Hope Nicely's Lessons for Life

by Caroline Day

  Praise for

  Hope Nicely’s Lessons for Life

  ‘I can’t even find words to say how much I adore Hope Nicely’s Lessons for Life! A heart-bursting book, full of tears, laughter and hope. Gorgeously written with an incredible protagonist . . . I cannot it recommend enough. It’s FABULOUS’

  Jessica Ryn, author of The Extraordinary Hope of Dawn Brightside

  ‘I loved it! A sharply drawn character with beautiful soft edges who has lessons in her for all of us’

  Anstey Harris

  ‘A sunburst of a story, full of love, kindness and one of the sweetest, most engaging central characters you’re likely to meet. I was drawn in from the very first page by Caroline Day’s sensitive portrayal of Hope Nicely’s inner voice; as I followed Hope on her mission to make sense of the present, to uncover the past and to write her book, I found myself sharing in her triumphs and frustrations, her laughter and tears. It’s a touching, tender story, but Hope Nicely’s wonderful humour and delicious honesty mean that it’s never sentimental. An absolute joy’

  Sarah Haywood, bestselling author of The Cactus

  ‘A very special book. Hope is extremely endearing and her rules for life are relevant for us all. Really enjoyable’

  Katie Fforde

  ‘How I wish Hope had been in my writing class. A gorgeous, funny, heartwarming read. Leaves you smiling’

  Ericka Waller, author of Dog Days

  ‘Hope is a bit different . . . her unique experience of the world will warm your heart, with Hope’s character and dialogue so well crafted by Day. A novel that reads as if Hope is sat with you. A book of acceptance, kindness and ultimately hope’

  My Weekly

  Contents page

  Praise for Hope Nicely’s Lessons for Life

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part 1: Introductions and Openings

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Part 2: Character and Dialogue

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part 3: Raising the Stakes

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Part 4: Finding Your Voice

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part 5: Research

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Part 6: Common Pitfalls

  Chapter 20

  Part 7: The Still Point

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Part 8: Conflict and Resolution

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Part 9: Conclusions

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Part 10: Closing Time

  Chapter 29

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Where Hope Comes From

  Hope Nicely’s Golden Rules

  Extraordinary Drop of Light

  Reading Group Questions

  Copyright

  For Ben, who has been Hope’s champion from the first page – and who has always been mine.

  1

  INTRODUCTIONS AND OPENINGS …

  Prologue

  My name is Hope Nicely. Hope as in hope. And Nicely like nicely.

  Why I am writing this book? That’s easy. This book is going to change my life. I have never even been in a group like this one before. I never thought I would ever try to write an actual book. Not a real one anyway. I mean, flip a pancake, most of my teachers would have told you I’m the last person who could ever do that. They would say there’s not much chance I’ll see it through. Not likely, Hope Nicely. Not if the book is more than one page long. My brain is a bit of a jumble sale, you see – that’s what they always told me, the teachers at school. They said it was a right old jumble sale, with all the jumble piled up high so you don’t know what’s in there, just all the clothes and the curtains and the toys, all in one big pile. It’s not a real jumble sale, of course – not like the one at the church, which is every summer, and you have to pay 50p to go in, and maybe there’s a Nike hoodie or a yellow teapot or an ice cream maker and it’s still in its box. It’s not a real-in-the-world jumble sale. Because that would be impossible. It’s just my brain that’s a bit of a muddle.

  My boss says it too. Karen, my boss. That’s why I have to do my walks with her. Never just me with the dogs. I’d forget which dogs were out walking with me otherwise. If I was on my own, I’d take the wrong dogs home and leave my ones running around alone in the woods. Because I’ve never been very good at remembering. And maybe that will make writing this book, my book, a bit difficult. And I’m not very good at – what’s the word – flip a pancake, it will come to me, I’m sure … I’m very easily distracted, that’s what they always said when I was at school. Flitty. Like a flitty thing. Flit, flit flittery flit. A flitty sieve. My mind wanders and my memory – well, maybe the less said about that …

  Persevering! See, I knew the word would come. That’s what words do. My mum says words can be like puppies who bring you a ball, and when you reach for it they run away with it, but really they just want to play and if you turn your back they will rush back and drop the ball at your feet. Teasing you. My brain is just like that. Persevering. That’s what I’m not very good at. That’s what people have always said. All my teachers. And Karen. That’s my boss. And I do have a little problem about getting confused. Just when there’s too much to think about. And also I …

  I talk too much. Everybody says this to me. I don’t know what to say and what to keep back. And some of this I’m saying out loud. And some of it is in my head. I’m never quite sure which is which. And it’s worse when I’m nervous, my mum, Jenny Nicely, says, or when I’m excited. Or when I haven’t slept enough. Or when it’s just a day when my mouth feels like it has a lot to talk about. And so what I do – what I’m doing now – is I sit on my hands, and I tell myself: Hope Nicely, you need to count to three. And I count. One. Two. Three.

