Page 74 of Just for December
‘You sound very emotionally healthy,’ Magda retorts, drolly, and then she can hear something in the background, giggles, and a muffled whisper akin toMarkus! Stop that!or similar.
‘Things sound like they’re going nauseatingly well with Mr Service Station,’ Evie notes.
‘I can’t possibly comment on that,’ Magda says, and it’s obvious Markus is listening. She’s stayed behind to spend some extra time with him, and Evie can’t fault her. Magda deserves it. ‘But listen, you need me and I’m there in a shot, okay?’
‘I know,’ Evie replies. ‘But it’s all good here. Enjoy your man while you can, and text me later, okay?’
‘Okay,’ Magda says, and before she hangs up Evie can hear more delighted squealing. Other people’s happiness is gross – even when that other person is your best friend.
‘Right,’ Evie says to herself, clapping her hands together and looking around. ‘Okay then …’
In the end she burns off her nervous energy by walking to the hotel and grabbing her laptop. She takes it down to a coffee shop next door to the hotel, telling herself she’ll just reread the last eight thousand or so words she got down and then jot down a few ideas about moving forward. It’s a gorgeous little place, with two window seats and a real log-burning stove and the heavy smell of cinnamon in the air. She gives a self-consciousguten tagand orders a double-shot latte and a muffin, with a seltzer. There’s ten or so tables, half of which are occupied, all with groups of two or three people full of festive cheer, apparently catching up before the holidays.
She sets her stuff – her coat and bag – on the chair one side of the table, and then hops up into a window seat, legs crossed underneath her, laptop literally in her lap, so that she’s like the proverbial doggy in the window. Anyone who passes by can see her, but it makes her feel part of something, to write that way. She knows so many writers prefer the quiet of home or a rented office space, but Evie has long sought inspiration by being out and about in the world. The thing is: it’s always as an observer. She’s so seldom been a participant in her own life, lately. She looks down at her new tattoo. She makes a quiet promise to herself to participate more, to be spontaneous, to make leaps. This trip has opened up something in her, an appetite totry things, at the very least. To stop being so damned careful.
To stop being so damned careful.
Huh.
Evie opens up a new Word document instead of the file she’s been working on. On the first page she types: UNTITLEDby EVIE BIRD, as is her tradition. She makes sure her settings are right – that it’s in Times New Roman, twelve point, double spaced, that the shortcuts for chapter headings are in place and the page numbers are in the bottom right-hand corner, just how she likes them. And then that’s what she types. She thinks of the women she met yesterday, and goes with that as a name, and that’s where she starts with her next novel:
Petra Egerton had decided to stop being so damned careful with her life.
She doesn’t stop writing for the next three and a half hours.
37
Evie
The rush of finding the rhythm of a story is the reason why Evie keeps doing what she does. She won’t ever be on social media documenting her life, or out on tour going from bookshop to bookshop, nice as she now knows it would be to meet her readers. Becausethatisn’tthis:creating, writing, going in hard and deep on a story that feels like a compulsion to get out of her head and through her fingers onto the screen. That is her offering to this world, that is how she makes sense of things. When the café closes and she’s forced to down tools and head back to the hotel to dump her bag, her mind is racing, her blood positively humming with creativity – it’s something she’s not felt in several books. She’s always written what she cares about, but she hasn’t felt this specific feeling for a while, and now it is back she wants to hang on to it for as long as possible.
In fact, when she gets back to her room, she sits at the small table by the window and decides to write one thousand more words, because she can. She’s not even sure that this book is a romance, like she’s done before: there’s something else she wants to say, something about a woman taking control of her narrative, taking it back from the outsourcing she has been doing, a thing that has been keeping her small.What happens,she thinks to herself as she folds one leg up under her, biting her lip and using the elastic on her wrist to tie up her hair,when a woman finally gets tired of her own bull?She almost can’t bear it. She’s asked herself the question, and now the character of Petra Egerton is going to seek out the answer.
It’s 11 p.m. when she finishes. In the space of eleven hours, she’s written almost ten thousand words – a tenth of a new book. Ten thousand words is often her own personal barometer of the tone of a manuscript, and so when she finally pauses and that feeling is still there – that light-headedness, that adrenaline – she knows this is it. The other idea has to go out of the window, even though it’s almost finished. This new one is exactly the story she wants to tell.
She gets up to pee and stretches a little. There’s a masseuse she sees back home in Utah who has never been able to fully get the knots out of her shoulders because Evie never fully commits to seeing her often enough. But she’s been given exercises to do, to help, and so she swings her arms loosely from one side to the other, and then puts her hands on her shoulders and circles forwards, then back.
She was supposed to talk to Duke today. It’s late. She’ssure filming will be done, so he’s likely to be in the hotel. She thinks of her character.Go find him,she tells herself.Go be brave.
She dabs on some lip balm and goes to the lobby. There’s a few of the crew in the bar, Katerina included, but she can’t deal with that now. At the front desk, she asks if they can tell her which room Duke is in so she can knock for him. They’ve moved around so many hotels she realises she doesn’t even know which room is his in this one.
‘I’m afraid we can’t give that information out,’ the young man with big brown eyes says to her, and to his credit he does seem sorry. ‘We’ve signed paperwork of the highest order declaring we will not breach any safety standards.’
Evie sighs. ‘I get it,’ she says.
The man smiles sadly. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Although, what I can say is … the more high profile the guest, the higher floor they are probably on.’
Evie smiles. ‘That helps a lot,’ she says, understanding that if Duke is the top talent he must surely be on the top floor. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? The best rooms are always on the top floor.
She takes the elevator up, wondering to herself if this is right, whilst simultaneously telling herself that she is brave, she is beautiful, she is badass. She taps her foot as the elevator goes up, floor one, floor two, floor three … Has time slowed down? She turns and looks at herself in the elevator mirror. Brave. Beautiful. Badass.
A little tinkle of a bell lets her know she’s on the top floor, and she steps out. It’s quiet. There are four rooms up here, all named suites rather than numbered rooms, withsleek gold plates on their heavy oak doors. She looks around. Right. She’s just going to knock, and when he answers she’s going to say … what? I love you? No, that would beinsane.She’s going to say: I’m scared but I like you? That’s more her speed. Okay. Brave. Beautiful. Badass. I’m scared but I like you.
She knocks on the first door, and there’s no answer.
She knocks on the second door, and Marnie answers, dressed in a robe, another one of the producers in there with her, also in a robe. It might even be Malcolm. Evie has interrupted something.
‘Oh shoot, sorry,’ she says. ‘I was looking for Duke.’
