I reach for the mouse, hovering it over the GO LIVE button.
I click.
My smile stretches across my face. I can hear it in my voice as I say, ‘Hello, everyone. I’m Elle Fielding, and I’m live today from my writing room here in Cornwall. Thanks so much for joining me. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m the author of Wild Fear, a psychological thriller that was published last year.
‘Over the coming weeks I’m planning on chatting about my writing journey, sharing tips of what I’ve learned so far, and answering any of your questions.
‘Right, I suppose a good place to start would be with today’s writing tip. It’s something simple that we can all do: get a notebook. Keep it with you at all times. Our short-term memory retains information for three minutes, so unless it’s written down, ideas can be lost. This is my current one,’ I say, holding up a plain black notebook. ‘I keep it in my handbag, or by my bed at night, or anywhere I go. It reminds me that I’m always a writer, wherever I am, whatever I’m doing.’
I’m careful not to open it.
Not to show what is inside.
I take a breath. ‘Okay, so now it’s over to you and your questions.’ I peer at the left-hand side of the screen, where viewers are typing them in real-time. ‘I’ll do my best to answer as many as I can. The first one is from Cheryl Down. She asks, Your debut novel was an international bestseller. Does that put pressure on you for your second novel?’
I’m aware that Jane and her team will be watching. ‘Yes, there is some pressure – but, the good thing is that I began my second novel before Wild Fear was released, so I didn’t have any expectation at that point. I must admit, I’m a little behind in delivering – there was a house move and a big book tour – but things are finally settling, so I’m planning on getting my head down now.’
Tick.
‘Next up, Adam Grant asks, What did you do before you became an author?’ I smile. ‘What didn’t I do? I waited tables, served coffees, worked on a reception desk, manned a nightclub cloakroom, cleaned offices. I travelled as much as I could afford. I lived in New Zealand for a while, and later, Canada. I pretty much spent my twenties bouncing from one thing to the next trying to work out what I wanted to do.’
Who I wanted to be.
‘And then I found it: writing. It just clicked. I felt stupid for not recognising it earlier. The moment I started to write, I fell in love with it. I didn’t know if I was any good at it, or whether I could ever make my living from it. All I knew was that I loved it.’
That is the truth.
I answer half a dozen more questions, then take a sip of water and glance at the clock.
‘Time for just two more questions today. Amy Werden asks, Do you have any writing rituals? PS You have the perfect life!’
‘Perfect life? I’m obviously using too many filters! With regards to writing rituals, something that is important to me is writing down my early ideas by hand. There is something about the germ of an idea, when it feels too precious, too delicate to be tapped into a computer screen and locked there. I like the curve of words on the page, a lack of uniformity, the scratch of a pencil on cream paper. The ideas can flow and find their rhythm.’
If Fiona is watching this, she’ll be rolling her eyes.
‘The final question is from Booklover101.’ I immediately recognise the username. The accompanying profile picture is of a bike, its wicker basket filled with books. Booklover101 has followed me from the very beginning, commenting on almost every post I write. She tweets me, sends me direct messages, has sent me handwritten cards via my publishers.
‘As your no.1 fan,’ I read now, ‘I’m interested to know, does an author need to have a dark mind to write dark books?’
I should have skipped it – chosen a different question.
I keep my face set in a smile.
‘What you need,’ I say slowly, giving myself a moment to think, to get it right, ‘is an enquiring mind. To be able to look at any situation and see the possibility for shadows. To always ask, What if?’
I leave it there. I thank everyone again for tuning in and remind them that I’ll be live again next week.
My face disappears from the screen.
I sit for a moment, taking several deep, slow breaths. Almost pitch-perfect, I think. Jane will be pleased.
Then I push to my feet, moving away from the desk, and I open the window wider. Hooking a finger under the neckline of my top, I shake it to let air circulate to my flushed skin.
I stand there, gaze mapping the waves, waiting for my heartbeat to settle.
2003
Sitting in the passenger seat of her mother’s old Renault, Elle turned the silver star stud through the cartilage at the top of her ear. Around and around she twisted it, like a rosary, as she ran through each of her worries. Would her new housemates like her? Would she be homesick? Had she chosen the right course? Was her outfit okay?