  Now, it’s true that my counting isn’t good and when it’s bigger numbers they can float out of my head like balloons into the sky. But one, two, three is as easy as blinking my eyes. Even I can’t let one, two, three slip through my fingers like balloon strings. I’ve done it with my mum, that’s Jenny Nicely, a hundred times. A million. Practising. Sit on my hands. One, two, three. And I talk my brain back down. Calm. Slow. Count. Don’t go telling everyone everything that’s in my head. Think about other people, when they’re listening to you, and try not to just talk and talk and talk and talk.

  And so here I am – see – my hands are flat on the chair beneath my bottom. And I’m looking at the big round table and the people sitting at it. And I take a nice deep breath and I count to three again. And then I count the people sitting at the table – not big and round, did I say round? Flip a pancake. That’s not what I meant at all. Oval. You see, that shape word, dropped by a puppy. Big oval table. Not round. Oval. And there are one – two – three – four – five – six – seven – eight – nine – ten people around the oval table. And because the numbers have come to me kindly and have not hidden in the wrong bits of my head, I’m feeling calm now and my brain is clear. And I start again. From the beginning …

  1

  My name is Hope Nicely. Hope as in hope. And Nicely like nicely. I am twenty-five years old. I have a real job as a dog walker and I live with my mother, Jenny, in the close by the statio
n. Station Close. I am here because I’m going to write a book. It’s not a historical book – like the woman with the glasses on a chain around her neck, who just told us hers is set during the revolution in France, or a detective one, like the man on my left – no, my right – with a watch that is ginormous and very gold. No, it is my left. Because, look, if I bring my hands out from under my bottom, with my fingers pointing up and making a corner with my thumbs, there’s an L between my finger and my thumb on this side, and that’s how you know. Because of L being for left. My book is going to be – I look for the words and they’re right there, because my brain is all clear and kind – non-fiction. That means real. Not fiction. Not a make-it-up story. It’s called a memoir. Or an autobiography. About my life.

  And I want to say a lot of other things: about how this book is very important. This is the book that is going to find out who my birth mother is and why she gave me away, even if it was all for the best, actually. This is the book that is going to give me the word I can’t remember at this precise moment but is a bit like closing time. And my mum, Jenny Nicely, says it’s a very good thing to write this book. It will be a Big Achievement. But I know I should stop talking now, because the writer, our teacher – Marnie Shale, who has written four novels and been shortlisted for an award whose name I can’t quite remember but I think it’s like a cup of coffee – is leaning forward in her seat, on the opposite side of the round table. And she is smiling at me and holding out her hands towards me. Oval table. Oval. And I know – because I have role played this with my mum, Jenny – that this is a cue that she’s about to talk. And I want to tell her lots of other things about my book and why it is so important that I write it, I am bursting to tell her more, but I am sitting on my hands again and I am breathing in deeply and I am telling myself that it is her time to speak now and that we have to take turns. This is how a conversation works, and that means everyone has their chance, not just one person talking, talking, talking. I am leaning towards her, too – this is called mirroring – and I am telling myself I have to stop talking. I have to listen now.

  It is hard to be quiet. There is a buzz in my head and I want to shout. I want to tell her, listen to me, listen to what I have to say about my book. But I count inside my mind. One, two, three. One, two, three. One. Two. Three.

  And I stop. Because now is my turn to listen.

  ‘Hello, Hope.’ This is Marnie Shale, and her hair bounces as she speaks. Her voice is low and warm and I think she might be Scottish because when she talks it’s a bit like music that I’ve heard before. I’m not very good at accents, actually, but I don’t think she can be from Harpenden because she doesn’t sound like me and she doesn’t sound like Jenny Nicely, my mum, and she doesn’t sound like Karen or the people in the shops near us. There are so many accents. Scottish and Irish and American and the accent from Cornwall where we went last summer and Kingston in … I can’t remember where … but which is where someone comes from. Someone I know. But I can’t think who.

  ‘I am particularly delighted to have you participating in our writing class.’ Marnie Shale is smiling at me and then she is looking around at the other people in the room and she is telling them about the course scholarship that she offered, and how it’s me who won it and how important stories can be for all of us, and how vital it is that the voices that are heard are not the same ones that have been telling the stories for the past ex-hundred – that’s what she says, ‘ex-hundred’ – years, like the letter X, or ex like ex-husband. And when she speaks she uses her hands and her arms to make big gestures. And she says that for centuries women couldn’t write unless they pretended to be men, and even after that, it was only the privileged minority who could do it at all. ‘A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,’ she says. And pauses. There is lots of nodding. And lots of the other people in the room have notebooks open and they are writing in them. And some have laptops instead. And one of them has her phone, and she’s holding it up, like maybe she’s videoing Marnie Shale while she’s talking – like maybe Marnie Shale is famous and she wants to put it on Twitter or Facebook, maybe.

  I have my hand in the air and I’m humming with my lips pressed together, because my brain has forgotten that I’m not back in school – and that’s what you had to do, even though I usually forgot, because otherwise it’s called interrupting. And I wait, until Marnie Shale smiles and raises her eyebrows towards me. ‘Yes, Hope?’

