‘I’m sorry your marriage broke down,’ Jo said.
‘It happens,’ Ewan shrugged. ‘It was a couple of years ago now. We’ve all had time to come to terms with it and find a new way of being a family. To be honest, I think Sam likes that he has two bedrooms, and gets two lots of Christmas and birthday presents. The world can be gloriously uncomplicated when you’re eight, don’t you think?’
Jo thought back to when she was eight and her biggest worry was whether or not she’d get her poem published in the school summer magazine. She nodded, but then cringed inwardly when she realised her life hadn’t really moved on too much from that point. She still longed for validation from others. Then again, that’s something everyone needs, she thought.
‘And you? Is there a Mr Campbell, or a significant other in the background?’ Ewan asked, and immediately apologised. ‘Sorry. That’s absolutely none of my business.’
‘It’s okay,’ Jo said. ‘There isn’t anyone.’ She pushed away a fleeting thought of Lorcan. He was nothing to her, she told herself. ‘In the interests of full disclosure,’ she continued, ‘at the moment I’m living at home with my mum and Clara, while my dad works away. I do have a flat-share, but my roommate is moving in with her new man, so I’ve to find somewhere more suited to my price range. Preferably somewhere that is in my price range and doesn’t look like something very, very bad happened there. Which might be a problem.’
‘Yikes,’ he said. ‘That’s a tough one.’
‘Nah, not really. I mean, I have my parents to fall back on if needed. It’s not necessarily where I saw myself heading into my thirties. But Clara is going through some separation anxiety at the moment, so it’s probably a blessing in disguise.’
‘She clearly means a lot to you.’
‘She does. She’s so loving and pure. And she’s had enough to deal with in her life without more upset, so maybe it’s a good thing that I’m about to be officially homeless and may need to move back in with my parents.’
To her surprise, Jo found that tears were pricking at her eyes. She was terrified she was going to start crying, right there, beside Ewan McLachlan, who she’d only met the previous night and who she really wanted to impress.
She turned her head to look out of the window, watched as they drove the familiar roads through Inishowen in north Donegal towards Buncrana. She was dangerously close to being completely overwhelmed by her emotions. She would miss Clara more than she thought possible, even though Clara was not her child, and would be completely fine. But it was more than that too. Her chat with Ewan had made her realise how little she had achieved in her years on this planet. Even her flat, which she had made into a lovely home, would soon be gone from her.
Ewan didn’t reply immediately, which made Jo want to turn herself inside out with embarrassment. She very much doubted he’d planned on bringing a very emotional, crazy woman along to mentor. Perhaps he was already having second thoughts and trying to figure out how to shake her off and go it alone for the next few days.
‘Here’s the thing,’ he said eventually. ‘Clara will be fine if you’re at home, but she’ll be more than fine if you’re not. Just like Sam is more than fine. She’s surrounded by love and you’re not talking about walking out of her life and never looking back. I imagine you’ll still do a lot of things with her, no matter where you choose to live. You’ll still love her. If you’re even a little bit like me, you’ll probably overdo it on the love and time together, and treats to assuage your own guilt, and Clara will love it. She’ll cope, you know. Because we all do, with change. It’s how things go.’
She would have looked at Ewan right there and then and thanked him, but she couldn’t because she was sure if she did, not only would she cry, but it would be one of those huge, horrible mega-ugly cries and he would definitely want to drop her off at the side of the road.
23
Falling Inn Love
‘Two rooms, reserved under the name of McLachlan?’ said the doe-eyed receptionist with a soft, lilting Donegal accent. Although they were only twenty-five minutes from Derry, they had crossed into the Republic of Ireland and already the pace of life felt more relaxed.
‘If this was a romcom movie, this is where they’d tell us there was a problem with the booking and they only had one room left. With a double bed, of course,’ Jo said with a laugh, before taking a momentary panic that the receptionist would indeed tell them there had been a mistake. In which case she would be mortified that she’d said what she did and worried that Ewan would think she had wanted it to happen.
