She would have looked at Ewan right there and then and thanked him, but she couldn’t because she was sure if she did, not only would she cry, but it would be one of those huge, horrible mega-ugly cries and he would definitely want to drop her off at the side of the road.
23
Falling Inn Love
‘Two rooms, reserved under the name of McLachlan?’ said the doe-eyed receptionist with a soft, lilting Donegal accent. Although they were only twenty-five minutes from Derry, they had crossed into the Republic of Ireland and already the pace of life felt more relaxed.
‘If this was a romcom movie, this is where they’d tell us there was a problem with the booking and they only had one room left. With a double bed, of course,’ Jo said with a laugh, before taking a momentary panic that the receptionist would indeed tell them there had been a mistake. In which case she would be mortified that she’d said what she did and worried that Ewan would think she had wanted it to happen.
‘It’s okay,’ the receptionist said, with a smile. ‘There’s no mistake and we have two rooms available.’
Ewan smiled. ‘You see, Jo. This is a thriller. There are no quirky room errors. A murder or two, possibly. Definitely some dark intrigue. Blackmail probably too.’
Jo couldn’t help but laugh, but the poor receptionist looked terrified.
‘Don’t worry,’ Jo explained. ‘He’s a writer. He’s talking about the books he writes.’
‘Actually, we’re both writers,’ Ewan told the receptionist and Jo felt a flutter of excitement in the pit of her stomach.
‘Oh, that’s really cool,’ the receptionist said. ‘What books have you written?’
While Ewan told a suddenly very impressed receptionist about the McCreadie books, and she had a low-level freak-out because she has watched the TV series, Jo fidgeted. She had nothing to say. No book to mention. No TV series to boast about. When the receptionist’s gaze moved to her, she would’ve gladly delighted in the ground opening up under her and swallowing her whole.
But Ewan stepped in. ‘This is Jo Campbell. She’s an up-and-coming writer. Remember her name.’
‘How exciting,’ the receptionist replied, before she handed over their room keys. ‘I’ll definitely make a note of that.’
As Jo and Ewan walked towards the lifts with their cases, she thanked him. ‘You didn’t have to say that.’
‘You write, don’t you? Then you’re a writer! Own it.’
Jo was still replaying that sentence over and over in her head when she walked into her sea-view room and threw herself down on top of her super king-size bed, luxuriating in the feel of the starched Egyptian cotton sheets. ‘I’m a writer! I’m a writer!’ she said. Ewan was right. She had to own it.
Ewan was right about a lot of things, it seemed. Including his advice that Clara could and would cope if and when she moved out. She just had to find the right place. Near to Ivy Lane, with a little garden space. And a second bedroom for Clara to have sleepovers. She’d need her own writing desk in the corner of her living room, too. When she got back home, she would start to search the rental listings online just to see what was out there.
Jo was suddenly filled with a sense of peace and burgeoning self-confidence. Her friends would be so impressed with her can-do attitude. Lorcan, she thought, would be so impressed with her can-do attitude. Of course, she quickly remembered that Lorcan was now not her friend, and she was still mad at him.
That didn’t stop her checking her phone to see if he had sent her a text – which, of course, he absolutely hadn’t.
With a little less vigour this time, she repeated to herself that she was a writer. Ewan McLachlan thought so, and in that moment his opinion was the only one that mattered to her.
Jo unpacked her case and unwrapped her laptop from its towel. She fixed her hair, pulled on her jacket and a light scarf and made her way down to the lobby to wait for Ewan.
‘I’m a writer,’ she told herself as she walked. ‘I’m here to work and learn and live my best, big life. I am here on my own merits. I deserve it.’ And maybe, just maybe, she was beginning to believe it.
Jo was sipping from a cold glass of Sauvignon Blanc and Ewan had ordered a pint of Guinness, saying it had to be done because he was in Ireland. He’d taken a picture of it and uploaded it to his Instagram, telling his fans he was doing research for McCreadie’s next big adventure.
Along with the drinks, Ewan had a printout of notes he had made about her book, and he had scribbled more in the margins in red pen. She was a little bit more than mildly intimidated by the sight, but she was there to listen and Ewan did know what he was doing.
‘Don’t look so scared,’ he said, and she shifted in her seat. That was easy for him to say, she thought. He wasn’t the one sitting across the table from a hugely successful author who clearly had an awful lot to say about her work.
She forced a smile on her face, then took a long drink from her wine glass. It was entirely possible the wine would help her relax enough not to want to crawl under the table and hide. ‘I’m not all that scared,’ she lied. ‘But you’re one of, like, two people who have read my work. Or at least read anything I wrote after the age of sixteen. Before then, I had no wit and forced everyone to read my stuff. It was truly awful. Mostly angsty poetry.’
‘I did a fair bit of that in my teens too,’ Ewan said. ‘But I really don’t know why you haven’t showed off your work more, Jo.’
‘At first, I just didn’t feel the need to. I was writing for me because it was something I found relaxing. Then, when I started to think that maybe it would be nice to have someone read it, I suppose I took the fear.’
‘The fear?’
‘Yeah, that this thing I enjoyed doing, and which brought me joy, was actually a bit rubbish. If someone told me that,’ she said, glancing to the red-pen-scored sheet in front of her, ‘then maybe it wouldn’t bring me joy any more. And I’d stop.’
‘The other side of it is, what if someone told you they loved it? Or someone told you they saw real strengths in it, but here are a few ideas you could use to make it better? It might make you write more and enjoy it more?’
‘It was a big risk for me,’ Jo said. She ran her fingers through her hair and took a deep breath. ‘And I’ve not been feeling particularly brave.’
Ewan sat back in his chair and looked at Jo. His gaze was so intense she almost felt as if he was trying to read all her thoughts, disassemble them and put them back together in some kind of order that made sense. ‘Tell me how you felt as you wrote? When you created those images of the ramshackle cottage on the edge of the beach? The long grass and buttercups? How did you feel when you described the crash of the waves to shore, the buzz of insects, the sting of the sun on bare skin? Or the creeping darkness and the rot setting in?’
Jo sat straight. How had she felt? ‘At times, it felt as if I could pull my hair out with the frustration of finding the exact words I needed to get the description just right.’
‘I’m familiar with that feeling,’ Ewan said with a smile. ‘But what else? Because I know there is something else too.’