It’s a beautiful sunny day in early June when I step off the bus in Padstow, Cornwall. The tide is out and the view stretches right over the Camel Estuary as I climb the hill, revealing a series of long, smooth sandbanks punctuating the clear, bluey-green water. The smell of fish and chips wafts through the air, making my tummy rumble. My appetite will have to wait. It’s already three thirty in the afternoon and Nicole’s husband, Charlie Laurence, is expecting me.
When Sara explained that Charlie wanted to oversee the writing of his wife’s book, I was apprehensive. The job was already going to be challenging enough – would he make it even more difficult?
I come to a stop outside a modest, terraced, redbrick house. A narrow, slate-topped veranda stretches across the front, sheltering a charcoal-grey door and a bay window. Apart from a lavender hedge bordering the wall adjacent to the street, the tiny paved area is devoid of plants.
Movement catches my eye at the window, so I quickly walk up the path and knock on the door. There’s not even time to check my reflection in the glass before it opens to reveal who I’m assuming is Charlie.
He looks to be in his early thirties, and is around six foot tall and slim, with green eyes and shaggy dark-blond hair held back from his forehead with a mustard-yellow bandana. He’s wearing a faded orange T-shirt and grey shorts, and his face and limbs are sun-kissed the colour of honey, all the way down to his bare feet.
Wow.
‘Charlie?’ I check hopefully.
‘Hello,’ he replies with a small, reserved smile, holding back the door. ‘Come in.’
I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this.
‘Tea?’ he offers.
‘Thank you, that’d be great.’ I jolt as the door closes with a clunk. I’m nervous.
Charlie gestures down the hall, indicating that I should lead the way. The television is on in what I presume is the living room, but I don’t look in as I pass, and a moment later we spill out into a galley-style kitchen. It continues onto an extension containing a two-seater sofa backed up against the left wall and a round table at the end.
He fills the kettle and gets out two mugs. ‘How was your journey? Did you drive?’
‘No. Tube from Wembley to Paddington, train to Bodmin, and bus to here.’
‘Sounds harrowing.’
He’s polite and well spoken, but he hasn’t made eye contact with me once since I stepped over his threshold.
A noise sounds out from the direction of the living room.
‘Excuse me,’ he says, exiting the kitchen.
I take a deep breath and force myself to exhale slowly while taking in my surroundings.
The internal walls are exposed and the bricks have been painted with thick, white masonry paint. The worktops are fashioned out of old railway sleepers, sanded and varnished to a dull shine. French doors at the end open up onto the back garden. It’s neat and tidy in here, but it looks like a right tip out there. My attention drifts to the table and the wooden chairs encircling it.
Two chairs.
And one highchair.
That was another thing Sara neglected to mention at our meeting last week.
When Nicole died, she left behind not only an unfinished manuscriptanda grief-stricken husband, but a five-week-old baby daughter, as well.
Life can seriously suck.
Charlie is talking in low tones in the living room. Another wave of nerves washes through me.
Babies freak me out. They don’t seem to like me, and I don’t particularly like them. What if I make them cry? What if I makethisone cry? If she takes offence at me, Charlie probably will, too, and he may well pull the plug on this idea.
Earlier this week, I met up with Nicole’s editor, Fay. She’s a lovely, warm woman in her late forties and she revealed that the decision to go ahead with the sequel came down to Charlie. He wasn’t at all sure, from what I gather, but he felt a responsibility towards Nicole’s readers and in the end, gave the go-ahead, as long as the job was done well by the right person. I’m still not convinced that I’m the right person, but, after reading Nicole’s book, I’m as keen as anyone to find out what happened next. Even if I have to write it myself.
The prospect is admittedly terrifying, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. If this meeting with Charlie doesn’t go well, there won’t be a bridge to cross.
The kettle boils, so I distract myself by pouring hot water into the mugs. A moment later, Charlie returns.
