You Let Me In

by Lucy Clarke

  Tan, timeworn.

  ‘But when I opened it, I realised it was something completely different. I don’t need to tell you what was inside, do I?’

  It is as if all the blood is draining from my body. My arms feel heavy and cool; my fingertips tingle.

  Fiona’s voice doesn’t change, doesn’t hurry.

  ‘Do you know how much it hurt to discover you’d been writing a book, but hadn’t thought to tell me? You didn’t come to me for help, or encouragement – you did it in secret. When I complained to Bill, he told me to let it go, that it was natural for you to want to strike out alone, wait until you had something solid to share. But I found it hurtful. It was embarrassing when friends asked about it – and I had to admit, Actually, I had no idea. It showed up the cracks in our relationship.’

  I remember calling Fiona to share the news of my book deal. My palms had been sweating so much that the phone had felt slippery within my grip. My voice was unnaturally casual as I’d said, ‘Hey, I’ve got a bit of news!’ I’d not mentioned I was working on a novel previously, because I’d worried that she’d say something, or simply deploy one of her looks, which would give away exactly what she was thinking: Elle, you’re only playing at it.

  ‘So, I admit that I was intrigued,’ Fiona continues, ‘to see the starting point for the story that launched you. Because, one moment you are my little sister – the wanderer, the part-time barista, the light-hearted free spirit.’

  She draws a breath, steel entering her voice. ‘But the next moment, you are an author. A bestselling, internationally-recognised author. An author whose debut novel won a host of awards. And I wondered to myself: how does one make that transition? It was like I’d missed some essential part of the plot.’

  Fiona has risen to her feet. She stares intently at me as her next words cut through the room:

  ‘And I had, hadn’t I?’

  I hold myself completely still. From the very moment it began, I have been waiting for this. Waiting for the truth to be cracked open and the hundreds of tiny lies I’ve told to come wriggling out, like maggots feeding on the rotten core.

  ‘Because it’s not your book, is it, Elle?’

  34

  Elle

  Readers always want to know how it happened. To understand the journey from aspiring writer to published author.

  For me it was a series of moments, a string of interactions, tiny pearls of excitement, of anxiety, of choices, which, when strung together, finally became the weight that hangs at my neck.

  It happened when Flynn was abroad. He’d accepted a four-week job on a film set in Spain creating a haunted wood for an indie movie. It had been arranged through a tree surgeon friend and was too good to turn down. If he had remained in Bristol, would it have changed things? Probably.

  As Flynn kissed me goodbye, he’d clasped the tops of my arms, dipping his head so he could look me straight in the eye.

  ‘Good luck with the publishers. Ring me the minute you’re out of the meeting. I want to know everything.’

  So I had. I’d stepped from the revolving doors onto a busy London pavement, already reaching for my mobile. I was eager to share every detail: the receptionists in their tailored black uniforms and headsets; the glass lift rocketing through the building; the view from the twelfth floor over the snaking brown Thames. I would tell him about how the senior commissioning editor had loved my story, how we’d talked about my characters and, for the first time, the story felt real. And then I’d tell him: I’ve got to think of another book idea by tomorrow! They want to see ‘the scope of my ideas’. Flynn would laugh, congratulate me, tell me this was incredible news.

  But Flynn hadn’t answered.

  Back at our Bristol flat, I made a coffee and settled myself on the sofa, a notepad on my knee. An idea for a second book by tomorrow! It was absurd, but also strangely energising to have a sudden goal – a deadline of sorts. It made my dream feel excitingly close.

  I began jotting down thoughts, digging deep into the recesses of my memory. Old ideas fluttered past, like birds soaring across the edge of my vision – too quick to see their full plume.

  I recalled a glimpse of an idea about a woman driving a dusty pickup across the Canadian plains, a baby strapped into the passenger seat, a smear of blood on the headlights, a clump of human hair caught on the bumper. But when I tried to examine the idea more closely, I couldn’t see the woman’s expression, couldn’t zoom in on any details to reveal how the plot may unfold.

