In Pursuit of Happiness

by Freya Kennedy

  He’d urged her to live big. She didn’t realise he had a very clear idea of how big in his head. ‘Yes, Jo, live big and chase your dreams. But stop at the medium-sized dreams. Those old big dreams can get messy. Put yourself out there, but not, you know, actually out there.’ She imagined his face, his lips moving, his mouth speaking those words. She imagined the glint in his eyes. How he made her feel kind of shaky. It was okay to trust her gut, as long as she trusted his gut more.

  ‘Oh feck off!’ she mumbled, throwing open her case and starting to fill it. She vowed not to think about him any more and, besides, she had far more pressing things to worry about.

  The previous night she had presented a perfectly groomed image of a woman in a designer suit, poised and elegant. The rest of her wardrobe – the wardrobe Ewan McLachlan would see over the course of the next three days – fell very much outside of the poised and elegant bracket.

  What would he think when she rocked up in her black skinny jeans, her oversized T-shirt, Converse and the shapeless but exceptionally comfortable cardigan she wore on days when she felt like she needed a hug? It wasn’t like she could wear her fancy blue suit for several days in a row. It wasn’t exactly a versatile capsule item, and even if it were, it was currently en route to the dry cleaners after Mags had accidentally tipped half a gin and tonic over the trousers the previous evening. It had been shortly after they’d found a particularly handsome picture of Ewan through Google – one in which he looked like he was a real life Disney prince. Mags had declared herself having a hot flush and went to wave her hand in front of her face, realising just a moment too late she was still holding her drink.

  ‘This is about your writing, not your clothes,’ Jo told herself. She pulled a capped-sleeved floral summer dress, in bright yellow with a little bluebird motif, from the back of the wardrobe and put it in her case, along with her bright white, hardly worn Converse which she saved for summer months. If she slathered on some of that slow-building, self-tanning moisturiser on her legs, it might even make for a good look for her. Next, she packed a few of her nicer T-shirts and a black smock top which looked amazing with skinny jeans and her wedged sandals.

  Wishing she had a proper laptop bag, she folded her ancient laptop in a towel and packed it, along with the battery charger, which needed to be permanently attached to it at all times. She grabbed a few pens from her dressing table, and two of the notebooks she kept beside her bed. Those were the sum total of her writing tools, but, she told herself, that didn’t matter. Even without the latest and most fancy MacBook, specialist writing software or expensive moleskin notebooks, she had written something that Ewan McLachlan had loved so much he’d offered to mentor her.

  Ewan McLachlan, who Google had told her, had sold fifteen million books across twelve different counties. Ewan McLachlan who had won almost every major crime writing award that there was to be won in the UK. Ewan McLachlan who, according to Google again, was single but the father to one child. (She’d had to search all the details she could find about him, after all.) Ewan McLachlan who smouldered in black and white in the author picture on his publisher’s page but who smouldered even more in real life, not that it mattered of course, because this was purely and entirely a professional trip.

  Zipping up her bag, she headed out of her room. Her mother looked more than a little green around the gills as Jo carried her case downstairs. ‘Never again, Jo. That’s a promise,’ she said, but there was a hint of a smile on her face all the same.

  ‘Tell that to Auntie Mags,’ Jo smiled back. ‘Look, I’ll probably be gone by the time you make it back from dropping Clara at school. I’ll keep in touch and, if you need me, sure, I’m only in Donegal. I can be home in an hour or so.’ A pang of love for Clara rose in her, closely followed by a wave of guilt that she was leaving her, even for a short trip.

  ‘Darling, I love you, so believe me when I say that we won’t need you this weekend. There is nothing that could possibly happen that would be more important than you getting this time to work towards your dream. Miss Clara and I will be just fine. I’ve raised kids before, you know. Clara’s hardly a handful. Unlike some others were…’

  ‘Surely you’re not talking about me, Mum?’ Jo blinked, as she pulled her best innocent expression.

  ‘Of course not. Sure, you always were an angel,’ her mum said, her voice suddenly thick with emotion.

