Klint looks up from his computer as I come panting into the room, red-faced and sweaty. I jogged the rest of the way with my laptop banging against my hip. I’m expecting him to be in a foul mood. So when he smiles, I’m relieved, but wary.
‘There you are. I want to show you something.’
‘What?’ I say, sitting on the nearest twin bed to remove my trainers.
He swivels his laptop towards me and points at the screen. ‘Look at this.’
I crane my neck to see. It’s information about a studentresearch prize for which the winner receives a not-insubstantial amount of money.
‘Susan sent it to me. She thinks I should apply.’
‘But you haven’t finished your thesis yet?’
‘The application deadline is early next year. So if I can get my thesis in by the end of November, I should make the cut-off date.’
He pulls the screen back. ‘This would look great on my CV when I apply for the lectureship.’
For a second, I’m confused. ‘What lectureship?’
‘There are rumours of Percy handing in his notice at the end of April, so his position would be up for grabs.’
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘That would be great if you got it.’
‘Susan thinks I’ll be a shoo-in.’ Klint’s cheekbones are flushed, and I suspect his supervisor has been singing his praises and overinflating his ego yet again. She thinks the sun shines out of Klint’s butt, and if she wasn’t at least 60 and happily married with four children, I’d worry she was after him. But I think she’s solely focused on Klint bringing the faculty prestige. I get up to flick the kettle on.
‘How was your walk?’ asks Klint.
‘Oh, um, good. I went up to the parsonage.’
‘What for?’
‘Just another look around.’
‘Did you have lunch?’
‘Yes.’
‘No cake for me, though …’ he says, assuming I went to the café in town.
‘Hah, no, sorry.’
‘Never mind. We can go there tomorrow for lunch. I need to get out of this hotel, or else I’m going to go stir-crazy.’
Later on that evening, we’re side by side on the twin beds with laptops propped on our knees. Klint is playing his medieval game, and I’ve been re-reading some of the Brontë correspondence. I pull up one of Emily’s diary papers and peer again at her cramped handwriting that covers every inch of the page. Thank God for the zoom function. Otherwise, I’d be ruining my eyesight.
I flick to another document, a letter from her publisher. Thomas Newby:
I am much obliged by your kind note and shall have great pleasure in making arrangements for your second novel.
I would not hurry its completion, for I think you are quite right not to let it go before the world until well satisfied with it, for much depends on your new work if it be an improvement on your first.
Basically, he’s saying,‘You’ve written an amazing debut novel. “No pressure” for the second one.’ It’s datedFebruary 15, 1848—ten months before she died. I’ve seen this before and passed over it without giving it much thought.
But now, after readingVillette, I’m seeing it with fresh eyes. I start getting an inkling of an idea.
I check the date when Anne started writing her second novel,The Tenant of Wildfell Hall: spring 1847; then when Charlotte was writingJane Eyre: August 1846 through to August 1847.
Was Emily writing her second novel during this time? She’d finishedWuthering Heightsin June 1846, so it’s hard to believe that both of her sisters were feverishly writing their bestselling novels in 1847, and she was sitting idly by. No fear. Emily would’ve been out on the moors, thinking up scenes and reading out excerpts to her sisters at their weekly writers’ group sessions in the parlour.