She didn’t know then, as she wound down the window, pushing her face into the salty, marshy breeze as they crossed the Severn Bridge, that none of those questions were the ones she needed to ask.
The event that would change everything was marked out for later. For a time when she was settled and happy, her life ready to bloom.
That’s when it would blindside her.
Elle arrived first. They pulled up on the pavement, leaving the hazard lights blinking as they trooped back and forth with Elle’s belongings: a duvet spilling from a torn bin liner, a cardboard box heavy with food raided from the cupboards at home, a lava lamp wrapped in a towel, a duffle bag bulging with clothes, two posters rolled into tubes that had bent in the car.
She didn’t mind the dreary pebbledash student house that backed onto a trainline, or the stretch of damp on the wall behind her bed. She looked at her student house and saw freedom.
Her mother helped her tack up posters of Bob Marley and Lenny Kravitz, and postcards from Fiona who was interning at a news desk in Santiago.
‘You’re going to be so happy here,’ her mother said, holding Elle’s face in her hands. ‘I’m so proud of you. I hope I tell you that often enough.’
Elle could sense the emotion brooked in her mother. It was the first time in two decades that her mother would be returning to an empty flat.
‘You know, Mum, you could do this, too. Study. Make more time to write. You could get a student loan …’
Her mother had waved a hand through the air. ‘This is your time. You enjoy every moment of it.’
And Elle would do.
Until she met him.
4
Elle
In the moon-streaked dark of one a.m., I twist onto my side, pulling the covers under my chin.
When I was a girl, if I couldn’t sleep, I’d slip into my mother’s bed and ask her to tell me a story. She’d pluck ripe characters from the branches of her imagination and I’d lie on my back, eyes open, a forest of snow leopards or daisy fairies dancing across our ceiling.
It’s been four years since she died, yet some nights, it’s still hard to believe that she’s gone.
In those awful first weeks after her death, when Fiona and I were both reeling, I’d read everything I could about sepsis. I’d pick up the phone, outraged to tell Fiona: Did you know, eight million people worldwide die every year from sepsis? How, how have we not heard of it? How can our mother no longer be alive because of something that began with a urinary tract infection?
I flick on the light, too agitated to sleep. From my bedside drawer, I pull out my copy of Wild Fear, and turn to the front.
I read the dedication.
For my mother.
I run a fingertip beneath those words.
Your mum would’ve been so proud, a reader once said at a book signing.
They were wrong.
*
Wind funnels along the side of the house as I step from the back door into the morning’s cold bite. Beneath bare soles, the paving stones are ice. Tightening the cord of my dressing gown, I feel the glossy kiss of my swimsuit beneath.
At the end of the pathway, private steps carve into the rock face, which I share with Frank and Enid’s property. I concentrate on each footstep, avoiding the puddles of seawater pooling in grooves, the rock edges furred with seaweed.
Last night I only managed to snatch an hour or two’s sleep. It felt like there was an axle out of alignment in my mind, causing my thoughts to over-steer, almost imperceptibly, in one direction so that, no matter how far I travelled, eventually they’d turn a circle and I’d arrive exactly where I started.
Out here though, buffeted by the blast and sting of salt air, my head begins to clear. Reaching the beach, the sand is compact, cold against my feet. Whitecaps rise and crumble beneath blustering clouds.
‘You’re mad,’ Fiona always tells me whenever she hears I’ve been in for a winter swim. ‘No one knows you’re out there. You don’t even wear a wetsuit. What if something happened?’
‘It won’t,’ I reply, confident in my ability to judge conditions, to know my own limits. I’ve always loved to swim, but there is something intoxicating about swimming in the depths of winter. When I moved here, I made a bargain with myself that I’d get in the water once a week – all year round.
As children, we used to holiday in Cornwall, renting a caravan set back from the beach. I remember a particularly cold April, books and blankets scattered across the caravan, and a sense of restlessness at having spent too long indoors. I’d looked up from my page to watch a group of elderly people in swimsuits gathered at the water’s edge. There was no squealing, no tiptoeing, no fuss. They simply walked into the sea and swam.
