How to Write a Love Story

by Katy Cannon

  For all he talked in class, I wasn’t sure I’d ever actually seen Drew speak to another student outside of it. But I supposed he had to – when I wasn’t around – because he always seemed to know everything that was going on around the place.

  Like now.

  “Oh, Rachel. You can’t imagine that Tilly Frost would date the mere mortals at this school?” Drew shook his head, a gesture he somehow managed to make look mocking. What can I say? I suppose the guy had to have at least one talent. “She’s far too good for the likes of us. In fact, I believe she’s actually sworn an oath of singledom in front of witnesses until she can meet a real man. Isn’t that right, Frost?”

  I stared at him. Drew and I might clash over books but he’d never attacked me personally before. Not like this, anyway. Either I’d unknowingly done something to offend him or the guy was having a seriously bad day for some reason.

  “Who on earth have you been talking to, Farrow?” Another thing that annoyed me about Drew (I was keeping a mental list) was the way he always called me by my surname. Like he didn’t want anyone to forget whose granddaughter I was – not that they were likely to. I’d started doing the same to him except now I was worried he actually liked it.

  Drew laughed. “Haven’t you heard? Apparently it’s practically a Valentine’s tradition around here now – waiting to see if Tilly Frost will finally crack and say yes to a date. I think there’s a betting pool. It’s not as big a deal as our new boy, though. All I’ve heard from anyone all morning is that there’s a new superstar student in town, and that you don’t date schoolboys. You claiming it’s all lies, Frost?”

  “I can’t say either way on the new guy, but I’m certain I’ve never sworn an ‘oath of singledom’. Whatever that is.” Because I hadn’t sworn an oath, exactly. Certainly not with witnesses. Still, I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks. Drew knew how to get to me.

  Rachel tilted her head to look at me. “Tilly, sweetheart, I hate to break it to you but the adult men outside this school aren’t actually all that much more mature than the boys in it. Trust me.”

  “I don’t have rules against dating,” I protested, although I don’t think either of them believed me at this point. Especially since I was lying about that part. “It’s just that I’m too busy living my life to waste time obsessing over some boy.” Especially one who wouldn’t live up to my – admittedly high – expectations.

  “Very sensible,” Rachel said. “And I was hoping you could use some of that time you’re saving to do me a favour…?”

  I knew it. I was grateful for the change of subject, though. “Depends on the favour.”

  “Do you think you could run the lower school Book Club yourself tomorrow afternoon?” She screwed her face up so she looked properly desperate. “It’s just that I’ve got a meeting about the Literary Festival tomorrow evening and there’s a million things I need to do to be ready for it. Including writing a request for a very special author visit … naming no names but trust me, if it comes off you’ll be thrilled.”

  “Thrilled?” I raised my eyebrows.

  “Delighted. Amazed. Enraptured.” Rachel leaned across the library counter, adding more excitement to her voice with every word.

  “Those are strong words,” I pointed out. “How can you be so sure I’ll love whoever this author is?”

  “Because I’ve listened to you rave about her books often enough.” She looked across at Drew. “Actually, I have a feeling you’ll be pretty pleased, too.”

  Drew and I exchanged a look. In our entire history of knowing each other (which was, admittedly, only five and a half months) we’d never agreed on a single book. Of course, we’d mostly only talked (OK, argued) about the books we studied in class, and most of those authors had already been dead for a couple of hundred years, so the likelihood of any of them coming to visit Westerbury were slim. Still, I couldn’t imagine anywhere our tastes might converge. On the few occasions I’d seen him actually reading in the library, or checking a book out, they were usually fantasy novels, or horror, or the really depressing sort of literary fiction. Not bad books but not my kind of thing.

  I liked a book where you knew from the first page that everything would work out OK, even if you couldn’t always see how when you were lost in it.

  Frowning, I turned back to Rachel. “OK, I give up. Who?” Because there was only one author I could remember really going on about to her – my favourite author (after Gran, of course). And there was no chance it could possibly be—

  “Juanita Cabrera,” Rachel said with a smug grin.

  I blinked at her, lost for words.

  “Seriously?” Even Drew’s eyes were wide with amazement. “You’re trying to get Juanita Cabrera here? But she hardly ever even comes to the UK!”

  “Not since she published The Hanged Man, and that was nearly ten years ago!” I said, causing Drew to turn those wide eyes on me. “What? It’s on her website.”

  “You’re a Cabrera fan?” he asked, obviously astonished.

  “Why wouldn’t I be? Let me guess – too highbrow for a romance reader, right?” I hated it when people made that sort of assumption – like stories about love and relationships weren’t just as important as ones about magic and wars and stuff. (Actually, I thought they were more important. After all, we had to live with other people every day. Surely anything that helped us understand them better was a good idea.)

  “You complain every time any book ends unhappily,” Drew pointed out. “And Cabrera isn’t exactly known for fluffy, feel-good stuff. Plus you hate fantasy.”

  “Cabrera isn’t fantasy, she’s more magical realism,” I argued. “And she writes good characters, with realistic relationships and friendships. I like the communities she creates.” And I’d almost forgiven her for not letting my two second favourite characters of all time – Henri and Isabella – get their Happy Ever After in Hallowed Ground.