  ‘Yeah, but that halo was propped up with two horns. You just didn’t know the half of it!’ Jo teased and enjoyed the expression of confusion on her mother’s face. ‘I’m only kidding, Mum. Now, you better get going or Clara will be late for school and you’ll get a bad look from the school secretary.’

  In all the things that were considered a fate worse than death, a bad look from the school secretary of Clara’s school was definitely a top-five contender. She’d an expression that could turn a man, woman, or child to stone.

  ‘God forbid,’ her mother said, crossing herself.

  Jo pecked her mum on the cheek and crouched down to give Clara a hug.

  ‘Now, you be a good girl and I’ll bring you back a surprise with me. I love you.’

  Clara nodded, her expression was serious and then she wrapped her small arms around her big sister and squeezed her tightly.

  ‘Come on, ladybug,’ her mother said. ‘We’d best be off.’

  With a reticence that pulled at Jo’s heart, Clara extricated herself from the hug and followed her mother out of the door. Jo knew that Clara would be better than fine. She knew that within a minute, she would be holding her mum’s hand tightly and swinging her arms as she walked to school and chatted about her routine. It was just Jo who had to fight her mythical guilt demons.

  ‘No,’ she said aloud as she looked at the affirmations her mother had stuck around the hall. ‘Today is for positivity. I am in control. I am successful. I can do this.’

  22

  Are We There Yet?

  Jo had arranged to meet Ewan at the Bishop Gate Hotel right in the centre of Derry, just off The Diamond. She figured it was much easier to meet him at a central spot rather than try and direct him through the streets of Derry to find her home. It also gave her a little bit of control over her own nerves as she didn’t have to sit, impatiently, on the edge of the sofa jumping every time a car pulled up outside in case it was Mr McLachlan himself.

  She was already jumpy enough. Every time her phone pinged with a new message, she felt her heart skip a beat. Auntie Mags was first to text to wish her luck and tell her that she loved her very much. She added that she too would never, ever drink again and she hoped very much to make it through the day. ‘Another Crochet Club with not a single crochet stitch done. That’s a win!’ the message ended.

  The next message was from Noah, to tell her he was proud of her and to assure her that he would be on hand should her mum need any help with Clara, or anything else.

  Libby’s text was basically the equivalent of a long scream of ‘OMG, you are going to work with THE Ewan McLachlan’, which was about as excited as she had ever known Libby to get.

  Just before her taxi arrived, a text message arrived from Harry, which made her smile. Everyone knew that Harry used his phone only very sparingly and in fact he probably wouldn’t have one at all if she and Noah hadn’t insisted upon it after his heart attack.

  That he took time to type her out a full message was akin to a modern miracle. She imagined he had taken forever to find each letter and make sure his punctuation was impeccable – and all the time with his eyes squinting at the small font and his pointer finger jabbing at the phone.

  * * *

  Dear Jo, I wanted to wish you the very best of luck with your writing trip. Libby told me about it this morning when she called in to buy some milk. It was semi-skimmed, even though everyone knows full cream milk is much nicer. I keep telling her that she might get even more customers if she switched, but no. She doesn’t listen to me. I don’t understand you young people and your choices. Yours Sincerely,
Harry Gallagher (from the shop).

  * * *

  She smiled at his message, and at his clarification that he was Harry from the shop. As if there was any other Harry in her life, let alone one who could opine even in a good luck message. She felt her spirits lift, but only momentarily. The realisation that the one message she really wanted, the one she had been hoping for, had not arrived. No, Lorcan seemed to have gone radio silent on her and she couldn’t help but feel disappointed, then angry, then indifferent.

  After all, this wasn’t about Lorcan and he shouldn’t be taking up any of her thoughts now, not when she was on her way to Ewan McLachlan’s hotel.

  By the time her taxi pulled up outside, Jo had managed to clear her mind enough to look forward to seeing the handsome writer again and hearing more of his thoughts on her writing. He had been so witty and entertaining the previous night, both when he was addressing his readers and when he was speaking to her. He had, she realised, spoken to her with genuine respect as if she was indeed a proper writer, which she was finally starting to believe might be possible.