‘That’s what dementia does to you,’ Fiona had declared, clambering onto the sofa beside me to watch.
‘They’re brave,’ I countered, chin resting on forearms.
‘They’re like, a hundred. They’ll get pneumonia.’
Our mother, who’d been writing in the gold-edged notebook we’d bought her for Christmas, glanced up.
‘Cold water boosts our white blood cells because our bodies are forced to react to the changing conditions. It’s good for you.’ She’d always had a knack for casting a relevant, articulate fact into almost any stream of conversation.
Fiona turned to me, eyes glinting. ‘I dare you to join them.’
Four years older than me, her approval was hard to gain. I thought about the sharpness of the cold, the feel of the icy waves lifting and dropping me, the way my skin would pucker with goose bumps. I placed a bookmark into the spine of my novel.
‘Sure.’
I lasted a minute and a half, the cold squeezing the air from my lungs, but Fiona had clapped and cheered from the shoreline and I felt like a hero. Afterwards our mother warmed a pan of hot chocolate and I sat cross-legged in front of the electric fire watching the wiggling red lines of heat, the mug cupped in my hands, a surge of endorphins pumping in my body.
Now at the shoreline, I step from my dressing gown, the cold nicking my skin. I set the gown on the damp sand, then snap a picture of it, typing a quick post:
My drug of choice for getting the brain cells firing. #wildswim
Then the phone is away, and it is just me and the sea.
The trick, I’ve learned, is not to rush. To set a pace that doesn’t falter. I walk purposefully to the shore and straight into the sea. I don’t focus on the cold gripping my ankles: I concentrate on my breathing, keeping it level as the water climbs to my waist.
I push off, kicking away from shore. The bitter sea wraps around me, stealing every thought in my head. It is all I can do to remember to breathe.
I’m careful to remain near shore, not wanting to chance my luck against the stronger currents that pull and suck towards the horizon. I can taste the salt on my lips, feel the pleasing sting of it against my skin.
I look back towards my house. I realise that I’ve left the light on in the writing room and I can see straight inside, the empty desk eyeing me.
It looks, just for a moment, as if someone passes behind it.
I tread water, blinking saltwater from my eyes, looking again. It is a trick of the light, of course. A strange reflection, because now the shadow has gone.
*
The first time I saw the cliff-top house was with Flynn. We had come to Cornwall to be introduced to a ten-day-old Drake. Fiona seemed shell-shocked that this tiny pink creature with tightly curled fists and a fierce cry was hers. She moved around the house in a daze, a muslin flung over her shoulder, patches of her shirt stiff with leaked milk.
‘Take him,’ Fiona had begged, when I passed the nursery one evening and found her jigging him wearily.
Pressing him to my chest, I slowly circled my palm over the curve of his tiny back. I began to sing in a low, half-whispered voice, words that unravelled from some distant song that our mother had taught us. The rhythm seemed to soothe him, and I placed my lips against the soft down of his head and breathed in. Longing bloomed like blood rising to the surface of my skin.
When I turned, I saw Fiona still standing in the doorway of the nursery, watching. Her eyes shone with tears that didn’t fall.
‘I can’t even stop him crying.’
‘You’re doing brilliantly – but you’re exhausted. Get some sleep. I’ll wake you when he’s hungry.’
Fiona didn’t seem to hear. Her gaze was on the empty cot.
‘There are so many things I want to ask Mum. She did it on her own. The two of us.’ She shook her head. ‘Dad left when you were six weeks old. How the hell did she manage with two kids and no family nearby to help? I can’t even imagine. She was a hero, but I didn’t … I didn’t tell her how incredible she was … it’s only now …’ She pulled back her lips, as if baring her teeth. ‘I just, I miss her so much.’
‘I know you do,’ I whispered.
It was no surprise that the cruelness of our mother’s absence revisited us again with the birth of Drake, in the way that life and death circle each other. She would have loved rocking Drake to sleep in her arms, examining those tiny pink toes, carefully dressing and undressing him, bathing him, washing the blankets he used, the Babygros he soiled, the muslins he posseted on. She would have made meals, stocked freezers, emptied bins, folded washing. She would have praised Bill’s easy competency at changing nappies, or with manning the sterilizing station. She would have looked at Fiona and known that sleep deprivation was sinking her, that the baby blues were in danger of growing into something more serious.
