Chapter 1
‘Hello again!’ my literary agent, Sara, exclaims as we air kiss each other’s cheeks. Her smile is a hundred watts brighter than the last time I saw her back in February. ‘Thank you for coming in.’ She directs me to a seat. ‘How’s it all going? I see you’ve topped ten thousand followers on Twitter!’
‘Yes, last week,’ I reply. ‘And the comments on the last post were off the scale.’
‘That was the Gabriel reunion?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Oh, I loved that one!’
‘Good!’ I grin. ‘It cost me enough to get to Brazil.’
She laughs. ‘You sounded like you had a lucky escape with him. What a chauvinistic pig! How many children did he have again?’
‘Nine.’ I grimace. ‘I felt so sorry for his poor wife.’
‘Whoa, did she have her work cut out for her! Were those kids really as badly behaved as they sounded?’
‘I’m sure they have their good days,’ I say benignly, wondering why I’m here.
It’s been three months since our last meeting when I pitched Sara an idea for a book, but it wasn’t as well received as I had hoped it would be.
‘Forgive me, Bridget,’ I remember her saying, as she eyed me shrewdly. ‘But, when you asked for a meeting about a book, I assumed you’d be pitching an idea about your experiences of navigating the globe, not your experiences of navigating men.’
It was a fair assumption. I was – am – a well-established travel writer.
‘I do plan to take the reader on a journey,’ I said with what I’d hoped was a winning smile, ‘and we will travel all around the world together, but our voyage will take us, yes, via all of the men I’ve ever been in love with. Travel writing will feature prominently, but, ultimately, this book will be about love.’
She smirked. ‘Are we really talking about love, here? You’re thirty-four, and you say you’ve been head over heels in love with twelve different men? Some weren’t simply holiday romances or one-night stands?’
I waved her away dismissively. ‘Oh, there were loads of those, too. But I could probably spin a couple out if I’m stuck for material,’ I added with a grin, as she blanched at me.
It was Elliot who gave me the idea, when I bumped into him in Sydney, a year ago last December. That night was the start of something new and beautiful between us, and I’m delighted to announce that we’re still together.
At least, we’re together as a couple. We’re not together literally, because I’m now back in the UK sans visa and he’s on the other side of the world in Australia. I could move over there if I married him. But that would mean one of us asking.
I’m slightly scared of him asking.
I love Elliot so much, but, when we were sixteen, my feelings for him were all-encompassing. He meant everything to me.
The love I feel for him now is not as powerful, and I’m worried that it’s because I’ve become jaded over the years. Have I had too many relationships to believe in happy ever after?
Maybe I’ve just grown up. Maybe love as an adult can never compare to that of a teenager.
Or maybe something is missing. And maybe there’s a chance that I can get this something back. . .
That night we met up again, Elliot put forward the tongue-in-cheek notion that perhaps I needed to hunt down all of the men I’ve ever loved to ask for their pieces of my heart back. Before I left Australia, he brought up the idea again, but this time he was serious. He knows that I’m struggling to commit to him wholeheartedly, but he believes that, if I use this time apart from him to revisit the past, I might be able to make more sense of the here and now. He suggested that I write about all of my encounters, and then he came up with another genius idea: if I could get a book deal, my time and travels would be funded in the form of an advance.
I should point out here that my boyfriend is not the jealous type. This was one of the first questions Sara asked when I put the idea to her back in February.
She also said that I needed to blog about my reunions and raise my profile before she’d consider approaching publishers, so that’s what I’ve been doing for the last three months.
My readers have joined me on voyages to South Africa (David), Iceland (Olli), Spain (Jorge) and Brazil (Gabriel), and, of course, I’ve also written about how Elliot and I rekindled our relationship in Australia. I’m yet to meet up with Dillon in Ireland, Freddie in Norway, Seth in Canada and Beau, Felix, Liam and Vince here in the UK.
My contacts in journalism have helped to spread the word about my blog, and, if you just ignore the trolls, I’d say it’s all going swimmingly.
Elliot, meanwhile, has been hanging onto his piece of my heart. It’s still the biggest piece – the first and last piece – and, once I get the other bits back, my path will lead me back to him. A walk down the aisle really would be the happiest of happy endings.
Late yesterday afternoon, Sara’s assistant called and asked me to come in for a meeting as soon as possible. Apparently, my agent had some news and she’d explain in person.
I got a little bit excited.
I know that Sara has started talking up my blog to publishers, but while the feedback so far has been good – they like my style, they like my wit – no one has wanted to commit to a relationship-blog-turned-book in the current market. Sara claims that publishers won’t be able to argue with the numbers if I keep growing my readership, so I intend to crack on. But has something changed in the last twenty-four hours?