  She pulled her case from the boot of the taxi, smiled at the doorman and walked into the lobby, where Ewan was seated, flicking casually through his phone. She was just wondering how she could attract his attention when he lifted his head and looked at her, his face breaking into a warm smile.

  ‘You came!’ he declared, standing up and pulling himself to his full six-foot-four height. ‘I wondered if you might decide it was all a bad idea or worry that I might be an actual serial killer rather than someone who just writes about them.’

  Jo laughed. The thought that he might murder her and leave her body halfway up a hill in Donegal hadn’t crossed her mind before now. She was fairly sure he was joking. ‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘Although you should know that my mum is following my movements via my phone and if I go off-grid at all, she’ll be calling the cops.’

  ‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ Ewan said. ‘And make sure that you leave your phone in the hotel, if I do decide to take you to an isolated spot for some light murder.’ He laughed, his weather-worn face lined and sun-kissed. God, he really did look George Clooney in his younger years. It was enough to make a person want to swoon.

  No sooner had that thought entered her head than she shook it away. No. She would not think about Ewan like that. No good could come of it and she was determined that this would be an entirely professional relationship. She wouldn’t give Lorcan, or anyone else, the chance to say she’d been taken advantage of. No. This was work. Very important work. Even if he did look a little like a Hollywood hunk. All sinewy and square of jaw. Goodness, she thought, she really needed to get a grip. Especially if she was to get through the next few days with him. She couldn’t be mooning over him like a schoolgirl. No, she was a professional writer (the newly penned affirmation on her dressing table mirror said so), and she had to act like one.

  ‘Yes, hiding my phone before you murder me would be a wise course of action. Maybe destroy the SIM, just to be sure? Unless you want to deal with my mother that is. But I’ll warn you now, if you do end up on her wrong side, you’ll end up wishing it was you who had been murdered on a dark back road. In fact, you may well end up exactly like that.’

  She noticed that their conversation, and its rather disturbing content, was attracting the attention of a tourist checking out of the hotel. The woman, perhaps in her fifties, with exceptionally big, lacquered and bleached hair, stood, her mouth agape.

  Jo fought the urge to giggle. ‘Are you ready to go?’ she asked Ewan, as she leant a little closer to him. ‘I think we have an audience who is about ten seconds away from calling the police herself.’ She gestured her head backwards and Ewan looked in the direction of the woman before smiling once again.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I think maybe we should be off,’ he said quietly before he raised his voice again. ‘Lots of murdering to be done.’

  He grabbed his case, and his laptop bag – which was significantly more stylish and professional-looking than her laptop-wrapped-in-a-towel ensemble – and led the way outside, to where his car had been left waiting for him.

  ‘I can tap our destination into the satnav,’ he said. ‘Or maybe you know a quicker way, being a local and all.’

  ‘Where’s our first stop?’ she asked him.

  ‘Buncrana,’ he replied. ‘The Inishowen Gateway Hotel. Do you know it?’

  ‘I do indeed. Everyone from round here knows it. No need for the satnav, just point your car towards those hills,’ she said, pointing to her left. ‘It’s more or less a straight road from here, or at least from the bottom of this hill.’

  ‘Then I’ll take your lead. I do appreciate you doing this, Jo,’ he said. ‘And I promise I’ll do my very best to help you in any way I can with your writing.’

  ‘I’m happy to help,’ she told him, struck by his sincerity. If only Lorcan could see him, he’d know that Ewan only had a professional motive. She, of course, quickly chided herself for letting Lorcan in. ‘What kind of thing are you hoping to see or what do you want to research?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, I want to catch some of the small-town feel of Buncrana today. Take in the shops, the pubs, the Irishness of it. I really wanted to see a seaside town, just to immerse myself in the sights, sounds and smells of it. I write better that way, you know.’ Jo took in his words, hardly daring to believe that he was really speaking to her as a fellow scribe.