  I made another coffee and paced the flat as I sipped it, scalding my top lip. I only needed something loose, a paragraph or two would do. Just a concept. As my agent had said, it was simply to display breadth of ideas.

  ‘Even if they offer you a two-book deal, you won’t be tied to the idea.’

  A two-book deal. My God, the thought of it!

  I sank onto the sofa, pushing aside a cardboard box filled with my mother’s photo albums. A fresh wave of grief reared up, fierce and sudden. I would have loved to speak to her, to stay up late into the night bouncing around ideas, pulling out threads from other stories we’d loved, discussing ways to weave them into something fresh.

  I considered – then dismissed – the idea of ringing Fiona. I could imagine the clipped edge to her tone, her surprise that I had been to see a publisher without her knowledge. No, I had come this far on my own.

  A ten-minute break, then back to my notebook, I decided.

  I reached for one of my mother’s old albums and flicked through the photos in their plastic sleeves. It was a Christmas album filled with winter pallor, me and Fiona sitting on a pink carpet, surrounded by a sea of used wrapping paper. I picked up the next album, covered in soft, tan leather, but as I opened it, I was surprised to find, not photos, but a sheaf of papers filled with our mother’s sloping handwriting. My first thought was that they were a collection of letters, but as I began looking through the pages, I noted the chapter heads.

  I drew it onto my lap, expecting it to be one of my mother’s stories that I’d seen before; yet, as I began to read, the words were completely fresh, unfamiliar. It felt like treasure, a piece of my mother that I hadn’t worn smooth by stroking the memory of it.

  Within minutes, I was lost in the story. It was like disappearing into an effervescent dream – the characters so real that I wanted to reach into the pages, sit with them, talk with them, cry alongside them.

  The light faded from the room, hours slipping past. I moved only to turn on a lamp, to pull a blanket over my knee. The story consumed me, the deft beauty of it, the plot that weaved so many strands into a single, textured narrative. The breathless pace.

  It was morning when I finished the final page. Outside I heard birds chirping, the beep of a van reversing, the huff of a bin lorry. I was exhausted, yet utterly elated. Look what our mother had done! I couldn’t wait to share this with Fiona.

  I set aside the manuscript, deciding to take a quick shower, clear my head, and then push on. I only had a few hours to get back to my agent.

  As steaming water sluiced over my scalp, I saw it: the fresh bloom of blood. I watched the hypnotic pattern it made as it fanned outwards before making a path to the plug hole. I knew the rhythm of my cycles, was acutely tuned to the minor fluctuations of my body – a dull ache in my lower back, or a slightly bloated feeling around my middle – that signalled it was coming. I found that it was better to know in advance that my body had, yet again, failed me, rather than having to bear witness to the red proof of it.

  But somehow that month – perhaps in the rush of a particularly busy set of shifts at the coffee house, or the excitement of the publisher meeting – I had missed the usual signifiers, and instead allowed myself to feel a tiny heartbeat of hope.

  Two years and five months we had been trying for. Twenty-nine cycles – each ending the same way. I began to see that the future I’d mapped out, a future that orbited around me becoming a mother, was going to have to shift. It would need to make space for th
e possibility that I would become someone else, someone who didn’t fold tiny sets of dinosaur pyjamas beneath pillows or hold a small pudgy hand on a pavement repeating, ‘Look both ways.’

  I snapped off the shower, twisted my damp hair within a towel, and returned to my laptop. Maybe, I told myself as I read the waiting message from my agent – ‘Ready with an idea I can ping across?’ – just maybe, what I am meant to be is a writer.

  In that moment I felt viscerally connected to my mother, as if she had been watching over me, gifting me those pages, saying, Here! Go make this dream real!

  And anyway, two paragraphs, that was all I had to send my agent. Just the essence of my mother’s story. I wouldn’t have to take it any further – it was simply to display that I had ideas.

  It didn’t feel momentous. It didn’t even feel like a path had been chosen. I typed out those two short paragraphs, then pulled on my uniform, and went to work.

