A User's Guide to Make-Believe
Page 31
If, after two years, the plant and the animal are both still healthy … then you are ready to start rebuilding relationships.
It was something Jake had told her, and it had stuck. Another year, though – that was a long time.
On her screen, she called up the message she’d received that morning while she was feeding Pita her breakfast biscuits. Allowed herself a tight little smile, as she read it for the fiftieth time: From Trusted Financial Solutions. Your balance is settled. To borrow fast, call now. Loans processed 24 hrs a day.
She had undone the worst mistake: Finn and Ella were safe. If she achieved nothing else, that would be enough. And yet, here she was, still hoping for more. You could say she was trying to fast-track a reconciliation – or else that she was a realist. Chances were it would take a year at least, twelve months of quiet perseverance, for her sister to understand that everything, now, was different.
But it was. The whole world was different – because the world was all there was. This: the world in front of her, above and beneath her. The grass and earth packed under her trainers, the wind dragging her hair across her eyes. No waterfalls. No happy endings. No Alan as he used to be. Only as he was, in his institutional room.
An excited terrier came streaking across the grass, bounced up onto its hind legs and planted two muddy paws on her jeans. ‘Hey, you,’ she said. Ruffled its ears, and laughed as it gave her hand a quick once over with a long wet tongue before it sprinted off again.
If Pita were only a dog, her wait would be less lonely. But in a strange way, she felt she had company anyway. Because she was still connected. Not through Make-Believe: not like that. Just, when the wind brushed her skin. When she drew her palms over the cracked wood of the bench. And though she didn’t want to admit it, perhaps it was Lewis who’d shown her this; that she could connect with another person, with someone who wasn’t Alan. She just needed to learn how to do it without any help from Make-Believe. She needed to learn how to do it alone.
She sat in the midst of the happy clamour rising from the play-park, the kids clambering and swinging and climbing, part of a bright random pattern of pinks and reds and blues. If she kept on watching the pattern, eventually she’d see them, Ella and Finn – and this time she would join them in the ice cream queue. Her niece wouldn’t jump into her arms. Her nephew would not ask wide-eyed about her fight. Her sister’s face wouldn’t crease in a smile. Meg would be angry still; the kids would be blank or shy or even scared. But in time, perhaps, they’d let her buy them all ice cream – and in her mouth the chocolate would melt, smooth and sweet.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful for funding awarded by Creative Scotland, and for the time and space provided by the Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers. A doctoral studentship from Northumbria University also supported me to explore some of the ideas in this book.
The lines from ‘A Note to the Difficult One’ are reproduced by kind permission of Rosalind Mudaliar, the Estate of W. S. Graham; thanks also to Toni Velikova and the Scottish Poetry Library for their help with this.
Special thanks to Viccy Adams and Helen Sedgwick for invaluable advice and support; to Francesca Davies, Juliet Mahoney and everyone at Lutyens & Rubinstein, and to the team at Allison & Busby, without all of whom this book would not exist; and to Aidan, for sharing my Make-Believe.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JANE ALEXANDER has completed a PhD in creative writing and teaches at the University of Edinburgh and the Open University. For several years she ran creative writing workshops for people in recovery from substance misuse. Her first novel, The Last Treasure Hunt, was published to critical acclaim. She lives in Edinburgh.
janealexander.net @DrJaneAlexander
By Jane Alexander
A User’s Guide to Make-Believe
COPYRIGHT
Allison & Busby Limited
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London W1F 8AN
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First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2020.
This ebook edition published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2020.
Copyright © 2020 by JANE ALEXANDER
Permission to reproduce extract from ‘A Note to the Difficult One’ granted by the estate of W. S. Graham
The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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 without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–0–7490–2424–6