She would have done all those things because she was a mother herself, and she knew.
I tried to fill that role as best I could, but each time I held Drake, my own longing sharpened. Flynn, sensing I needed a break, removed the pile of clean vests and white hats and delicate cardigans I’d been folding, took my fingers in his and told me, ‘Let’s walk.’
We weaved down a footpath in the direction of the coast, eventually coming to a steep path of switchbacks leading to a small bay hugged by cliffs.
I had a vague memory of visiting this beach years before. I could recall the red tassels of a picnic blanket, my mother sitting with a hand shading the sun from her eyes, marvelling at something. I could picture the black rocks that lay exposed and dripping at low tide.
As we walked, Flynn said, ‘It will happen for us.’
I’d slipped my hand into the back pocket of his jeans, leaning into him. ‘It’s been over a year.’
‘Maybe it’s time to see a doctor.’
I felt myself stiffen, retract. But I needed answers, too.
When we reached the far end of the bay, we looked up, noticing the squat fisherman’s cottage set on the cliff top. ‘What a view.’
‘It has a For Sale sign,’ he said, pointing to the red board at its shoulder.
The owner was home – a retired nurse who didn’t mind this young couple knocking on her door – and she invited us to look around. The cottage was hopelessly run-down, the roof sagging, the wallpaper curling at the edges, yet there was magic there.
‘Imagine living here,’ Flynn had said when we were alone, turning me to face the view, wrapping his arms around my waist, chin resting on my shoulder. ‘We could do it, couldn’t we?’
The money from my advance had just landed in our account, and Flynn had some savings from a family inheritance.
‘Yes, I think we could. But Cornwall? What about your job?’
‘I can be a tree surgeon anywhere,’ he’d said. ‘I think this is where you want to be, isn’t it? Near your sister, near Drake.’
I thought of Fiona cradling her new son; I thought of our mother’s dream to own a house overlooking the sea; I thought of the chances of stumbling across this cottage, finding the owner home. It seemed serendipitous.
‘Yes,’ I’d said to Flynn. ‘It is.’
Twelve weeks later, we had the keys. We moved in, sleeping on a mattress on the floor while we made plans. A lick of paint. A wood burning stove. New curtains. Fresh carpet. It was everything we’d need.
Now, as I swim looking up at the towering house on the cliff top, I wonder if we’d stuck to the plan – if the idea of the house hadn’t overtaken me – whether our marriage would have had a better chance of surviving.
Here I am alone, with a house I can no longer afford, and a career that feels like it, too, is teetering on a cliff edge.
My feet look bloodless and pale against the dark rock as I climb the cliff steps, shivering beneath my dressing gown. My hair hangs wetly at my neck and I am already anticipating the warmth of the shower.
As I follow the narrow path alongside the house, a plastic bag wheels past on the breeze, brushing my bare ankle. I grab for it, but a gust lifts it out of reach, parachuting the bag beyond me. Hurrying after it, I come to the end of the path and halt.
The driveway is scattered with litter. Used kitchen roll, empty tins, plastic containers, and cereal boxes are strewn across the gravel. Sheets of newspaper dance in the gusts, several more pinned against the fence line. A crumpled page from a notebook rolls past me. At the edge of the driveway, the recycling bin lies on its side, lid open. Although the wind is blowing, I know it isn’t nearly strong enough to upturn a bin.
I hurry across the drive, gravel cutting into my feet, and with some effort, I manage to right the bin. I re-knot the belt of my dressing gown, then begin gathering the litter. My wet hair whips around my face, leaving trails of fresh salt.
As I push my hair back from my face, I have the growing sensation that I’m not alone.
Across the lane, I spot Mark standing in the doorway of his parents’ house, a cigarette held between his fingers.
‘Foxes,’ he calls.
He stubs the cigarette against the wall, then turns and disappears inside the house.
