Travis strode over to the ice-cream van and returned with two bottles of water. Courtney chugged hers down as if she’d just finished running a marathon.
“Note to self. Don’t leave the house without taking water with me,” she laughed. “If I’d realised it would get so hot, I would’ve filled a bottle before I started out on my walk.”
“It’s warmer than the weather forecasters said it would be.” He studied her face, his gaze narrowing in concern. “Are you sure you feel alright?”
“I feel okay. I’d tell you if I didn’t. Don’t worry, I’m not about to go into labour right here in the park.”
She laughed, and although Travis joined in, his expression was still wary. “When is your baby due?”
“Just under six weeks. My official due date is May fourteenth, but my midwife says that it’s not unusual for first-time mothers to deliver late. I’ve got ages to go.”
Travis drank some water, possibly reassured by her words, possibly not—she couldn’t quite tell.
“You must be excited about your new baby coming?”
“Very excited. I can’t wait to meet her.”
His eyebrows lifted. “You’re having a girl?”
Courtney nodded. “A lovely little girl. I wouldn’t have minded whether it was a boy or a girl, but knowing it’s a girl is wonderful and exciting and helps me imagine her in my head.”
“Have you picked a name for her yet?”
“No. I’ve thought of lots of different names I like, but I don’t think I’ll know which is the right one until I meet her and hold her in my arms.”
That brought a smile to his lips. “That will be a special moment.”
“It really will.”
He drank some water and looked off towards the duck pond for a long beat before speaking again. “Your partner or boyfriend must be excited too?”
For the second time that day, she felt the tiny stab of pain that pierced her heart whenever she thought of her unborn child’s father.
“I’m not involved with the baby’s dad anymore. We broke up.”
A surprised look crossed Travis’s face, his water bottle halfway to his lips. “Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“It’s fine. It’s only natural to ask, and only natural to assume I’m with the father of my child. But, no, we’re not together anymore. He decided he didn’t want to be involved with the baby, so…”
She caught the sad sigh in her throat and sucked it back down deep inside, then put on a smile and patted her swollen stomach. “We’ll do just fine on our own, me and this little one.”
The expression on Travis’s face morphed from embarrassed surprise to a thoughtful smile. “I’m sure you will.”
Courtney drank more of her water, feeling better with every sip. “So, tell me, how did you become a writer? If you don’t mind me asking…”
“Of course not.” Travis move further back onto the bench from the edge where he’d been perched, making himself comfortable. “I studied journalism at university, but after I graduated, I couldn’t find a job. The news industry is competitive, and it’s also going through a lot of big changes and financial cuts and it’s not easy to get your foot in the door. I ended up working in a sales job just to earn some money, but it wasn’t what I’d trained for and it definitely wasn’t what I’d hoped for either, as far as a career was concerned.”
A wistful look crossed his face. “I’d always imagined myself as some sort of intrepid investigative reporter, digging deep into the big issues and exposing the truth and making sure that decision-makers in politics and society are held accountable. I imagined doing my part to make the world a better place, if only in some small way. It wasn’t easy realising I might not get to do any of that, after all.”
Courtney saw the faraway look on his face and sympathised. “That must have been difficult.”
He gave a small shrug. “It was a wake up call, and a realisation that things don’t always work out the way you think they will.”
She knew exactly what he meant. Wanting to hear more about how he’d turned failure into success, she gave him an encouraging smile to continue talking.
“I’d always dabbled with creative writing ever since I was a kid,” Travis said. “I enjoyed writing stories, and so, to cheer myself up between shifts at the terrible sales job where I was working, I started writing a sort of James Patterson style fast-paced thriller. It was a lot of fun.”
Travis laughed and waved a hand at nothing in particular. “The first draft wasn’t very good, but I had a blast writing it. There were plot holes so big you could drive a bus through them, but I managed to sort most of them out in the second draft. I’d only written the book to amuse myself, or at least that’s what I thought, but I started to wonder if it might be publishable. I gave the manuscript another work through and then got in touch with literary agents. Those are the people who represent authors and negotiate contracts with publishers.”
