The Forgotten Guide to Happiness

In this restless frame of mind, I wandered into the bedroom and opened Mark’s end of the wardrobe for the first time in months.

His clothes queued calmly on the brass rail in tasteful, ice-cream colours of cream and beige. His Paul Smith suits, shirts, moleskin trousers, khaki cargo pants, all radiating the faint smell of his aftershave. My throat tightened and my heart softened. Mark’s stuff. I’d loved those clothes when he’d loved them. I’d loved them when he loved me.

I took a shirt out of the wardrobe and held it up – it was creased around the tails, where he’d tucked it in. I sniffed it and then put it around my shoulders and tied the arms around my neck, as if he was hugging me from behind. The sleeves were cool and soft. I could smell his deodorant on them.

Angry at my self-indulgent sentimentality, I dashed into the kitchen, tearing a bin bag off a roll. I unhooked his clothes, setting the coat hangers jangling, and stuffed them into it like the rubbish that they were. I put my coat on, slung the bag over my shoulder and headed to the Oxfam Clothing Bank near the Forum in Kentish Town. Shifting the heavy bag to the other shoulder, I passed the school, still lit up. On the top floor, a man in a high-vis jacket was operating a floor-polisher with one hand. I slowed down by the rug shop – the Orientalist has a life-sized model of a camel outside. It’s been there for years and nobody has stolen it or vandalised it or even put a traffic cone on its head, which tells you something.

My destination, the recycling bins, were surrounded by interesting stuff – a folded buggy, a clothes airer, and some lengths of pine which, reconstituted, could be a bookcase. Refusing to be diverted I opened the lid and, with a grunt, hoisted the bin bag up to stuff it in and hesitated on the brink.

Just do it.

Listened to the thwump of its soft landing.

I flexed my shoulders and caught my breath. Then I looked inside the bin, suffering from sudden separation anxiety, but the bin bag was lost in the dark. Too late.

CHAPTER SIX

Plateau

I had reached what publishers call a plateau. I couldn’t write. My worries took up all the space. Time was going by and I still had no story.

Little did I know I was about to experience a turning point. Publishers like these – the more the better.

It was sunny, one of those autumn days when the sun is still warm on the skin but the shadows are chilly, and I thought the fresh air might stimulate my brain. I was walking on the Heath, distracted from my reflections by a parakeet screeching overhead like a haunted door in the kind of horror film that goes straight to DVD.

Parakeets are everywhere now, flying around with their long pointy tails and screaming hysterically, but really, it’s all show because they have little to scream about. Parakeets in London have no natural predators. Is it because they’re green and look too vegetarian for raptors? I walked past the boating pond. The ducks were fighting over a M&S prawn sandwich. You know that research that concluded ducks prefer kale? Not in London, they don’t. London birds prefer fast food. But only the gulls eat chilli.

My phone rang and it was Kitty, asking how the writing was coming along.

I watched the ducks moving their squabbles into the reeds. ‘I’m still at the planning stage,’ I said.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘keep at it. The reason I rang is, I got a call. Someone’s looking for you.’

‘Who?’

‘He didn’t give his name. He said he was your hero and you’d know who he was.’

I felt as if I’d been Tasered.

And then I felt a sudden rush of euphoria.

Thank you, God! ‘Did he leave a number?’

‘He did. Shall I text it to you?’

‘Yes please.’ I stood on the Heath flooded with happiness and laughing to myself. Mark was looking for me. I’d changed my phone number but he’d tracked me down. He cared! I stared at my phone and when the message pinged it was like having a winning lottery ticket in my hand.

I’d known this was going to happen!

It was preordained and I was generous in my happiness, gloating over my good fortune, smiling at people as they passed me. It felt like the glory of life had suddenly been revealed to me! I walked up Kite Hill and the grass was greener, the sky bluer, the passers-by more glamorous than they’d ever been before. I was seeing everything with new eyes.

I leant against a tree, feeling the cold bark through my jacket, filled with gratitude at my good fortune. I thought of Mark’s Trek bike fondly. What amazing good luck it was that I hadn’t sold it! I realised at that moment that I’d misunderstood my motivation. I hadn’t kept it because it was his; I’d kept it for him.

I dialled the number. The phone rang, once, twice; my heart was thundering and then:

CHAPTER SEVEN

Turning Point

‘Jack Buchanan.’