  ‘I went to work,’ I continue to explain to Fiona. ‘I didn’t feel guilty about sending over Mum’s idea because it was the book I’d already written – the book I’d spent eighteen months working on – that the commissioning editor was interested in.’

  Fiona is still, her gaze pinned to me.

  ‘My agent called later that day to tell me that the editor wanted to make an offer.’

  I’d taken the call in the stock room at work, my back to the door, the phone pressed to my ear. I could recall the exquisite excitement, as if something inside me was rising, reaching for air, filling my lungs with the glorious possibility of a new future. One that didn’t involve the black apron fastened above my hips, or the dishwasher that needed filling with dark-ringed mugs.

  As I’d listened, nodding intently, hoping the reception didn’t falter during this call that was a lifeline, my agent said, ‘The acquisitions team liked your novel and said your writing style is fresh and beautiful – but, they didn’t think the concept was quite strong enough for the current market. Essentially, they felt the story was too quiet and lacked the hook that would help them sell it through to readers. However, what they did fall in love with was your second book idea. They think that’s the one.’

  The beautiful sensation of something lifting, rising – was pricked. It collapsed around me.

  ‘So, what do you think?’ my agent asked, bright with the expectation that, of course I would say, Yes! This was what every aspiring writer aimed for – a solid book deal with one of the largest and most respected publishers in the industry.

  How could I tell my agent that the second story idea – the one the acquisitions team had fallen in love with – wasn’t my own? I would not only lose the book deal, but my literary agent, too.

  What I wanted was my book published. I had done the work. I had written a ninety-thousand-word story. But in that high-rise, glass-fronted office in London, a team of people had sat around a table discussing fiction trends and packaging, and decided that the story I had written wasn’t the one that would sell. It was the other idea, that tiny concept sent to them via a hastily typed email.

  And they had been right.

  I look at Fiona. ‘I accepted the offer. I told myself that it was just a starting point. Mum’s book would secure me that first publishing contract, and then after that I’d be writing my own stories again.’

  It had been a small deal. They had offered me a fifteen-thousand-pound advance. I’d had no idea that my agent would then sell the rights internationally, that my mother’s story would cause a bidding auction in Germany with twelve publishers going to three rounds. That in Holland, editors were sending what my agent called ‘love-letters’, extolling why I should pick their publishing house. Or that in America, an editor in a New York skyscraper was already briefing her team of designers about how best to package the novel tipped to be their biggest-selling title that summer.

  ‘I felt like I’d pressed Start on something I couldn’t stop,’ I explained. ‘People wanted interviews. Book tours were arranged. I had to talk about my inspiration for the novel, how I brought my characters to life.’

  Submitting my mother’s manuscript was only the first lie. The others unfolded one after the other, digging a hole so deep that I couldn’t escape.

  ‘My insomnia flared back to life. I had panic attacks before interviews because, how could I stand in a roomful of people and talk about a book I didn’t write? Everyone was congratulating me, telling me how proud I must feel, what a beautiful novel I’d written.’

  I look at my sister. ‘I trapped myself in a life I never wanted.’

  Fiona’s stare is unflinching. ‘Didn’t you?’

  35

  Elle

  ‘Mum worked two jobs,’ Fiona says, looking straight ahead, eyes dark, almost unfocused. ‘Yet she still set an alarm every morning, so she could write before work.’

  I’ve anchored myself by the oak trunk. Below the tight set of my jaw, I can feel the flicker of my pulse.

  As a girl, if I woke early, I’d often find my mother sitting at the kitchen table, head bowed over a notebook. I recall the perfect stream of her handwriting as it flowed across the page, the knit of concentration in her brow. If my mother noticed me, she’d glance up, pen hovering above the page as she’d offer to make breakfast – but I could see it in her eyes, the cost of leaving behind her story.

  ‘Mum put everything into her writing,’ Fiona continues. ‘She didn’t have the privilege of going to university, or the luxury of financial support. She squeezed every moment she could from each day and used them to write.’