‘It’s okay,’ the receptionist said, with a smile. ‘There’s no mistake and we have two rooms available.’
Ewan smiled. ‘You see, Jo. This is a thriller. There are no quirky room errors. A murder or two, possibly. Definitely some dark intrigue. Blackmail probably too.’
Jo couldn’t help but laugh, but the poor receptionist looked terrified.
‘Don’t worry,’ Jo explained. ‘He’s a writer. He’s talking about the books he writes.’
‘Actually, we’re both writers,’ Ewan told the receptionist and Jo felt a flutter of excitement in the pit of her stomach.
‘Oh, that’s really cool,’ the receptionist said. ‘What books have you written?’
While Ewan told a suddenly very impressed receptionist about the McCreadie books, and she had a low-level freak-out because she has watched the TV series, Jo fidgeted. She had nothing to say. No book to mention. No TV series to boast about. When the receptionist’s gaze moved to her, she would’ve gladly delighted in the ground opening up under her and swallowing her whole.
But Ewan stepped in. ‘This is Jo Campbell. She’s an up-and-coming writer. Remember her name.’
‘How exciting,’ the receptionist replied, before she handed over their room keys. ‘I’ll definitely make a note of that.’
As Jo and Ewan walked towards the lifts with their cases, she thanked him. ‘You didn’t have to say that.’
‘You write, don’t you? Then you’re a writer! Own it.’
Jo was still replaying that sentence over and over in her head when she walked into her sea-view room and threw herself down on top of her super king-size bed, luxuriating in the feel of the starched Egyptian cotton sheets. ‘I’m a writer! I’m a writer!’ she said. Ewan was right. She had to own it.
Ewan was right about a lot of things, it seemed. Including his advice that Clara could and would cope if and when she moved out. She just had to find the right place. Near to Ivy Lane, with a little garden space. And a second bedroom for Clara to have sleepovers. She’d need her own writing desk in the corner of her living room, too. When she got back home, she would start to search the rental listings online just to see what was out there.
Jo was suddenly filled with a sense of peace and burgeoning self-confidence. Her friends would be so impressed with her can-do attitude. Lorcan, she thought, would be so impressed with her can-do attitude. Of course, she quickly remembered that Lorcan was now not her friend, and she was still mad at him.
That didn’t stop her checking her phone to see if he had sent her a text – which, of course, he absolutely hadn’t.
With a little less vigour this time, she repeated to herself that she was a writer. Ewan McLachlan thought so, and in that moment his opinion was the only one that mattered to her.
Jo unpacked her case and unwrapped her laptop from its towel. She fixed her hair, pulled on her jacket and a light scarf and made her way down to the lobby to wait for Ewan.
‘I’m a writer,’ she told herself as she walked. ‘I’m here to work and learn and live my best, big life. I am here on my own merits. I deserve it.’ And maybe, just maybe, she was beginning to believe it.
Jo was sipping from a cold glass of Sauvignon Blanc and Ewan had ordered a pint of Guinness, saying it had to be done because he was in Ireland. He’d taken a picture of it and uploaded it to his Instagram, telling his fans he was doing research for McCreadie’s next big adventure.
Along with the drinks, Ewan had a printout of notes he had made about her book, and he had scribbled more in the margins in red pen. She was a little bit more than mildly intimidated by the sight, but she was there to listen and Ewan did know what he was doing.
‘Don’t look so scared,’ he said, and she shifted in her seat. That was easy for him to say, she thought. He wasn’t the one sitting across the table from a hugely successful author who clearly had an awful lot to say about her work.
She forced a smile on her face, then took a long drink from her wine glass. It was entirely possible the wine would help her relax enough not to want to crawl under the table and hide. ‘I’m not all that scared,’ she lied. ‘But you’re one of, like, two people who have read my work. Or at least read anything I wrote after the age of sixteen. Before then, I had no wit and forced everyone to read my stuff. It was truly awful. Mostly angsty poetry.’
