“And they’re all really excited to welcome you. They’re a nice bunch of people and they’ll be crushed if you cancel now. When I spoke to the librarian, Ellie, a few minutes ago, she said everyone from the book club was already there and waiting for you to arrive.”
“Now I feel bad.”
“Good. Youshouldfeel bad. They’ve even brought home-made cakes to share with you during the Q&A.”
“And now I feel even worse,” he said, and meant it. The last thing he ever wanted to do was disappoint his loyal readers. Without them, he had no author career. Without them, he was just a lunatic hammering away at a keyboard while letting his imagination get the better of him.
“You can still make it over there, Travis,” Michaela said. “The library is only a fifteen-minute walk across town. Ten minutes, if you look lively. I’ll call Ellie back and tell her you’re running late, but you’re on your way.”
Travis glanced at the manuscript on his screen and at the blinking cursor that was waiting for him to keep typing the story. Inside his mind, he could still see Maura Shaw waiting there for him to start writing again, caught in the middle of the scene he was composing. Another thirty or forty minutes at the keyboard and he would finish the chapter.
But he couldn’t disappoint the people who were waiting for him at the library. It wasn’t their fault he’d forgotten all about the commitment he’d made to speak to their book club. Knowing he was already late for the talk made his neck heat with embarrassment.
“Yes, okay,” Travis said. “I’ll leave right now. Tell your friend I’m sorry to keep everyone waiting.”
Michaela gave a half-laugh, half-sigh down the phone. “What are we going to do with you, Travis?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“There is a world out there beyond writing, you know?”
“I think I’d heard something about that.”
With a grunt of laughter, Michaela hung up. Travis saved his work at the computer, then hurried upstairs to the bedroom to hunt around for the smart blazer he liked to wear to writerly events. As he searched fruitlessly through the suitcase on the floor, he wondered if he’d actually packed the blazer in the first place.
When he’d come to stay on Foxglove Street for a few weeks while finishing his current Maura Shaw book, he hadn’t planned on taking part in any book-related events at all. The whole point of decamping to the rural peace and quiet of the South Downs was so he could focus on writing and nothing else. If Michaela hadn’t volunteered him to speak to the local book club at the library, he wouldn’t have been going over there at all.
But Michaelahadvolunteered him, and he’d said yes after the fact, so now he needed his blazer. Wearing the blazer gavehim the boost of confidence he required to appear in front of readers and discuss his writing in a way that made it seem like he actually knew what he was talking about.
Even after eight books published in his Maura Shaw series, not to mention the five other books he’d published before that, Travis still felt like an imposter who’d be uncovered as a clueless hack at any moment. The ‘writer blazer’—as Michaela jokingly called it—smartened him up and gave him the façade of literary authority he needed to face the reading public.
It took him several minutes to locate the jacket, not in either of the suitcases he’d hauled upstairs into the bedroom when he’d arrived, but—inexplicably—folded up inside a small rucksack alongside some spare notebooks, a charging cable he’d been unsuccessfully looking for since he got here, and a review copy of a book written by an author friend which he’d promised to read and provide an encouraging blurb for in advance of publication.
With a stab of panic, he realised he’d forgotten all about that promise, too. He hadn’t even started reading the book yet. What was the deadline to send through a few positive remarks to his friend’s publishing company? Travis couldn’t remember.
But there was no time to worry about it right now. The book club people were waiting for him, and here he was getting distracted with yet another task he’d forgotten about.
Setting the review copy of his friend’s book on the bedside table where he’d hopefully remember to start reading it tonight, Travis pulled on the smart blazer and checked his appearance in the mirror. The black jeans and blue shirt he wore worked just fine with the dark grey blazer, but before he left the house, he’d have to do something about his hair.
Hours spent writing at the keyboard while absently running his hands through his hair as he ruminated about his story and pondered various plot developments had left him looking like a man who’d stuck his fingers in an electrical socket. His darkbrown hair stood up in wild tufts all over his head and made him look manic.
Travis grabbed a comb and wrangled his hair into order with some styling product, then slapped on some aftershave. He had the beginnings of a scruffy beard forming, but there was no time to shave, so the aftershave and tamed hair would have to do the heavy lifting in the grooming department.
And, of course, the blazer. Thank God for the blazer. The moment he put it on, he felt ready to do his bit as a ‘writer’.
Travis hurried downstairs and back into the front room, which he’d set up as his temporary office while he stayed here. His leather satchel was leaning against the desk, and he picked it up and shoved a copy of the last Maura Shaw mystery novel inside.
When he’d agreed to appear before the book club at the local library, the chair of the group had asked if he’d mind reading a short excerpt from his latest book before taking questions from the floor. This was usual practice at these sorts of events, and as Travis had given several talks to numerous book festivals and special gatherings as part of the promotion when the previous novel was published, he already had a section in mind which he’d easily find once he got himself over there.
Out in the hallway, he slipped his phone inside his pocket, slung the satchel over his shoulder, and was about to leave when he realised he didn’t know where the house keys were.
For the past four days, he hadn’t left the house. Spring might be bursting into full glory outside, but Travis had limited his enjoyment of the changing season to either looking out the window or stepping into the small back garden. He was here in this house to work, not have a holiday, and he knew from bitter experience that if he ventured out and about, he’d only use it as an excuse to procrastinate.
The last few days, the writing had gone so well that Travis hadn’t wanted to leave the house, anyway. He’d hoped that renting the cosy 1930s house in the quaint town of Hamblehurst for several weeks would give him the comfortable surroundings he needed to make solid progress with his current novel, and so it had proved.
Except he’d become such a hermit while hunched over his keyboard that he now couldn’t remember where the door keys were.
Frowning, he tried to think where he put them the last time he’d gone out. Which was when, exactly?
