“It’s my firstghostwrittennovel,” I clarify for Elliot’s benefit. “It won’t have my name on it, obviously, but it’s my plot, and my characters. And my writing, obviously.”
“That doesn’t seem very fair, somehow,” says Elliot. He puts Evie’s box, which he’s carried carefully in from the car, onto a glass topped coffee table near the window, then sits down on a long, L-shaped sofa. He gestures for me to come and join him, and it doesn’t look like I’m going to be leaving here anytime soon, so I cross the room and take a seat at the opposite end of the ‘L’, as far away from Elliot as possible.
“It’s a lot more common than you’d think,” I tell him, sinking into the squashy cushions. “Ghostwriting. You’d be surprised how many authors have a bit of help from people like me. Well, I mean,youprobably wouldn’t be surprised, would you?”
Elliot’s face instantly clouds over.
“I just meant you wouldn’t be surprised because you’re part of the industry, “ I add quickly. “Not because … because …”
“Because my one and only book exists purely because of you?” he says, his voice ominously quiet. “Because you’re the one who came up with the plot line that everyone loved? Because you helped me with those early chapters I showed you, when I was just fumbling along in the dark, not knowing where I was goingwith it? Because I took our relationship and turned it into a story? Is that what you were thinking?”
For the first time ever, I find myself wishing Levi was here, to jump in and take the focus away from me, like he always does. But there’s just me and Elliot, which means it’s up to me to answer him.
“No,” I reply evenly. “That’snotwhat I was thinking, actually. I reallydidjust mean that you obviously know more about the publishing world than most people. But … well, itistrue, isn’t it? You did do all of those things? Or am I wrong?”
I hold my breath, hoping he’s going to tell me I am. Because, honestly, I’dloveto be wrong about all of this; just like I’d love to wake up tomorrow morning and discover this was all a bad dream, and I’m 24 again, and in love with a man who loves me back.
Instead, Elliot gets up and starts pacing back and forth in front of the window. Actuallypacing. Like Ebenezer Scrooge trying to figure out why all these ghosts are suddenly tormenting him.
“I know that’s what it looks like,” he says, turning to face me at last. “And I’m not going to tell you that you’re wrong. But that’s not what I was trying to do, Holly. It’s not what I meant.”
“So… it all just happened by accident?” I reply. “You justaccidentallywrote the book, and itcompletely by chanceended up having a character in it who’s almost exactly like me? Other than the thing with the doctor, obviously. And the bird. And, well, all theshoutingshe does. I’m not a shouter, Elliot. I hardly ever shout.”
“You’re … kind of shouting now?” Elliot replies cautiously.
“You said you were going to make up a story for Evie and Luke, because we couldn’t find out what the real one was,” I point out. “But instead you just usedus; you basically superimposed me onto Evie, and made me your story. Can you blame me for shouting?”
I attempt to sit up straighter on the sofa in a bid to assert myself, but the cushions are too soft for that, so I end up perching on the edge of it instead, like a budgie.
“I don’t blame you,” Elliot says in a new, harder tone. “But I’m not going to pretend I totally understand you, either. Not any more. Because, ever since I came back here, you’ve been acting like I did you some huge wrong, and all I did was write a book. That’s it. Nothing more.”
A dozen or more objections to this come rushing to my lips, each one jostling the others as it tries to get there first. Before I can pick a winner, though, Elliot jumps back in.
“You didn’t ghostwrite my novel, Holly,” he says wearily, “But you haunted it all the same. You hauntedme. And you’re there in every single page. Every last word. I owe it all to you. All of it. And I know you think I did it because I didn’t care about your feelings, or because I was just using you or whatever, but I didn’t. I swear to you. The book was never supposed to hurt you. It wasn’t supposed to be an attack. It was supposed to be a love letter.”
I teeter dangerously on the edge of my sofa-perch, feeling like all the air’s been taken out of my lungs.
“A love letter?The Snow Globe?” I say, just to confirm we’re talking about the same book here. “Tome?”
“Yes, to you,” Elliot replies, amused. “Who else would I have written a love letter to? Sandra at The Rose?”
“That would actually be slightly more believable than you writing one to me,” I retort. “Especially one that wasn’t true. And it wasn’t, was it? The story you told wasn’t even true.”
My voice is starting to sound croaky now, which is a sure sign I’m about to cry; and I amnotabout to let Elliot Sinclair see me cry, so I jump up from the sofa — well, it’s more like an odd kind of bounce, really, but hopefully he won’t have noticed — and reach for my coat.
There’s absolutely no plan in my head beyond getting out of this room before I burst into tears and embarrass myself even more than I already have. I have no idea how I’m going to get home in the middle of a blizzard. Or what I’m going to do once I get there. All I know is I don’t want to behereanymore, so I pull on my coat and whirl around to face the door, ready for my big exit.
Only it doesn’t quite work out like that.
Because the thick winter coat is both longer andswishierthan I’d given it credit for. And, as I turn around in the space between the sofa and the coffee table, the hem whips out and hits something. Something fragile and old, which falls to the tiled floor with a sickening crash that seems to go on and on, even though it only takes a fraction of a second to fall; a fraction of second, in which Evie Snow’s box hits the floor of a luxury Airbnb that she couldn’t even have imagined existing, and breaks into a million pieces.
22
PAST
DECEMBER, 10 YEARS AGO
The next 24 hours are a blur of activity as we attempt to book me onto Elliot’s flight back to the U.S., and sort out something called an ESTA, which is apparently necessary to get me into the country, and which I onlyjustmanage to apply for before it’s too late for it to be approved in time.