I stand there, open-mouthed. Did that just happen? Had he – a grown man – upturned my bins?
I half-laugh, staggered. Is this a reaction to the house build – a retaliation for compromising the view from their family home? I think of the awful visit six months after we’d bought the house, as I unrolled the architect’s drawings across Frank and Enid’s kitchen table.
‘You said renovate, not rebuild!’ Frank exploded, colour bursting into his cheeks.
When I’d worried about the neighbours’ reaction, friends reassured me that No one owns a view! Any other buyer would do the same! Although they were right, it didn’t lessen the guilty heat that crept up my neck.
Enid had moved towards the kitchen window, heavy-knuckled hands worrying the edge of her cardigan. She looked out towards the sea as if her time with the view was waning. If there’d been a moment when I was close to reconsidering, that had been it.
I finish collecting the litter, then drag the bin back into position at the end of the driveway. If I were Fiona, I’d go over and demand an apology from Mark, but I don’t have the energy for a confrontation.
My novel, I think. That’s what I need to focus on.
Setting myself at my desk with a steaming coffee and salt-damp hair, I am ready. I open the drawer to grab a pencil – but can’t find one. I pull the drawer right out, trailing my hand through the mess of pens, Sharpie markers, Post-it notes, and glue sticks. There is a hole puncher, a calculator, a pot of drawing pins, a lighter for my oil burner – but no bloody pencils.
It’s a stupid detail, but it bothers me: I always have spares.
I tramp downstairs and locate a pencil from the depths of my handbag. I’m tetchy by the time I return to my writing room. I open the window, settle myself for a second time. I keep a well-thumbed dictionary on my desk and I watch as its cover lifts in the breeze, pages fanning.
Something doesn’t feel quite right. I try not to indulge the feeling – I don’t want to become one of those writers who demand a certain ambience to create – but I can’t shake the thought that something is off-balance.
Then I realise what it is. The dictionary. It is usually secured by a paperweight – a beautiful glass globe that my mother bought on a hiking holiday in Malta three years before her death.
‘It looks like it’s caught the sea inside,’ she’d told me, a wistful look in her eyes. I always keep the paperweight on top of the dictionary – but oddly, it is now positioned beside it.
I pick up the paperweight, turning it through my fingers, feeling its solidity and coolness against my palms. Daylight catches in the silver flecks, making it shimmer like the surface of the sea. As I rotate it, my skin catches on something jagged.
Lifting the globe towards my face, I see the crack – a chip no greater than the length of a fingernail.
I can’t remember damaging it.
There is something unsettling at the back of my mind, a sense of discord. I pace for a moment, trying to work it loose.
Then I seize on it: the jagged shard of glass that punctured my foot. It’d looked like a tiny, lethal icicle. The same colour as this.
I hurry from the writing room, descending the stairs, fingers gripping the paperweight. Pushing open my bedroom door, I go straight to the wastepaper basket at the foot of my mirror. Digging through it, I pull out a parcel of tissue.
Opening it carefully, I remove the dagger of glass I’d found embedded in the carpet.
I press the missing fragment against the paperweight.
Like a key slipped into a lock, it is the exact fit.
Previously
When staying in someone else’s house, one would have to be incurious not to wonder about the owner. There are clues everywhere – the photos carefully selected for display on the walls, the clothes hanging in the floor-to-ceiling wardrobes, the stock of medicines in the bathroom cabinet, the box file filled with documents in the bureau, the post that arrives with the handwritten address.
I can take my time, enjoy these small discoveries because, for now, your house is mine.
I drift from the kitchen to the lounge, admiring the sense of continuity and flow between rooms. Everything is marvellously tasteful: the low-backed cream sofa, framed by two upholstered tub armchairs, each carefully angled to face the water. The neutral tones and uncluttered lines naturally focus the gaze towards the sea. Even on a dull day, such as this, there is a mesmerising quality to the water. In warmer weather, I imagine sliding back the bifold doors, removing a wall of the room so that it feels as if the house and water are just a breath apart.
It’s a truly beautiful home. I’m sure some people would be quick to add, ‘Well, yes, easy if you’ve got the money.’
