by Molly Flatt
Quietly Alex said, ‘I know. I want to be better than okay, too.’
Mae leaned forward. ‘So did you look at that thing I emailed you?’
‘Oh. Yeah. Thanks. Nice thought, but it’s a bit out of my league.’ Alex took her phone out of her pocket and checked the time. ‘Sorry. I should get going. You know what Mark’s like.’
Mae folded her arms. ‘Out of your league? You could do that job with your eyes closed. Copywriting, new media, flexible hours – it sounds tailor-made. And Singapore! Imagine! Wouldn’t it be the perfect time to get a proper fresh start, seeing as you’re having to start again anyway?’
Alex began to slide out of the booth. ‘It’s very sweet of you, but I’m just not sure it’s what I want to do. I have no idea what I really want to do; I never have, you know that. So it would be an awfully big risk to go halfway across the world for something I’m not even convinced I want, and which I’d probably fail at anyway. And I’m really not sure that Harry would be up for Singapore.’
‘I’m not talking about Harry, Al. I’m talking about you.’
‘Well, I’m not ready. It’s too soon to be thinking so big, Mae. But I do appreciate the thought, honestly I do.’ Alex stood up. ‘Sorry. Duty calls.’
Mae got up and began to sweep detritus into her holdall, while Alex lifted Bo out of the high chair, enforced a squirmy cuddle, then buckled him into the buggy.
‘Have a great afternoon,’ Mae said, leaning in for a goodbye hug. ‘And I’m sorry if I was, you know, too full-on. As usual. Too me.’
‘No,’ Alex said, gripping Mae’s shoulders with sudden fervour, her throat thickening. ‘I love it. You being you. Don’t ever stop. Promise me.’
‘Only if you promise me not to settle? To aim for better than okay?’
‘Okay. Sure.’
They disentangled. Mae pushed the buggy forward a foot, then suddenly stopped and turned.
‘You know, Al,’ she said quietly, ‘it’s the story of your life. I don’t think you’re afraid of failure, not really. I think you’re terrified of success.’
Alex sat back on the edge of the booth as Mae pushed her way out of the doors. For several minutes she simply sat there in a daze, her thoughts shattering and colliding while the packed restaurant receded into impressionist shapes.
When she finally stood, a wave of nausea rose with her. She only just had time to push her way to the loo, lock the door and hunch over the toilet bowl before she threw up a stream of undigested fish and rice. As she washed her mouth out at the sink, the unfamiliar mirror confirmed how much her face had filled out over the past month. She had a rash of spots on her cheeks, too, and an uncharacteristic pink flush. As she stared, fragments of images began to dance over her reflection.
A broken stiletto heel, a pair of grey eyes, a giant stone tower, a red index card. The smell of industrial bleach faded into an echo-scent of salt and peat and wild thyme.
She left the toilet, light-headed, tingling with oxygen, as if she had just taken her first real breath in a very long time. Through the glass frontage of the restaurant, above the heads of people on stools bolting their food and swiping their phones, she saw that the sky had turned a stormy mineral grey.
The splash of hooves. The thrum of an old bike, swerving low. The thud of mud on her hood.
She walked shakily towards the double doors and, sure enough, as soon as she pushed out onto Cowcross Street, a few drops of rain began to spit. She reached for the sensible mini-umbrella in her tote, then stopped, lifting her face to the damp air.
A constellation of sparks. A spark in her hand, shooting upwards. A lifetime of moments wheeling around it, wheeling around her, as she fell to the bone-white floor.
She stumbled through the jostling pedestrians.
A maze of stone giants. A toy aeroplane. A great glass dome.
Somewhere deep within her abdomen, something started to ache. It wasn’t a bad ache; more of a yearning. A tug. A pull. The nearest way Alex could think of to describe it was as if something inside her – some tiny, deep-rooted, slowly growing thing – was homesick.
Her pace increased to a jog.
A vodka bottle, rolling on floorboards. A memory stick, hidden in her fist. A pool, cradled in the middle of a cliff.
At the corner where Cowcross Street became Turnmill Street, she flung her Minos lanyard into a recycling bin.
A novel. A pearl.
She paused to lean on a rack of hire bikes.
A rainbow. A noose.
She fished in her tote and swapped her sensible kitten heels for the water-stained trainers she had been wearing when she had been rescued.
Darkness. Total darkness. Endless darkness.
A pair of strong, blue-mapped arms, lifting her out.
He had been waiting there inside the tomb, beside the mouth of the tunnel, for days. Everyone else had eventually given up, but he had stayed behind. He had seen her stumbling towards him, barely alive. He had reached down into that darkness and pulled her back into the light. And as he handed her over to Iain in that rickety plane, he had said something, soft and lilting in her ear, but she hadn’t been able to make it out.
What had he said? And what would she say to him? Where on earth would they start?
On Clerkenwell Road a man outside Sainsbury’s looked up from his phone with a jerk, as a sodden woman in filthy trainers sprinted past.
Look, she wasn’t expecting happy-ever-afters. This wasn’t a bloody fairy tale. But what if two strangers from opposite worlds, brought together by a dead man, divided by genes and personality types and tastes in knitwear, could in fact forge some kind of relationship that wasn’t a total disaster?
I’m coming, Finn, Alex thought, upping her pace until she felt like her heart might burst out of her chest. I’m coming back.
Acknowledgements
Thanks, first, to two wonderful women: my agent, Cathryn Summerhayes, and my editor, Bella Pagan, both of whom saw the potential in a mad book and had the talent and tact to help me make it work. Thanks also to the wider teams at Curtis Brown and Pan Macmillan – I feel truly lucky to have such skilled and passionate people on my side. And thanks, too, to Antony Topping, without whose initial encouragement this journey might never have begun.
Alex Moore would never have been born without Richard Skinner and my beloved cabal from the Faber Academy writing course. Richard, Julia, Judith, Laura, Georgina, Jonathan, Wendy and of course my first reader, Matt Blakstad – you are all indispensable and irreplaceable. A big nod, too, to my other first reader and friend, Annie McKie. Her magical room in the forest was where Alex first found her true voice. Woody, come!
And I am of course indebted to all those who helped me get a feel for the extraordinary place that is Orkney, especially Stewart Bain and the team at Orkney Library, Tom Rendall and Fran Flett Hollinrake.
Finally, I am forever grateful to my friends and family for their patience, humour, love and support. You know who you are. And you are everything.
Permissions Acknowledgements
The extract here from The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje, published by Jonathan Cape, is reproduced with permission of The Random House Group Limited © 2011.
The extract here from Further Than Hoy © 2005 Estate of George Mackay Brown. Reproduced with permission of John Murray Press, a division of Hodder and Stoughton Limited.
Molly Flatt is a journalist who writes about the impact of technology on publishing, culture and identity. She is Associate Editor for FutureBook, Digital Editor for PHOENIX magazine and Associate Editor for The Memo. She lives in Hackney with her husband and daughter, but spends as much of her spare time as possible in the countryside, ignoring her phone and making stuff up.
www.mollyflatt.com
@mollyflatt
First published 2018 by Macmillan
This electronic edition published 2018 by Macmillan
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
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Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-5098-5455-4
Copyright © Molly Flatt, 2018
Illustration by Wil Freeborn
Photograph: Shutterstock
Design: Ami Smithson, Pan Macmillan Art Department
The right of Molly Flatt to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Pan Macmillan does not have any control over, or any responsibility for, any author or third-party websites referred to in or on this book.
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Table of Contents
Title page
Dedication page
Epigraph page
Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
∞
Acknowledgements
Permissions Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright page
