he gives a celebratory bark.

I look around the room—the monk’s cell, to be literal—that’s been home ever since I arrived here, back in October. Farida was waiting at the monastery door to welcome me with a tight hug and encouraging words. Since then, she’s kept me constantly nourished with food and warmth and inspiration, not to mention a few bracing pep talks whenever I’ve lost motivation.

    I’m not the only participant to have come back for what Farida calls an “extended self-guided writing retreat.” There was a guy here before Christmas, working on an updated edition of his anthropology textbook, in a room across the courtyard. But we didn’t chat. Or eat together. Or even communicate, really. We both just got on with it.

I’ve never felt so immersed in anything in my life. I’ve spent seven days a week thinking, writing, walking, and just staring up at the sky. The sky can take a lot of staring at, I’ve discovered. I’m the first guest to have spent Christmas at the monastery, and I think my request to stay here took Farida by surprise.

“Don’t you have…?” she began delicately, but I shook my head.

“I’ve got no family, really. And, yes, my friends would love to see me, but I think they’d love it even more if I stayed here, kept going, and achieved what I want to achieve.” At which she clasped my hand and said I’d be very welcome, and it would be a quiet Christmas but a rewarding one.

It was after Nell got out of hospital and was safely home that I finally tackled the question burning in my soul. She was still on the fragile side and quite stroppy about needing lots of rest, but none of us minded her irascible outbursts. We were just so relieved that her attack had been diagnosed not as a potentially fatal cardiac arrest (OK, maybe that was just my fear) but as some sort of heart inflammation with a lengthy name and treatment plan.

    It had been a long seven days, during which time I’d been processing not just the Nell situation but the whole Matt situation. The whole life-feeling-like-it-was-over situation. The whole big-black-hole-of-despair situation. To be fair, a hospital is a good place to be if all you can do is keep dissolving into tears. People leave you alone or steer you gently to a chair.

(Except that hospital chaplain who kindly started chatting, got the wrong end of the stick, thought I was grieving for a dead husband called Matt, and started praying for his soul. It was all very awkward, and thank God for Maud coming along at the right time and asking if he knew anyone in the Vatican, because she had a tiny little favor she wanted to ask.)

So anyway. Nell was back home and one night it was my turn to stay over. We were watching TV on the sofa with Harold when I drew a deep breath and said, “Nell. D’you think I’m flaky?”

“Flaky? No,” said Nell at once, in forthright tones. “You’re the most reliable friend in the world.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. D’you think I’m flaky about my career? Or, like, all my plans?”

This time there was silence as Nell stroked Harold’s ears and considered.

“I mean, you’re scatty,” she said at last. “You’re capricious. Changeable. But that’s why we love you. You always have a new idea, and you’re so passionate about them all.”

    “But I never see them through,” I said, and Nell propped herself up on her elbow to stare at me.

“What is this? Ava, don’t beat yourself up! It’s who you are, sweetie. It’s lovely! It’s you!”

“But that’s not who I want to be,” I said, with a sudden fierceness that surprised even me. “I want to finish something, Nell. Really finish it. I started a novel, I went to Italy, I had a plan. But I got distracted. Like I always do.”

Then there was another silence, because we both knew what had distracted me in Italy, and we weren’t going there.

“I want to finish something,” I repeated, staring ahead, my jaw set. “I want to get something done. For once.”

“Right,” said Nell slowly. “Well, good for you. How are you going to do that?”

“Don’t know yet.”

But already the idea was taking shape in my mind.

The next night, after I’d eaten supper, I sat at my kitchen table. I did some sums. I looked up pet passports. And I thought. I thought for about three hours, till my legs ached and my shoulders had frozen and my chamomile tea had gone cold and Harold was whining to go out. But by then I knew. As I walked him along the chilly midnight street, I was smiling, even exhilarated, because I had a plan. Not a little plan: a huge, ambitious, drastic, exciting plan.

And once I told the others about it, they embraced it even more enthusiastically than I had. I mean, you’d have thought it was Maud’s idea in the first place, from the way she reacted.