What the? Who?

What kind of trick was this?

My glittering bauble of happiness shattered into bits, irrevocably broken.

I squashed my bag against my face and screamed into it. It had all been a delusion. I was such an idiot. The worst thing about losing an imaginary future is that the lights go out and you stare into the blackness and you can’t see anything there. There’s no destination. It is a bleak and frightening feeling. Time heals, they say, without adding that it moves in a slow and arduous way, like sludge, and the only way to time-travel is to sleep.

‘Hello? Hello?’

‘It’s Lana Green,’ I said, unable to hide my frustration. ‘My agent said you were trying to get hold of me.’

‘Yes! I don’t know if you remember me – I met you at the Edinboro Castle. You’re a writer in need of a hero. I’m the dark-haired guy in the orange sweatshirt. I put that in Rush-Hour Crush. Don’t you read the Metro?’

‘What do you want?’ I asked, too disappointed to make an effort, watching dogs snuffle past my line of vision.

For some reason my lack of interest and gloomy tones didn’t put him off.

‘I emailed you on your author’s website but when you didn’t reply I called your agent because she was in the acknowledgements. Listen. I’ve been paragliding.’

‘So?’

‘So, if you’re still looking for a hero, I’m reapplying for the role.’

‘I don’t want—’

‘I’ve never done anything like that in my life. I’ve never felt so alive! Or,’ he added soberly, ‘so close to death. Look on YouTube if you don’t believe me.’

‘I do believe you.’ I just don’t care.

‘Well look at it anyway. By the way, just want to reassure you I haven’t suddenly grown boobs – that’s a water balloon down my shirt.’

It was like being licked by a labrador. ‘Jack, I’m not—’

‘Yes, I know, you’re going to say that going paragliding once is not enough.’

‘Actually that’s not what I was going to say.’

‘Good! Let’s pick a date. I’ll try my best to be aloof. What are you doing on Saturday?’

There is nothing worse than a person who is trying to engage you in conversation when you don’t feel like talking. Just at that moment I would have given anything for aloofness. It’s what gave Mark an air of superiority.

Women think that the one quality they want in a man is someone they can talk with. Bad mistake. Nowhere in the whole history of romantic fiction has a woman fallen in love with a talker. Talking is what girl friends are for. My advice is, always go for a man you fancy the pants off, it’s as simple as that.

However – what was there to lose? He might even buy me lunch and I’d get a free meal out of it.

‘All right,’ I sighed. ‘I’ll bring my notebook.’

‘Great! Twelve o’clock at the Edinboro Castle,’ he declared. Then he added in an undertone, ‘How did that sound?’

I smiled despite myself. ‘Decisive and masterful,’ I said.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Words, Words, Words

Some people never forget a face. I’m not one of them. I couldn’t remember what Jack Buchanan looked like, other than the general impression of a person who’d just got out of bed. But when I got off the bus in Delancey Street he was leaning against the white gatepost of the Edinboro Castle. He was wearing a lime-green jacket, his dark hair ruffling in the breeze.

‘Hey!’ he said, taking his hands out of his pockets.

‘Yeah, hey!’

‘You came!’ He grinned at me.

I was surprised that he thought I wouldn’t. It wasn’t as if I had anything better to do or any other invitations, but there’s nothing quite as satisfying as exceeding someone’s expectations.

‘How is your new book coming along?’ he asked.

‘Basically … not well. To get creative, you need to be ill or bored.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Andrew Motion drinks Lemsip when he’s writing. It’s to fool his mind into believing he’s got a cold.’ Just behind Jack I could see the menus pinned to the gateposts in gilt frames. I have a lot of faith in a menu in a gilt frame. ‘Are we going in?’

‘Well, what I thought was, we could walk to the Hub Sports Pavilion, have a coffee and then go to the boating lake and hire a boat. I’ll row.’

I fancied a glass of wine and something to eat in the pub, but I had to give him credit for coming up with a plan.

‘Or,’ he said, ‘we could hire a pedalo, but that doesn’t seem the kind of thing a hero would do, right?’

I thought it over as we turned the corner and walked past the flower shop through the scent of lilies. A train rumbled beneath us.

‘True. A hero would have a jet ski.’

He laughed. ‘Yes. I read your book.’

‘You did? I can’t believe you bought it!’