‘I did a fair bit of that in my teens too,’ Ewan said. ‘But I really don’t know why you haven’t showed off your work more, Jo.’
‘At first, I just didn’t feel the need to. I was writing for me because it was something I found relaxing. Then, when I started to think that maybe it would be nice to have someone read it, I suppose I took the fear.’
‘The fear?’
‘Yeah, that this thing I enjoyed doing, and which brought me joy, was actually a bit rubbish. If someone told me that,’ she said, glancing to the red-pen-scored sheet in front of her, ‘then maybe it wouldn’t bring me joy any more. And I’d stop.’
‘The other side of it is, what if someone told you they loved it? Or someone told you they saw real strengths in it, but here are a few ideas you could use to make it better? It might make you write more and enjoy it more?’
‘It was a big risk for me,’ Jo said. She ran her fingers through her hair and took a deep breath. ‘And I’ve not been feeling particularly brave.’
Ewan sat back in his chair and looked at Jo. His gaze was so intense she almost felt as if he was trying to read all her thoughts, disassemble them and put them back together in some kind of order that made sense. ‘Tell me how you felt as you wrote? When you created those images of the ramshackle cottage on the edge of the beach? The long grass and buttercups? How did you feel when you described the crash of the waves to shore, the buzz of insects, the sting of the sun on bare skin? Or the creeping darkness and the rot setting in?’
Jo sat straight. How had she felt? ‘At times, it felt as if I could pull my hair out with the frustration of finding the exact words I needed to get the description just right.’
‘I’m familiar with that feeling,’ Ewan said with a smile. ‘But what else? Because I know there is something else too.’
And there was. Jo knew that. It was why she wrote. Even when she had no audience. Even when she was alone in her room, with only the light of her laptop illuminating the room. ‘It’s the rush,’ she said, as she looked into her wine glass, acutely aware that she might sound as if she was the biggest nerd in the world. ‘Creating a story – a world. When it feels as if the characters take over. It’s almost like I’m watching a movie, or reading a book, and the words aren’t even coming from me. They just appear.’ Jo realised she was gushing. And possibly sounding as if she had lost her mind. She also realised she had a huge smile on her face. ‘There were times when I was writing the book when I swear I could feel the sun on my face and smell the salty sea air I was describing. It felt so incredibly empowering.’
She met Ewan’s gaze. He was smiling back at her, an expression that said he knew exactly what she meant. ‘You’ve got the bug, hen,’ he said. ‘Once you get that feeling, you’ll always want to chase it. It’s one of the best feelings in the world to be a storyteller. And don’t underestimate the power of it either. To bring people out of their worlds into something else. I realise I’ve a vested interest in saying that, considering it’s what pays my bills, but it doesn’t make it any less true.’
Jo nodded. She loved listening to him talk. She loved listening to someone who knew what it was like to feel that exhilaration she did when she had time to write too.
‘But here’s the thing,’ he said. ‘If you want to share your world with people, you have to take the risks and put your work out there. You also need to accept that there will always be more nos than yeses and it’s very rarely about what you’ve written.’
Jo wasn’t sure that was necessarily the case but decided to say nothing and see where he was going with his take on things.
‘It can be about the mood the person who’s reading it is in that day. Or what else they’ve read that afternoon. It could be that they want something action-filled when you’ve written something romantic, or atmospheric. It could be that you need to do a little more work – but most writers have to do a little more work. Even the successful ones.’
Jo raised her eyebrow at him. ‘You don’t have to say that just to make me feel better.’
Ewan threw his head back and laughed. ‘Oh how I wish that was the reason! It’s true. Have you any idea how many rounds of edits a book goes through before it gets published? Or how many drafts of a book are written before it’s submitted in the first place. Because, you know, it can be a lot and writing can be a struggle, even for those of us who do it all the time. So we work harder and research more.’
