by Clare Empson
‘They made each other strong,’ he says, ‘the way the best couples do.’
Sometimes I wonder what it’s like for our children growing up with these fictional characters whom Rick puppets to life each August. But then it’s the same for me. For I didn’t know Jacob or even Alice, not really. And to ponder too much on the Alice I could have known, the Alice I misunderstood, feared and lost, is to ache with regret.
Samuel has a story of his own, one he loves to embellish.
‘Alice had taken me to the beach for the day,’ Samuel says and we smile now and allow him this twisting of the truth. ‘And there was a family with a little sea float a bit like the one Alice used to take Dad in when he was a baby. So she borrowed it.’
‘She went paddling, didn’t she?’ asks his sister Iris, always keen to have some involvement in this tale, however small.
Samuel gives a solemn nod.
‘But it was windy and the float got caught in a current. And we were blown out to sea. Alice tried to swim back, but she wasn’t strong enough.
‘The man on the beach ran into the sea to help us, even though his wife was screaming at him to stay. And when he reached us, Alice begged him to save me.’
The man – Thomas, he’s called – bears a lifelong scar about that desperate split-second choice: save the woman or save the child. There was no choice at all.
‘I thought I could go back for her,’ he told me afterwards at the hospital, and his face as he said this was broken, Alice’s last moments an ineradicable image scratched onto his eyes. I didn’t tell him what I thought, deep down: Alice didn’t want to be rescued.
Sometimes Rick cries, sometimes I do, but as the years pass and the children grow and our strange family with its surfeit of grandparents – some dead, some alive – continues to flourish, we think, we hope, that Jacob and Alice got the ending they would have wanted.
If you enjoyed Mine, you will love Clare Empson’s dark and dramatic debut novel, Him. Click here to buy now!
Don’t miss Clare Empson’s dark and suspenseful debut novel …
Catherine has become mute. She has witnessed something so disturbing that she simply can’t speak – not to her husband, her children, or her friends. The doctors say the only way forward is to look into her past.
Catherine needs to start with Him. Lucian.
Catherine met the love of her life at university and was drawn into his elite circle of privileged, hedonistic friends. But one night it all falls apart and she leaves him, shattering his life forever. Still, fifteen years later, Lucian haunts every one of Catherine’s quiet moments, and when they are unexpectedly reunited, their love reignites with explosive force. But they can’t move on from what happened all those years ago.
In fact, uncovering the truth will cause their lives to implode once again. This time, with disastrous consequences.
Click here to start reading Him today!
Acknowledgements
First of all a huge debt of thanks to Frances Ronaldson for being so understanding about this book and allowing me to subvert her joyful reunion with John for my own dark fictional purposes. The real life story has been the happiest event. Enormous thanks to my amazing agent Felicity Blunt. I count myself so lucky to have you on my side. Thanks also to Lucy Morris, an absolute rock of strength through the rollercoaster of publication.
Francesca Pathak, my editor at Orion, thank you again for your absolute connection with this story and for helping me to make it immeasurably better.
You make the editing process such a pleasure.
Thanks to the whole team at Orion and special thanks to Leanne Oliver for all her hard work on Him. Thank you Lucy Frederick for working so hard on this manuscript.
And to Jane Selby for doing such a fantastic and sensitive job with the copyedit. Emily Burns my thanks for your dedication and professionalism and for being the loveliest person to work with.
Kishan Rajani thank you for coming up with another spectacular cover!
I have had so much help with the researching of Mine. First and foremost I must thank the psychotherapist and addiction counsellor Paul Sunderland for his insightful wisdom into the hidden trauma of adoptees and for generously sharing his knowledge with me. Thank you to the adult adoptees for allowing me to join your equine therapy workshop and for sharing those most poignant and memorable days.
Claudia Navaneti for your insights into adoptee psychology and Dr James Stallard for fielding endless psychiatric questions.
Professor Andrew Stahl, my thanks for your memories of the Slade in the early 1970s, I loved hearing them. Thanks also to Jo Volley for the same.
The artists Brian Rice and Jacy Wall thank you for talking to me about life and art in the 1970s I so enjoyed the day we spent together.
Portrait painter Saied Dai, thank you for allowing me to join your life class and for your invaluable insights into painting and drawing, I could have listened to you talking all day.
Dave Meneer, my most wonderful friend, for your exacting and elephantine memory of student life in the early 70s. Who else would know the price of a pint of bitter in the Coach in 1972? (10p).
To Caroline Boucher for perfectly rock and roll recollections of the 70s but also for your generous and continuous support.
Anna and Pete Banks, I began Mine in your beautiful house in Southwold. Thank you for lending it to me, for introducing me to this incredible town and most of all to Anna for a lifelong friendship which means everything.
My thanks to Billy Jones for providing me with a writing sanctuary when I needed it most alongside unwavering friendship. Victoria Upson, the loyalest and funniest person I know, for showing me what true friendship is.
Thanks to Susy Pelly and Chloe Fox, my writing sisters in Smug HQ, for sharing the joy and angst daily. Harriet Edwards and Lucinda Horton for your humour, brilliance and always making everything better. Hattie Slim, my secret weapon, I’m so glad I found you.
Thank you to the readers, bloggers and authors who enjoyed Him and told me so, I am so grateful for your support.
To Jane and Anna, for always standing beside me. I’m so glad I have you in my corner. Jake, Maya and Felix.Thank you for putting up with your distracted mother and for being the kind, funny, quirky and wonderfully individualistic people you are. I will always be more proud of you than anything else. And to the inspirational Diana Empson who is greatly missed.
Finally but most importantly Lucinda Martin and John Empson, this is not your story but it is your book. It comes to you with love.
About the author
Clare Empson is a journalist with a background in national newspapers – small business editor, finance correspondent and fashion at the Mail on Sunday and the Daily Express, and freelance for the Sunday Telegraph, The Sunday Times, the Evening Standard and Tatler amongst others. She currently works as editor/founder of experiential lifestyle website www.countrycalling.co.uk.
Mine is Clare’s second novel.
Also by Clare Empson
Him
Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Orion Fiction,
an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd.,
Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK Company
Copyright © Clare Empson 2019
The moral right of Clare Empson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and a
ny resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (eBook) 9781409177777
www.orionbooks.co.uk