‘Well … I didn’t exactly buy it. My stepmother took it from the library. But it has given me a rough idea of what you’re looking for in a hero.’

The suspense was killing me. ‘So what did you think of it?’ I asked casually.

‘Time-consuming,’ he said. ‘Not the book – I mean, love in general.’

I looked at him curiously. ‘You’ve never been in love, have you?’

‘Me? No. All that uncertainty, does she love me or not, and then the misunderstandings and other complications … I thought you got the title perfectly: Love Crazy – I like the way you identified it as a kind of insanity that makes people behave completely out of character. I’m more of a logical thinker. I like things to be straightforward.’

‘You got all that from my book?’

‘Nah. Mostly from life. My parents broke up when I was young.’

‘Yeah? Mine too.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Eighteen. You?’

‘Eight. It killed my mother.’

Mine, too, I almost said but then I looked up and his face was expressionless, as if he didn’t want his thoughts to show, so I held back my comment in case he meant it literally.

Of course, when I asked him what he thought of the book, what I actually wanted to know was whether he’d enjoyed it. Writers are strangely needy that way. Last year I went to the Radio Four book club and sat next to a woman named Minna Howard, who was also a writer (it was research, in case we were ever asked to do it ourselves), and the highly acclaimed guest author David Mitchell responded to her praise with such warmth and delight that I was convinced he was her ex-lover. Turned out she’d never seen him before in her life. He was just deeply grateful for her kind words.

We crossed at the lights and stepped into bright sunlight at Gloucester Gate. The sky was a pale, frigid blue. Attached to the railings was a plaque showing St Pancras being attacked by pumas. We crossed at the stone grotto drinking fountains where Matilda the bronze milkmaid posed with her bucket and he asked: ‘So, what happened to Marco Ferrari?’

I blushed. Well this was uncomfortable. When I’d written Love Crazy I’d assumed Mark and I would be together forever so I’d never imagined this situation arising – going out with a guy who knew all about my past.

I’ve always been obsessed with telling the truth and, although I see it as a positive character trait, other people don’t necessarily see it as a good thing. But I’ve stuck with it because it’s become my way of rebelling. No one can argue with the truth.

The way I looked at it, this meant that I was also going to have to explain that Mark had dumped me and it was way too soon to disillusion him – I always prefer people to get disillusioned with me in their own good time.

However, the habit of a lifetime is hard to break.

‘We broke up,’ I said, and glanced up at him, blinking – in the sunlight his lime-green jacket was hard on the eyes.

‘I knew it!’ Jack said. ‘So, what happened? Did you get bored with all that adventure and the excitement?’

I liked the way he assumed I’d been the one to end it. ‘We’d always kept our independence; I guess it was an extreme version of that.’

He pressed the button on the crossing. ‘Independence to the point of separation?’ He gave me a look that was both incredulous and empathetic at the same time. ‘And now you’re looking for a new hero to write about.’

I wanted to say something witty and trivial in reply. We crossed the road and while I was working on it, Jack said, ‘So, with the pedalo you really need two to pedal, that’s why I thought we could get a rowing boat and I could row you by myself.’

‘Have you rowed before?’

‘No, but I watch the boat race every year and I think it’s all about the rhythm. Brisk and steady.’

I laughed. There was an endearing quality about him; something normal and nice, and trust me, they weren’t attributes that I ever thought I’d rate in a guy. We walked in step alongside the Zoological Society of London’s railings, keeping a respectable distance away from each other.

Ahead of us was the park. In the golden glow of the autumn sunshine, the grass was bright green, and the trees striped it with muted shadows. A glossy brown boxer dog bounded across our path chasing pigeons and two children raced their brightly coloured scooters towards us with speed and aplomb. Joggers overtook mothers pushing buggies and I thought about Jack’s comment that love was time-consuming. I was just going to ask him about it when his phone started to ring right at that moment.

He took it out of his jacket, stared at the number and frowned. For a moment I thought he wasn’t going to answer it. He let it ring a couple more times and then he sighed.

‘Sorry, Lana, I’d better take this.’

‘Go ahead.’

I did that polite thing of staring at the horse chestnut trees in the distance and pretending not to listen as he said, ‘Hello? Nancy. Slow down – what do you mean, a lot of men? John the police officer?’ He flicked a glance at me. ‘Okay, okay, put him on. Hello? Yes,’ he said irritably, ‘I can hear that she’s fine. No, I’m not worried.’

