by Helen Fisher
“This is my mother.”
* * *
I BRIEFLY LOOKED back at the sea and saw a few pieces of cardboard drifting off, some as far away as the eye could see, and I knew there was no going back.
And then, not knowing the right questions to ask yet, and not being sure of the answers anyway, we got up off the sand. The three of us, like human shipwrecks, ascended the cliff. My mother clinging to me in disbelief. Pierced by the sword of knowing she would never see her little girl again. The unique gift of getting to know me now was a compromise she had yet to come to terms with. Eddie walked behind, his hands on our shoulders, as though we might fall backward. We climbed, taking our first steps into a new life together. The past only behind us. A life to be lived only forward.
Summer, 1979. A chest infection wasn’t just a winter occurrence anymore. Jeanie could feel one coming, its early symptoms as distinct as the difference between sea and sky, its progress as predictable a story as any other—the beginning: a subtle rawness between her throat and lungs, which moved lower daily; the middle: an increasing shallowness of breath, pain breathing in, and lack of energy; the end: a cough on which she could get no purchase, until she could finally clear it, hawking up lumps of phlegm as solid as slugs. This was the end she was accustomed to, but she felt sure it would kill her one day.
It had been fifteen months since Jeanie had seen her guardian angel: the woman who looked like her mother, a mother she could barely remember, who carried the same name and the same tics and turns of phrase as her daughter. Sometimes Jeanie felt a desperation to find her guardian angel that was overwhelming; she had said as much to her friends, like-minded bohemian types whom she rarely saw these days. She had found a connection in Faye, formed a bond to the older woman, was magnetically drawn to her.
When Faye didn’t return and the months passed by, Jeanie had got on with her life, but never stopped looking, quickened her pace if she saw someone similar from behind, only to be disappointed when she overtook the woman and turned to see her unfamiliar face. She knew it was foolish to miss, to mourn, a friend she barely knew. Faye had been nearly old enough to be her mother, but maybe that was it, maybe she was the mother figure Jeanie had missed out on. Maybe that’s why it hurt so much. And the fantasy that this woman could look after her daughter if anything bad were to happen to Jeanie was never going to be a reality. There was no safety net; she would have to accept that.
It was time for Jeanie to let go of the idea of Faye—she had been happy before, she would be happy again—and concentrate on her daughter; she needed to get well, or her fears of dying young were going to come true, and above all else, she did not want to leave her daughter without a mother. She would never leave her willingly. Ever. God would have to take her.
She gazed at the sleeping form of little Faye, her chest rising and falling gently below the sheets, and kissed her on the forehead.
Jeanie went downstairs and flicked on the kettle, desperate for the hot water to soothe the rasping in her throat and chest, hoping it would warm and melt the infection that was taking hold, dissolve it out of her body. She leaned on the kitchen counter and absentmindedly picked up two empty glass jam jars near the window, pinching them between her thumb and finger. She walked them down to the shed; the air was warm already, even though it was still early. It was going to be a beautiful day.
Jeanie opened the shed door, wrestled with it momentarily. These jars would keep for things that didn’t belong anywhere else, the things that we just don’t know when the time will come for us to need them. She hadn’t been in the shed for ages, perhaps years, there were a lot of cobwebs and not much else. Jeanie wondered about clearing it completely, cleaning it, painting it, and making a playhouse for her and little Faye, a place to hide, to talk and play.
There was a box on the floor, might come in handy, although it was a little broken, and beyond it just a mess of tools and other paraphernalia. As she leaned forward to place the jars on a shelf at the back of the shed, she stepped into the box on the floor, and as she did so, the bottom opened up and swallowed her.
Two glass jars hit the floor of the shed and rolled momentarily, clinking as they collided with each other, and then stopped.
Jeanie hurtled through the darkness like a bullet, until she could see something—water? Gray water. She couldn’t breathe, and as she hit the ocean like a torpedo, she threw her head above the waves and took a breath as deep as her lungs would allow.
Acknowledgments
It’s difficult to know where the beginning really is, but, as best I can, I’d like to do this in chronological order. I couldn’t have written this book without me, and so I’d like to thank my parents, Patricia Steele and Norman Graupp, for starting things off.
Thank you to Sarah Geileskey for our wonderful conversation in the early stages, which helped me create the character of Eddie. Next are three friends who read my story as I was writing it—a few chapters at a time—and told me they liked it. For their support, feedback, and patience, I give my deepest thanks to Patrick Doyle, Adam Schiller, and Amy Schiller.
When I was sick of rejections and put my manuscript in a drawer and cried myself to sleep until I came to terms with never getting published, I got a message from a friend who encouraged me to send it to one more agent. Without that nudge I may have left it locked away, so thank you, Sarah Whyand. That “one more agent” was Judith Murray, who is the character everyone loves from a novel, the fairy godmother in the story of my own life—thank you for getting me to the ball.
Thank you to Jo Dickinson and Jackie Cantor at Simon & Schuster for your moving, emotional response to my novel. Thank you to Kate Rizzo for all your work in selling the foreign rights, and Alisa Ahmed for all your help.
I thank my children for believing that I would get published just because I’m their mum, and who prayed to the universe—and everything in it—when I promised to buy them a kitten if I got a publisher.
And thank you for picking up this book. I hope you feel that reading it is time well spent.
There are a lot of people who help take a story and turn it into a book and get it out there. I didn’t know about all of them until recently, but here they are, all much appreciated. Some made me laugh and were personally supportive, and some I’ve never met—not even virtually—but to whom I am extremely thankful.
In the US: Aimée Bell, Jen Bergstrom, Jenny Carrow (for the US cover art), Allison Green, Molly Gregory, Eliza Hanson, Lisa Litwack, Jen Long, Sally Marvin, Caroline Pallotta, Jaime Putorti, Carolyn Reidy (for her kind words of support), Jamie Selzer, and Abby Zidle. Thank you all.
In the UK: Maddie Allan, Suzanne Baboneau, Jess Barratt, Dominic Brendon, Ian Chapman, Rich Hawton, Clare Hey, Judith Long, Hayley McMullan, Polly Osborn, Gill Richardson, Joe Roche, Alice Rodgers, Katrina Scott, Francesca Sironi, Rich Vlietstra, and Pip Watkins (for the UK cover art). Thank you all.
More in Fiction
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The Storyteller
Beautiful Disaster
About the Author
Helen Fisher spent her early life in America but grew up mainly in Suffolk, England, where she now lives with her two children. She studied psychology at the University of Westminster and ergonomics at University College London, and worked as a senior evaluator in research at the Royal National Institute of Blind People. Faye, Faraway is her first novel.
FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR:
SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Helen-Fisher
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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First Gallery Books hardcover edition January 2021
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Interior design by Jaime Putorti
Jacket design by Lisa Litwack
Jacket photograph © Kate Vellacott
Author photograph © Johnny Ring
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Fisher, Helen, 1972– author.
Title: Faye, faraway / Helen Fisher.
Description: First Gallery Books hardcover edition. | New York : Gallery Books, 2021.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019060245 (print) | LCCN 2019060246 (ebook) | ISBN 9781982142674 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781982142681 (paperback) | ISBN 9781982142698 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Mothers and daughters—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3606.I774 S63 2021 (print) | LCC PS3606.I774 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019060245
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019060246
ISBN 978-1-9821-4267-4
ISBN 978-1-9821-4269-8 (ebook)