  Turning to her handbag, she removes a large manila envelope. From it she withdraws a set of pages that I recognise: our mother’s manuscript.

  ‘Mum never told us she was working on a novel,’ she says, laying the manuscript on the desk, like an exhibit. ‘Why do you think that was?’

  The question hasn’t been pitched for an answer.

  ‘Mum never truly believed she was any good. She referred to her writing as her silly hobby. She didn’t tell anyone about it. Beyond having a couple of short stories published, she wrote for herself, for pleasure. She wrote because she couldn’t not.’

  Fiona places her forefinger in the centre of the manuscript, an arrow pinning it to my desk.

  ‘When Mum died, she had no idea that she’d left behind something of such startling beauty that people all over the world would go on to read it, to fall in love with her characters, to recommended it. She never got to see any of that, or to know that all those years she dedicated to her silly hobby – meant something.’

  I feel the rise of guilt, sticky and hot, crawling into my throat.

  ‘When you found her manuscript, you could have seen it as a chance to honour her. You could have published the story on her behalf, posthumously, and brought her dream to life. It would have been Mum’s legacy – the stamp she left behind.’ She pauses for a fraction of a beat. ‘Yet you claimed it for yourself. There was no one to stop you, so you thought, I’ll have that.’

  My teeth press against the insides of my cheek, clamp to the warm glossy flesh. The words sound so dark, so calculated.

  Ever since I submitted my mother’s manuscript, I’ve fought to push away the disgrace of what I’ve done, to squeeze it to the back of my mind. The sensation is like an immense pressure, building and expanding.

  Fiona’s words puncture something. Guilt and regret come rushing out. I cover my face with my hands, a raw sob escaping into the room. The hot slide of tears streams from my eyes.

  My mother loved me, believed in me.

  But I betrayed her.

  Fiona’s expression remains motionless, rigid. ‘Does Flynn know?’

  The question is simple. Answerable. I wipe my face with the back of my hands.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Flynn never read your original manuscript – no one did – so you thought you’d get away with it.’

  ‘It was never about getting away with it. He was abroad when the book deal happened. By the time he flew
home, I was in too deep. I didn’t know how to undo it. I was—’

  ‘I remember you calling to tell me the news,’ Fiona says, cutting me off. She leans against the writing desk, one ankle crossed over the other. Chin raised, lips pursed. ‘I was eight months pregnant, kneeling in front of my holdall, trying to work out what the hell one puts in a hospital bag. I wanted so very, very badly to talk to Mum, for her to tell me what to pack, what to do, that this was all going to be okay. And then you called.

  ‘I felt this surge of relief to hear your voice. I began to tell you about my hospital bag dilemmas. You listened – listened for ages – and it was only right at the very end that you said, “Hey, I’ve got some news.”’

  Fiona’s expression tightens, a muscle working in her lower jaw. ‘I was floored. A book deal? A fucking book deal! Writing had always been my career. It was part of how I defined myself, how other people saw me: Fiona the journalist. But when I put down the phone, I realised that, somehow, we had switched lives.

  ‘You visited after Drake was born. You saw how hard I found it adjusting to motherhood. I had expected to be filled with this instinctive, body-rocking love that new mothers talked about, but I just … I wasn’t. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. And this whirlwind of success you were riding – the praise from critics, the sudden surge of wealth – all of that just compounded everything I was lacking. All I knew was that I was somehow failing. Failing Drake. Failing Bill. Failing myself.’

  She pushes away from the desk, turning and positioning herself in front of the glass wall, her back to me. The beach is shrouded in darkness, except for the white trim of the waves that surge towards the waiting shore. In the reflection, I can see the stony set of Fiona’s face.

  ‘A few weeks after Drake was born, you decided you were going to move to Cornwall. I wanted to be happy about it. Truly, I did. I knew how much you loved Drake and wanted to be near him – but I also felt like, somehow, this space I was trying to establish for myself was being compromised.’