  “Of course you like the characters – rather than the politics or the social message.” Drew shook his head. “I should have known.”

  “I can’t like both?” I asked, eyebrows raised. Actually, I did like both those things. “Not to mention her lyrical writing style, her imagination—”

  “OK, OK,” Rachel interrupted me. She gave me and Drew a pleading look. “Can we just accept that you’re both fans?”

  “I suppose,” Drew grumbled, and I nodded my agreement.

  “You’re really going to try and get her here in Westerbury for the Literary Festival?” I asked. Juanita Cabrera had kind of a cult following, and big formal events weren’t usually her style, as far as I could tell.

  “Not for the festival itself,” Rachel said. “But this year we’re doing a series of smaller events in the three months running up to it, held in local venues around the area, and she happens to be over in the country while they’re happening, so…”

  I let out a tiny squeak of excitement and saw Drew roll his eyes. Like he wasn’t just as excited as me.

  “No promises!” Rachel reminded us. “But if you can take over Book Club tomorrow, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “In that case, definitely,” I told her, grinning.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I realized I must have moved into a reception hot spot at last. Pulling it out, I checked the notification, my heart stuttering in my chest as I saw it was an email alert from the blog of one of the biggest romantic fiction reviewers.

  Suddenly all thoughts of Juanita Cabrera flew from my brain and I focused completely on the slowly loading review on my phone screen. I read it through carefully, savouring every word, my smile growing with each line of glowing praise.

  Until I reached the very end. Because it was then I realized that I was in a world of trouble, the moment Gran read this review.

  “A writer is someone who writes. It’s as simple – and as impossibly difficult – as that.”

  Beatrix Frost, Author In interview with the BBC, 2004

  That evening I sat at the dinner
table nervously nibbling on one last piece of garlic bread, flinching at every smile from my gran, who was sat at the head of the table. Every swipe of my dad’s finger across the screen of his tablet made me wince. My twin brothers sat in their high chairs, smearing banana rice pudding all over the tablecloth, my mum watching them with resignation.

  Any moment now, I thought. Any moment now, my secret would be out.

  “So, Bea, how was launch day then?” Mum asked, oblivious to my nerves.

  Gran’s gaze flew up to meet mine and I knew. This was it.

  “It went very well, thank you. The usual flurry of activity online.” Gran always claims not to understand the appeal of social media but I happen to know she’s totally addicted to Twitter. “Oh, and I had that interview about ‘the nature of love in the modern age’ on the radio this morning. Plus pre-sales are looking good, apparently.”

  “That’s great.” Dad put his tablet down on the table and slid it across to her. “And did you see this review from Flora Thombury?”

  As a maths professor who also writes popular non-fiction, Dad’s most famous book focused on the mathematical realities of love – the probability of meeting, falling for and marrying your true love – as well as the chances of staying married to them. His reviews were from a rather different sort of reader than Gran’s. But he also grew up as the son of Beatrix Frost, romance novelist extraordinaire, so he knew all the important names – and Flora was one of the most important. Her reviews could make or break a book.

  Given all the delays with getting the manuscript to the publisher in the first place, after Gran was hospitalized, the hardback edition had only just made it to the shops for the planned Valentine’s Day publication date.

  Gran had still been recovering through the production process, so I’d had to take on responsibility for her copy-edits, which was new, and the final proofread, which wasn’t. (Gran hated proofreading, so she always got someone else to do it. Usually me.)

  Since we were running so late, the publishers had decided to make a big thing of there being no copies available for reviewers – except for one or two really important ones, who’d been couriered theirs just yesterday.

  All of which meant that, with the book out today, Flora’s was the first review that had been written about Aurora Rising. And it was stunning, I knew that. I’d already read it that morning in the library.

  I knew exactly what it said and what it meant for me.

  And as Gran took the tablet, her gaze still on mine, her smile fixed in place, I realized she did too.

  She’d already read it. Of course she had. She’d have read it the moment it was posted, the same as me.

  Which meant she already knew the truth. And now she was going to make me squirm.

  I held my breath as Gran looked down at the screen in her hands and started to read, adding her usual dramatic flair to the proceedings.

  “‘The latest outing from Beatrix Frost – Aurora Rising, the last in the Aurora series, released appropriately enough on Valentine’s Day – is classic Frost at the top of her game.’ Good start. I did always like Flora.” Gran got to her feet and began pacing the kitchen as she read aloud. “‘Nuanced characters, sweeping romance that will make you believe in destiny, and the kind of denouement that she became famous for over fifty years ago, with the publication of her first novel.’”

  “Ah, sweeping romance,” Dad commented. “That’s sort of your trademark, right?”

  “While yours is reducing the magical to the mathematical,” Gran replied, but fondly. “While your wife turns it all into science.”

  “I thought a good romance was all about chemistry,” Mum said with a smile. She’s a lecturer at the same university as Dad, but instead of maths she focuses on psychology – learning why our brains make us do the things we do – especially falling in love. (In fact, last year, they published a book together, combining their two specialities, and proving that love can persevere even in the face of disagreements about chapter headings.)