  ‘And, late afternoon, we could sit down and discuss your book in more detail. I finished it last night, and wow, for a first book it’s incredibly accomplished. There are a few plot strands I think you could expand a little and I’ve some character notes, which you are more than welcome to ignore.’

  Jo was still floating on the high of ‘incredibly accomplished’ that the talk of plot strands didn’t seem at all intimidating. ‘Sounds really helpful. I really appreciate your effort,’ she said. ‘As for Buncrana, it’s like a second home to a lot of Derry people, so I’ll be more than happy to do a walkabout with you. I’m fairly familiar with it. It’s probably the Main Street and the shorefront that will interest you. Some of the wee villages close by might be worth seeing too. And Mamore Gap is definitely a must. Why no one has set a crime novel there yet is beyond me. It’s the perfect location.’

  ‘I thought so. Thought it was time to move things out of Scotland for a bit, you know but keep it Celtic.’

  ‘I’m all for that. There’s something here that begs to be written about,’ she said, aware that her own book made ample use of the Inishowen landscape.

  ‘There is, and you do it well yourself. Maybe I could learn from you,’ he said with a smile.

  She wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t taking the piss, so she just smiled and nodded.

  ‘Jo, relax a bit. I’m not flattering you. I’m being honest,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll try, it’s all just a little overwhelming at the moment. A week ago, I’d have died to think anyone was reading my work. Never mind that a successful author was reading it and liking it.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you didn’t die, and I’m glad I read it. Tell me, what’s your usual read? Your book is a great domestic noir, so is that your normal thing?’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I just enjoy good storytelling. I don’t really factor genre into it, not when reading. I love the kind of books where ordinary people do extraordinary things, I suppose. Be it that they love completely, or they make sacrifices, or overcome great obstacles. Or that they hate completely and are properly twisted. I’ll read anything. My to-be-read pile is mountainous and it’s only gotten bigger since Libby opened her shop.’

  ‘So it’s about the story for you?’ he asked, his eyes on the road.

  ‘Very much. Just whatever I’m in the mood for. But it has to feel real. It has to have heart. I have to think the characters are one hundred per cent real and genuine and I could bump into them in the street. I mean, maybe not the murderers… but everyone else.’

  Jo lo
oked at Ewan as he nodded. ‘It’s a skill,’ he said. ‘To create a believable world on paper with real characters. It’s one we all have to keep working at. But tell me this, Jo Campbell, why do you write? It sounds to me like you have a busy life, running the pub and volunteering at the bookshop. I assume you’ve a family and good friends who take up your time. What makes you, at the end of the day, lift a pen and paper, or take out your laptop, and start writing? Why that, instead of sitting down to watch a good movie or having a glass of wine?’

  ‘Oh, I watch movies,’ she laughed. ‘Mostly children’s movies these days, mind. But I used to be borderline obsessive. Romantic comedies, mostly. When Harry Met Sally, While You Were Sleeping – that kind of thing. Or the oldies but goodies, Singing in the Rain, High Society. Anything that leaves me smiling.’

  ‘And children’s movies now? I didn’t realise you were a mum, sorry. What age is your little one?’

  Jo shook her head. ‘I’m not a mum. She, Clara, is my little sister. My parents adopted her recently, but she’s been in our life for almost all her six years. My parents were her foster carers first. Clara and I are very close. She’s often mistaken for my daughter – she has the same fiery red hair, and fiery temper at times. She’s one of the great loves in my life. So what about you? Any little McLachlans running around?’ Of course she knew the answer to this question already thanks to her Google stalking, but she wasn’t going to admit to him that she had studied his Wikipedia page intensely that morning.

  ‘One, a boy. Sam. He’s a fairly typical eight-year-old. Football-mad. Addicted to Minecraft. He has to be forced to read a book every now and again. It’s fair to say he’s not a fan. He stays with me every second weekend and some of the holidays. He’s a good kid, you know, coped admirably when his mother and I divorced. Probably better than I or my ex-wife did.’