He turned his back to me as he looked across the park. ‘A sex offender? What’s he done? What do you mean you can’t tell me? Okay. Put Nancy back on. Hi, Nancy, it’s Jack again. Listen, I’m out with a friend at the moment. I’ll call you later.’ His face was set as he turned back to me and tucked his phone away.

Obviously I was intrigued by what I’d heard. I hadn’t been a journalist for five years without knowing a good story when I heard one.

‘Problem?’ I asked lightly.

‘My stepmother’s had a drink with a sex offender. That’s all they would tell me.’

‘How did she know he was a sex offender? And how did the police get involved?’

‘Don’t ask me.’ He shrugged. ‘This always happens,’ he said grimly. ‘Every time. It’s as if – anyway, forget it, let’s crack on. Do you mind if we miss out the coffee and go straight to the boating lake?’

He strode off up the Broad Walk without waiting for an answer and I hurried to catch up with him as he cut across the grass.

I grabbed his arm. ‘Look, Jack, we don’t have to do the boating thing. We can go another day, I don’t mind.’

‘No,’ he said stubbornly, ‘it’s fine. I’ve planned it.’ But he stopped walking, his eyes narrowed with indecision. He rubbed his hands over his face and his grey eyes met mine and held. ‘I’m sorry. You’re right. I should go.’

‘Yes.’ I was more disappointed than I’d expected. He was easy to be with and he made me smile, but I could see the relief in his face and I knew that for once I’d said the right thing. ‘I hope you get things sorted out.’

Behind the railings, through gaps in the foliage, I could see the penguins standing at the edge of their blue pool, bracing themselves to dive, wings held at the ready before taking the plunge. ‘Well, thanks. It’s been—’

‘You could come with me,’ he said.

‘Really?’ Our day out wasn’t over! ‘Okay.’ I didn’t need asking twice.

We turned around and headed the other way, towards the road. The crossing beeped and the cars stood at bay and the green man showed, and we walked over the canal together even though the fake date was over and we weren’t going boating any more.

We caught the C11 bus from Adelaide Road and stood in the wheelchair area, crushed together. He was taller than Mark and I was eye-level with his throat. It was a nice throat; smooth and strong.

‘Your stepmother – did she break up your parents’ marriage?’

‘Yes. She was pretty ruthless about it. And my father was weak.’

‘How did she get to be your responsibility?’

He gave a brief laugh. ‘After my mother died I went to live with her and my dad. Then he died, so now it’s just Nancy and me. She was in her late fifties when she and my dad met so she doesn’t have children of her own.’

I thought about the way he’d said that heartbreak had killed his mother. But despite all that, he was still looking out for Nancy. I tried to imagine being that dutiful towards Jo-Ann and failed miserably.

We got off at South End Green and walked up South Hill Park. The house was four-storey, red-bricked Victorian; it backed onto the other side of Parliament Hill Fields. I could probably see it from my window. A police car was parked up against the kerb. Jack rang the doorbell and a community police support officer answered the door; she had short dark hair and an attitude that indicated we shouldn’t mess with her.

‘We’ve taken a statement,’ she told Jack in the hallway.

To the side of the chandelier above her head loomed a huge oil painting of an old lady with a skinny black and white dog. They were looking into an empty cupboard with some dismay.

It seemed a strange choice of picture. I had built up an image of Nancy as an older woman clinging onto her youth with yoga, Pilates and Botox; I’d imagined she’d go for something more modern, an abstract.

‘She seems fine, but she’s vulnerable.’

‘She’s eighty,’ Jack said.

‘Yes, but she’s got no sense of self-preservation. She started a fight with a police officer who tried to take away her drink.’

I suppressed a smirk – but too late.

‘One day someone is going to hit her back,’ the CPSO warned me.

‘You don’t know that,’ Jack said. ‘You’re just seeing the worst-case scenario.’

‘Trust me, this came close to being that scenario.’

‘I still don’t understand what happened. What’s the big deal?’ Jack asked.

‘I can’t say.’

‘Well now, you can’t tell me and she can’t tell me. Fuh … lipping …’

‘Okay, the guy’s a gerontophile. Rules of his licence – don’t engage with old ladies AT ALL. But they were in a pub having a drink, which is engaging, so we arrested him.’