‘You must be wondering why you’re here,’ Sara says to me now, reading my mind.
‘I’m pretty curious,’ I admit.
‘Yesterday, I had lunch with Fay Sanderson.’
The name isn’t familiar to me, but Sara explains that she’s an editorial director at a top publishing house.
‘She’s been avidly reading your blog and was raving to me about how well you strike the balance between warm and likable, and feisty, funny and fresh. She loves your voice. She absolutely loves it,’ Sara stresses, and there’s something about her tone that has me sitting up straighter in my seat. Am I about to be offered a book deal?
‘She has a proposal,’ she continues. Yes! ‘Have you heard of Nicole Dupré?’
‘Er, that name sounds familiar,’ I reply.
Sara swivels on her chair and takes a book down from the shelves behind her. ‘Nicole had a runaway bestseller with The Secret Life of Us, which was published last autumn. It took us all a little by surprise, to be honest.’
‘I remember hearing about it.’ I pick up the novel she’s placed in front of me. The cover has a photograph of a lone girl standing on a beach in Thailand. I turn over the book and scan the blurb. It’s about a travel writer who falls in love with two different men on two different continents.
Where is Sara going with this?
‘Nicole passed away shortly after that was published,’ Sara explains, her tone growing sombre.
I breathe in sharply and glance up at her. ‘Oh, God, that’s right, it was in the news. Was she one of your authors?’ I ask with surprise.
She nods.
‘I’m so sorry. I had no idea you represented her.’
‘It’s okay. It was very sudden,’ she tells me. ‘She had a brain aneurysm. She was only thirty-one.’
I shake my head, horrified. That’s three years younger than I am now. ‘That’s so tragic,’ I murmur sympathetically.
‘Nicole was writing a sequel,’ Sara continues, drawing my attention back to her. ‘Secret ended on a cliffhanger. The readers are crying out for more. And, Bridget. . .?’
I haven’t been sure up until this point what any of this has to do with me, but, from her more upbeat tone, I sense I’m about to find out.
‘Fay thinks your voice is perfect!’ she concludes, triumphantly.
There’s a long moment where neither of us says anything.
‘To write the sequel.’
She thinks she’s clarifying it, but I’m even more confused.
‘I don’t understand,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘Fay loves my blog?’
‘Loves it!’ Sara repeats. ‘She thinks your voice is spot on!’
‘I thought you were about to tell me that she wants to sign me up.’
Sara clears her throat. ‘She does. For the sequel to The Secret Life of Us.’ She points at the book I’m holding.
What?
‘Nicole was about a quarter of the way in,’ she explains. ‘She left behind a stack of notes. Fay’s been trying to find the right person to complete it.’
‘She wants me to be a ghostwriter?’ I splutter. ‘But what about my book?’
‘You’ll still write it,’ Sara says evenly. ‘Think of this as a stopgap, your way in. This is your chance to get your foot through the door of a major publisher. You can write your own book alongside this one while you continue to build your profile, and the advance you’ll get will pay for your travels. It’s the perfect solution.’
‘But. . .’ I’m still reeling. ‘What makes anyone think I’m up to the job? Surely there are a million other more qualified authors who could do this?’
‘Oh, I’m sure there are, too,’ she says smoothly. ‘But Fay wants you. She’s even read the novel you wrote a few years ago. The plot wasn’t quite there,’ she says hurriedly, quashing any hope of resurrecting my old romantic-fiction dream, ‘but the point is, Fay knows you have it in you to pull off fiction. She thinks your style is fabulous.’
‘She does?’ I allow myself to feel a little flattered, as well as incredibly daunted.
‘Have you read The Secret Life of Us?’ Sara asks.
‘No,’ I admit, studying the book in my hands.
‘Take that copy,’ she says. ‘You won’t be able to put it down. The protagonist is a travel writer just like you, so you should be able to identify with her brilliantly. It is the biggest compliment that Fay believes you can carry Nicole’s baton to the finishing line.’
‘I just. . . I’m not sure. . .’ I’m struggling to get my head around all of this. A young woman, dying so abruptly. . . A bestselling author leaving behind an unfinished sequel. . . Me – me! – being the one to complete her work. . .
‘Read the book,’ Sara urges, and I sense she wants to wrap up our meeting. ‘And keep in mind, Bridget, this is a great opportunity. Give me a call as soon as you’ve reached the end so we can discuss the finer details. I’m around all day tomorrow.’
She seems very confident that I’m going to go along with this hare-brained scheme.
Her conviction is founded, because I call her back first thing.