  ‘I’m not writing fiction. I’m writing non-fiction. It’s an autobiography. My book is real and it’s about me and it’s going to help me find my mother and it’s going to make her come and … and I do have money of my own. Because I have a real job. And I have my own bedroom, too. But it’s not fiction, it’s non-fiction. It’s real and it’s very important because my birth mother is going to—’

  ‘Good point, Hope.’ It’s not rude, even though she’s interrupting me, because she has put her hand towards me, with the palm facing out – that’s a cue, actually, that it’s still her turn to talk – and because she’s the teacher. The teacher is allowed to talk when you’re talking already and you shouldn’t shout or bang your head on the table if they do it, because it’s not really interrupting. It is allowed because they are there to teach you. And she is smiling to show that she’s not cross. So I smile back at her, too.

  ‘Absolutely, Hope. Good point. And the essay in which Virginia Woolf made this very point was also non-fiction. But her message is more that we can’t see creativity as a gift that will flourish in a vacuum.’

  It’s a bit confusing, actually, because I’m not sure why she’s talking about a vacuum, which is like a Dyson, or a Hoover, or one from Lidl and it’s red, which is the one my mum, Jenny, has. But I’m not going to interrupt. Because of it not being my turn to talk. I’m going to keep on listening very hard.

  ‘Only certain lucky, wealthy, privileged individuals …’ This is Marnie Shale with her up-and-down Scottish accent.

  It’s Jamaica. That’s where Kingston is. And the person who comes from Kingston in Jamaica is Julie Clarke who is my social worker, although not really anymore because really now she is retired, actually. But she still comes round every Thursday evening to see how I am. And that is the accent that she has which is not very much like Marnie Shale’s. It’s more like every word she’s saying is stretching out slowly. And as I remember I want to shout it out – Jamaica – but I don’t shout. It’s really not very loud at all. Almost like silent thinking it. Almost like not even saying it at all. I don’t think anybody’s heard me, except maybe the man with the shiny scarf with the knot at his neck who is beside Marnie Shale. I think maybe he did because he turns and looks right at me and he makes a noise which is a tut and then a sigh. Like: ‘Tuh-huhh.’

  He is the man who was in the lift when I came in today. He was talking to the woman in the glasses on the chain, and I asked which floor for the writing class and he took a long time before he answered me – third floor. And then he turned his back, so he was only looking at her again. And although he said it like a whisper, I heard what he said. ‘Here was I thinking I’d signed up for literary classes, but now I’m rather wondering whether they might be literacy classes.’

  I thought how he was going to find it difficult to write a whole book if he doesn’t even know what class he’s going to.

  Marnie Shale glances at him when he does his tut-sigh, but she is still talking about how it may only be a tiny drop in the ocean of inequality but that she hopes our society, and the publishing industry in particular, is finally beginning not only to tolerate but to listen to and embrace the voices of the unheard. ‘… because this is how we move on from ignorance. It is time we swung the balance away from all those centuries in which the only narrative has been from a white, heterosexual, middle-class, able-bodied, neurotypical’ (she lifts up her hands to by her ears and wiggles two fingers on each of her hands here. I’ve seen people doing this before and it’s saying something, not just p
retending to have little rabbit ears, I just can’t remember quite what) ‘focus, and lacking in all fluidity. For too long, those from the BAME and LGBT communities, let alone those with …’

  I can’t really listen properly anymore because I’m a bit confused by the wiggling fingers and also now I’m trying to put these letters together in my head to see what words they make. B-A-M-E. Bame? What does bame mean? And lgbt? That doesn’t even sound like a real word. It’s like ligbert but without the long sounds, just l-g-b-t, really fast. Maybe they are places. You call it a community when people come from places. So maybe these are countries. Bame and Lgbt. Maybe they’re in Russia or somewhere with different sounds.

  And I’m trying to work out what the teacher is talking about and if they are real countries or if she’s spelt them wrong or if I’ve remembered the wrong letters, when I realise she has said my name again. And she’s looking at me with her head bent over to one side. She wants to check that I’m still happy for the group to know about it and that I don’t mind her telling them. When she says it she means me, and why my brain is a bit unique. She means about my birth mother making my brain damaged because of drinking alcohol when I was in her tummy and being developed. It’s called Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. And it’s also called FASD. And I say no, because I don’t mind, and anyway, because she’s already asked my mum, Jenny. They’ve had a long conversation on the telephone about me doing this course and if I will be able to persevere enough, and if other people should know about it, and Mum has said that it’s always best to tell people because I have nothing to be ashamed about and that way they will know and understand. Not that there will be any outbursts, Mum said on the phone. She was laughing.

  She and Marnie Shale know each other a little bit. Because my mum, Jenny Nicely, is a poet. But being a poet doesn’t pay billions of pounds, more’s the pity, so she also works in the bookshop. The one near the station. And when Marnie Shale wrote a new book a few years ago, the book was sold in the shop and Marnie came in and did a talk, so that she could sign her book and people could buy it. And Marnie and my mum talked about poetry and bookshops and ideas and life. And afterwards they stayed in touch a little bit. On Twitter and Facebook and the telephone sometimes.