  For all that they had very different approaches to the family matter of Love, my parents and my gran at least generally managed to respect each others’ positions.

  (Respecting them, incidentally, was in no way the same thing as agreeing with them. It just meant that they could spend an entire Sunday dinner arguing about whether who we fall in love with was predetermined by fate, probability or brain chemistry, and still be speaking to each other by the time I’d finished my apple crumble.)

  Gran looked back down at the screen and my stomach tightened. I knew what came next.

  “‘In fact, the final scenes – a sequence of tightly plotted and fast moving sections that tie up every loose thread of the series – were so satisfying, so achingly perfect a conclusion for long-time Queen Beas (as the legions of Frost fans like to call themselves) that I felt compelled to go back to the beginning and read the whole sixteen-book series all over again.’” She looked up, meeting my gaze again, reciting the next line from memory. “‘No spoilers, as ever, but in particular, the closing scene that tied up the story of Huw and Rosa managed to deliver both a stunning surprise and a strange feeling that it was the only way their story could ever have ended.’” Huw and Rosa. The characters who had topped my all-time favourites list for four years now, ever since I started reading the Aurora series at the age of twelve. It seemed kind of fitting that it was my desperation for a happy ending for them that had ultimately given me away.

  I looked down at the table, littered with garlic bread crumbs, and Gran turned back to the tablet for the last line of the review. “‘Quite an achievement from this Queen of Romance – this could be her best book yet.’”

  There was silence once more around the table as we all took in the full magnitude of the article. This was only one review, of course, but it was Flora Thombury.

  But if they were all like that… There was no denying it. Gran had done it. Even half-delirious with pneumonia and with the book more than six months late, Grandma Bea had pulled off a miracle. She’d written a book that satisfied her editor, reviewers and, hopefully, her adoring fans. Sixteen years after she’d started writing it, back in the year that I was born, she’d completed her longest running series – and Flora Thombury, at least, loved it.

  The only problem was, Gran hadn’t done all that. And now she knew it.

  “Bea, that’s a fantastic review,” Mum said, beaming. “You must be so pleased!”

  “Oh, of course.” Gran smiled at me again, and I squirmed in my seat. “I’m particularly pleased that the Huw and Rosa storyline paid off. They were always your favourites, weren’t they, Tilly?”

  “Absolutely,” I said, forcing a smile.

  “I have to say, even I’m looking forward to reading this one, after that review.” Dad hardly ever reads Gran’s books. He says he has enough to read already, between reading picture books to the twins and keeping up on academic papers.

  But the Aurora series was something different. Gran had written over a hundred books in the last fifty years, but this series was the one she called her legacy. The one that had catapulted her to a whole new level of fame – especially with the TV show. (They were only on Season Two, but the buzz around it was epic. And Gran got to go on set and consult sometimes, which she loved, and sometimes she even took me with her.)

  That was why I’d known, deep down in my bones, that the series had to be finished. Even if Gran was too sick to do it for herself.

  Gran handed the tablet back to Dad. “Now, I’d better get back to answering all those lovely comments from readers online.” She glanced over at me again, determination shining through her eyes. “Maybe you could come and give me a hand with that, Tilly?”

  “Of course.” I folded my napkin and placed it over the garlic bread crumbs. “I’d love to.”

  I followed Gran dolefully up the stairs to her study, while behind me I heard Mum and Dad arguing with the twins about bath time. At least they’d be too occupied to notice any shouting
from the study – bath time with Finn and Freddie was louder than even Gran in a temper.

  I supposed I should just be grateful she’d waited until after dinner, rather than confronting me with the truth at the kitchen table. I’d half-expected her to jump up on to her chair, point a bony finger at me and yell ‘Plagiarist!’

  Except plagiarists were people who copied other writer’s work, weren’t they? That wasn’t me. What did you call someone who passed off their own writing as someone else’s? A forger, I supposed.

  I paused outside the study door, wondering. Could you go to prison for that? At least I was still only sixteen. Probably the worst they could give me was youth detention centre.

  “Are you coming in or not?” Gran shouted, and I gave up worrying about it. The book was done and printed and on sale. Not much I could do about it now, was there?

  Sucking in a deep breath I stepped inside, remembering the first time I’d walked in here, age four, clutching a book with her picture in. I’d asked her what she was doing in the book, and Gran had said, “Why, darling, I wrote it, of course. And now I’m writing another one. Would you like to help?” It was the first time I ever realized that making up stories could be an actual job.

  That had been the beginning of our writing journey together, really. Would this be the end?

  Gran sat at her desk, back straight, a bright red beret that hadn’t been there at dinner perched on top of her perfectly styled silver hair. Other people’s grandmothers either seemed to cut their hair short after a certain age, or keep colouring it to pretend they weren’t as old as they were. Gran, however, was very proud of her thick, shoulder-length, silver-white hair. “It even looks striking in black-and-white author photos,” she always said.

  It used to be red – bright and vibrant, not a faded, strawberry blond red, like mine. From all the old photos I’d seen, it was even more spectacular then.