Maggie gave a small laugh, I think probably more out of pity for me than actual humor, but Nick was staring at me.
“That might work, you know…”
“Erm, I was joking,” I said. “I assume we don’t have access to Jane Austen—right, Maggie?”
“Sadly not,” she said. “And believe me, I’ve tried some madcap ways of communicating with her over my time here, just in case. This long alone can make you do some really strange things.”
“I don’t mean Jane Austen,” Nick said. “Zoe, you’re a writer. You could write about us back in our lives in London, and then Mum could read us into that?”
It was such a bananas idea that I couldn’t help laughing. “I don’t write anymore, Nick! Besides, I assume your mum’s tried that tactic and it didn’t work.”
I looked at Maggie, but she was lost in thought again.
“Mum?” Nick said.
“I did try it, but not until I’d already been stuck here for quite a long time,” she said. “It obviously failed, but maybe that was because I’d been away from my own world too long, so what I wrote wasn’t convincing enough? Besides, I’m definitely not a writer; a reader, yes, but I don’t have a creative-writing bone in my body.”
“So, do you think it might work?” Nick asked her.
Maggie sighed. “I don’t know. I mean, there’s a risk that we’d endup reading ourselves into Zoe’s version of 2026 London, as opposed to the real one. It would all depend on how true to life her writing is, I suppose.”
“But it has to be worth a try, surely?” Nick said.
“Whoa, hang on a second,” I said. “There’s no way I can do this! I told you, Nick, I gave up writing years ago because I wasn’t good enough.”
“You told me you gave up writing because you were comparing your work to the dick lit Crispin was writing, but that’s not who you are. You have your own, unique voice, and I’m sure that if you use that, you’ll be able to do this.”
“That is 100 percent not something you should be sure about,” I said. “Plus, I also gave up writing because I couldn’t write a happy ending that felt convincing, and that’s exactly what we need right now.”
Nick shook his head. “We don’t need a happy ending, Zoe. I told you when we first met, I don’t believe in them anyway—they’re unrealistic. All we need is for the story not to endyet, and you’re our best chance to make that happen.”
“But what if your mum’s right and we get trapped in whatever weird faux-London I write?” I said. “I think I’d much rather take my chances in Jane Austen’s beautifully crafted, perfectly executed world than whatever crappy two-dimensional world I come up with.”
“But Jane Austen’s beautifully crafted world might be about to fall apart, and if it does, we may fall apart with it,” Nick said gently. “I genuinely believe you can write us out of here; otherwise I wouldn’t be asking you to do it.”
He was looking at me with those deep, piercing eyes, and I glared back at him. “You believed in me once before when I tried to read Darcy back, and look howthatturned out.”
“But this time my mum’s here to read us out, so all you have to do is write it.”
I looked at Maggie, who shrugged. “In the absence of any other ideas, this is the best we have right now.”
I groaned. “Right, so what you’re both saying is that the survival of the three of us rests entirely on my writing skills, despite the fact that all I’ve written for the past four years are shopping lists and a few diary entries?”
Nick gave me a slow, soft smile. “I know it’s a lot to ask. But you said yourself, nowadays women in romance novels don’t get rescued by the man—they rescue themselves. I’m just sticking with the trope.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
You know the scene at the start ofShakespeare in Lovewhere a sexy Shakespeare sits at his desk with ink-stained fingers, surrounded by balled-up pieces of parchment, unable to write anything but his own name? Well, that was me, only the year was sometime around 1811 rather than 1593; I was holding a fountain pen, not a feather quill; and I looked more like Judi Dench’s grim-faced Queen Elizabeth than peak-hotness Joseph Fiennes. Plus, I couldn’t even write my own name, my mind as blank as the pages in front of me.
I tried to remember what I’d been taught in my writing course, but none of it was any help. It was all very well, knowing about the three-act structure and the apparent evils of adverbs, but there had never been a class on “Life-writing In Order Not To Die.” And so, as the last revelers left the ball and Netherfield Park settled down for the night, I sat at the dressing table, exhausted yet jittery with adrenaline, Crispin’s words running through my head.
This is sweet, babe, but you’re not there yet… What are you trying to say?
Zoe’s a good little writer, but the difference between being a writer and an author comes down to commitment…
You just have to want it badly enough and be willing to put in the work, and not everyone can do that…
By the time the sun rose, I had a banging headache and maybe two hundred words on the page. I crept downstairs to make myself a pot of tea—how I wished they had Starbucks and Deliveroo in Regency England—and then returned to my room to carry on. The hours ticked by, and yet by ten, I still only had a couple of paragraphs of clunky prose. This was a complete waste of time; we’d be better off reading ourselves into Bingley’s copy ofThe Odysseyand taking our chances against Cyclops than relying on my writing to save us.
