“So, they’re not going to pay?”
“Not for this novel in this form, no. I’m sorry.”
I had thought the risks through so far as money went, or I thought I had, but clearly, I’d grossly overestimated my value because I’d had no idea it rested so completely on Eliza.
“The house,” I said.
“What house?”
“We’re moving.”
“I didn’t know.”
“I didn’t know about it myself until this week. Dan bought a house without telling me. It’s a reno job.”
“What?”
I didn’t know what to say. It was humiliating. I heard Max exhale.
“So, you need money?”
“We will do.”
“The way out of this is to put Eliza back into the book. I have every confidence that it’s doable because you’re such a talented writer. What do you think?”
“I’ll think about it,” I said, and hung up. If I’d said any more, I would have broken down and I didn’t want Max to hear me like that. It was too shameful. He tried to call back, but I didn’t pick up.
I packed up my stuff and went out into the cold afternoon. The city streets were swarming with people. I began to walk home before realizing I didn’t want to go back there, not yet, and I stopped abruptly. A woman collided with me, knocking both of us off balance. “Hey!” she said.
She leaned over to pick up her bag. She wore clothing that Eliza might wear when she was off-duty, jeans, boots, and a khaki jacket, and had the same athletic physique, the long red hair, and I held my breath as she turned to me, waiting to see Eliza’s eyes, slightly hooded and darkly liquid, just as I had written them, with their slow blink that made you feel as if she had all the time in the world to unpick you psychologically. I had made many characters squirm beneath that gaze. I braced myself to be the subject of it, and also because I was afraid of seeing the injuries I’d inflicted on her.
But it wasn’t Eliza. This woman was older, her face entirely different, and the relief I felt made me bark out a laugh. She looked at me as if I was crazy. “Watch where you’re going,” she said. I apologized and as I walked on, not knowing where I was going to go, all I could think about was how if I put Eliza back in the books, I would see her everywhere again, around every corner, in crowds, sitting beside me on the bus, in bed.
“You won’t,” Eliza said. “I promise.”
I walked on, pushing past more people, but it seemed as if the world around me had tilted a little and I tried to think about how I was going to tell Dan what Max had said, and I had no idea.
It was much later when I let myself into the flat and Dan shouted, “Where have you been? I just heard the vans are coming at nine tomorrow morning. You need to pack your stuff,” and I knew this was a moment when I should come clean but all I could say was “Okay, then,” because I had no idea where to start explaining and I felt as if I was drowning in all of the change.
We moved the next day, as planned. I had a sleepless night. We both did. Dan mistook my restlessness for excitement, and I let him.
I felt as if I was barely there while our boxes were loaded into the van. When the flat door shut behind us for the last time it was a brutal severance, a final silencing of all the gentle whispers our home and I had exchanged. Leaving the city was horrible. As we drove across the bridge a taut knot of anxiety formed in the pit of my stomach and it tightened as we approached the new house.
When Dan stopped the car, he put his hand on my knee and squeezed. “Welcome home,” he said, “and welcome to the beginning of the rest of our lives.”
“Put a brave face on it,” Eliza said. “You’ve got no choice now.”
“Welcome home to you, too,” I said.
I didn’t know who to hate more in that moment, myself, or him for bringing me back here.
I stood beside the car for the longest time before I walked into the house. I could see the tops of the trees in Stoke Woods. I imagined their trunks bleeding memories like sap and the rustling leaves whispering accusations, and when I listened harder, I could make out the voices of the search party being carried on the wind, and my brother’s name.
IV.
It doesn’t take long for Teddy to get tired and it hurts when he tries to sit on you. The heels of his shoes dig into your calves and his weight is enough to make your ankles feel crushed. He’s just said it for the first time: “I want to go home,” and every cell in your body is willing him not to say it again, but his eyes have gone glassy with fatigue and you know you’re on borrowed time.
You also know you can’t leave now because of the burning inside you, the hot tug of wanting to stay. You think that if you walk away from here now and go back into the woods, then everything around you will go gray again and you’ll have to retreat back into your head to find color.
There, it’s always Technicolor, kaleidoscopic and packed so full of thoughts and feelings that sometimes it feels as if it might explode.
9.
On our first morning in the new house, I crept out of bed quietly so as not to wake Dan. He had been up late, unpacking, moving stuff around, pacing the rooms. I’d heard the drag of furniture and his footsteps on the bare floors for what seemed like hours as I tried to get to sleep.
It was close to dawn and the darkness was tinged blue and friable. I made my way downstairs cautiously, not wanting to turn lights on, because that would make the fact of this house more real, but it meant I was spooked by each unfamiliar feature as it emerged from the gloom.
I sat at the kitchen table facing the expanse of window. It was noticeably quiet here compared to our flat. I was used to waking to traffic noise, a background drone of sirens, the rumble of trains. Here, there was birdsong and it occurred to me that I should take pleasure in it, but instead I couldn’t help imagining baby birds in their nests, bald, vulnerable, and needy, beaks stretched wide open to reveal bottomless red gullets.
I wanted to expel that image from my mind and stared hard at the strip of sky I could see above the hedges but it didn’t metamorphose as quickly as I thought it would, and it occurred to me this might be a good time to try to locate my friend the coffeepot.
“Why are you sitting in the dark?”
Dan’s voice startled me. I hadn’t heard him approach.
“I’m enjoying the dawn chorus,” I said. It was an answer I knew he’d approve of. I usually kept a few of those up my sleeve because he liked it when I conformed to his idea of what a creative person should be like.
The light switch snapped, and I blinked as the halogens deluged the room with light.
“Coffee?” he asked.
“I’ll make it.” Between books, it was important to demonstrate that I was willing to do stuff for myself, or Dan felt taken for granted.
I got up and took over the coffee making and he leaned against the glistening countertop to stretch. His running gear looked brand-new. “Run with me?” he asked.
“No way.” I laughed, and he did, too, because he knew I’d say that. I hated exercise.
Once he’d gone, I turned out the lights again, cradled the mug in my hands, and thought, When did he acquire that gear and when did he get so mad keen on running that he’d be up and out this early on the weekend? Has he been doing this in Devon while I was shuttered in my writing room?