In the background a lavatory flushed, and then a belligerent voice called out: ‘Who’s there? What are you all doing, conspiring in my hall?’

Jack’s stepmother hurried towards us, dressed in a burst of colour – a yolk-yellow cardigan and a yellow, grey and black skirt.

To my astonishment I recognised her immediately. She was Nancy Ellis Hall, the novelist. My mother and I had gone to listen to her at the Hay Festival when she was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and she had signed a book for us with the inscription ‘Be what you are’; which pleased my mother enormously, although she said it didn’t apply to me.

I could have sworn Jack had just said his stepmother ‘wrote a bit’.

I was suddenly self-conscious standing in the hallway at such an awkward moment, with a police officer and some kind of sex scandal going on – I still wasn’t sure how the police had come into it.

‘You! Who are you?’ she asked me crossly, pointing her finger inches from my face.

‘Lana Green,’ I said, thinking she might recognise the name as she’d taken my book out of the library. I felt a shiver of intense happiness. Nancy Ellis Hall had read my book!

‘What have you come as?’

I didn’t understand the question, but I had a stab at it anyway. ‘A visitor.’

‘Oh. In that case, come on in and sit in the parlour, said the spider to the fly. Not you,’ she said to Jack.

‘Nancy, it’s me.’

‘Oh! Well you’d better watch yourself because they will be after you if you talk to me. I met a nice young man today, and these policemen sprang out of nowhere while we were having a drink and took him away.’

‘VUL-NER-ABLE,’ the CPSO mouthed from behind her.

‘And she’ – Nancy turned and pointed at the officer – ‘was jealous because he was taking an interest in me.’

‘I was not jealous. That man is a known offender,’ the officer said tightly.

‘Don’t be ridiculous! He didn’t offend me in the slightest. And that constable tried to take my glass of wine before I’d finished it.’ She turned to me crossly. ‘What have you got to say about that?’

‘Very bad-mannered of him,’ I said.

‘Exactly. They think they know better, but I’ve been – what have I been?’ she asked Jack.

‘A novelist and a feminist,’ Jack said.

‘Exactly.’ Her mood lifted. ‘I’m awfully good at it, you know,’ she said happily, and as she smiled I noticed the gaps in her teeth.

The officer’s phone rang. ‘I’ll take this outside,’ she said. ‘John!’

The police officer appeared from another room. He seemed to know Jack. He said he’d taken a statement from Mrs Ellis Hall and he raised his eyebrows meaningfully – although exactly what it meant I wasn’t sure – and that they would be in touch.

‘So, this guy you arrested, what’s happening with him now?’ Jack asked.

‘Sorry,’ John replied. ‘I can’t tell you anything at this point.’ He was interrupted by Nancy Ellis Hall trying to shoo him out of the door with sweeping movements.

‘Off you go! Off you go!’

Once the officers had left, shutting the door firmly behind them, she turned back to look at us with intense curiosity. ‘Are you two sweethearts?’

Jack glanced at me. ‘Potentially,’ he replied.

Unexpectedly, I blushed. Potentially? It’s always nice to get a compliment.

‘In that case, I’m so glad you’ve dropped by,’ she said graciously. ‘I do feel I add to the happiness of the occasion.’

While Jack made the tea, Nancy Ellis Hall took me into her parlour. It was a writer’s paradise.

The room was large and high-ceilinged, with books everywhere, decorated in a dusty pink with polished mahogany furniture bearing silver-framed photographs. My heart leapt to see her posing with Beryl Bainbridge in a cloud of cigarette smoke and sitting in a field at Hay, sandwiched between an elderly Molly Keane and Germaine Greer. She had a leather-bound, gold-tooled visitors’ book. And there was a colour photograph in an oval frame of her cheek to cheek with a young, dark-haired man who looked familiar but whose name I didn’t know.

‘Who’s this?’ I asked her, pointing to it.

‘Yes …’ She picked it up and looked at it closely. ‘Yes, now I’ll tell you exactly who it is. This is a lonely young man that I met in a bookshop. The police officers came in, hundreds of them, and pounced on him, and they tried to take my wine from me.’ She put the frame back on the table and sat in the armchair. ‘Ooh!’ she said, admiring her own yellow-patterned skirt as though she was seeing it for the first time.