‘And end up sitting opposite neurotic wannabe writers in a bar instead of spending time actually writing?’ Jo said, her toes curled with embarrassment at her lack of understanding about how the business worked.
‘But I am working on my novel. Didn’t we have a research ice cream on the Main Street and didn’t you show me the Mass rock where the priest was martyred under the penal laws? And the little hideouts on the coast? This is all great, authentic research material. Apart from the ice cream. That was just really nice.’ He smiled warmly and Jo startled when he reached across the table and took her hand in his. She looked at his tanned skin, the soft hairs, bleached by the sun, the sinewy muscle of his forearms. Maybe the wine had gone to her head, but the surreal nature of the entire experience had made her a little giddy, and the warmth of his skin on hers made her breath catch in the back of her throat.
She raised her glance to his face, to that damned irresistible smile of his, and there was a moment where she honestly thought he might just reach across the table and pull her towards him. He was tall, strong, he could easily sweep her off her feet and kiss her so hard she would see stars. Jo realised, in that moment, she would probably let him. Not only that, she would probably kiss him back even harder. Her head was fuzzy now, and her heart thumped. Ewan McLachlan, in that moment, was like a magnet to her.
Her eyes darted to his mouth, his full lips. Her heart thudded faster as he started to stand up. Maybe she’d been right. He was going to kiss her. She braced herself.
‘Jo,’ he said, and her gaze moved reluctantly from his lips to his eyes. ‘Do you want another drink? I’m just going to the men’s and I’ll order them on the way.’
It wasn’t the seduction she’d hoped for. It wasn’t any seduction at all. He was just in need of the toilet. The spell, if it had even been there in the first place, was broken.
‘Actually, I think I’ll just have a cup of tea,’ she said, her voice little more than a whisper. She wanted another glass of wine, of course. At that moment, she’d happily down an entire bottle of wine, but no. God. What had she been thinking? She needed a clear head and to focus on what they were there to do instead of imagining how his strong, tall presence would make her feel almost pixie-like. Those thoughts were just the wine talking. And the day in the sun. And her annoyance with Lorcan. They weren’t real, she told herself. Even though they had felt very real.
‘When I get back, we can talk about your use of imagery,’ he said. ‘I’ve a few blog links I think you might find helpful. Maybe you could check them out tonight in your room? You’re okay if we just do our own things for dinner, aren’t you? I mean, absolutely order anything you want on r
oom service and I’ll cover it. But it will be a good chance to get some work done, and I have to say that after today I’m feeling inspired to sit down and write.’
His smile was warm and broad and just as he pulled himself up to his full height, Jo felt her body want to fold in on itself with embarrassment and she sagged with relief that she hadn’t made a noticeable eejit of herself by lunging at him for a full-on snog.
She dropped her head in her hands when he left and momentarily wondered if she could just make a quick escape before he came back – just grab his scribbled notes and make for her room. While he was still looking for her in the bar, she could throw a few things in her case and run.
She wished Noah was there. Or Libby or Erin. Or her mum or Clara. To her utter annoyance, Lorcan’s name even floated into her head. How had he managed to get under her skin so much in such a short period of time?
Noah would make her feel better by telling her one of his own excruciatingly embarrassing stories. Libby would say something comforting and give her a hug. Erin would say something outrageously inappropriate, and Clara would engage her with so much chat about all the intricacies of her day that she wouldn’t have time to feel embarrassed. Her mum would tell her about the time Mags did something much, much worse, and actually did it, not just almost did it. And Lorcan? He would probably stand in judgement and use this as some sort of proof that he was right, even though it was she who had almost made a pass at Ewan and not the other way round.
But none of them were here. She was on her own and she knew that if she ever wanted to be a writer, she knew she only had one option: to stay right where she was and wait for Ewan’s feedback. For better or worse. And not – under any circumstances – try to kiss him.
24
In Pursuit of Happiness Page 15