I take a step back, desperately fighting the impulse to crawl beneath the table of books and hide. Who knew that a village book festival could be so completely terrifying?
“Ahem.”
Elliot clears his throat in a bid to regain the attention of the audience, who turn reluctantly back to him.
“I only spent three weeks in Bramblebury,” he says. “But they were some of the happiest weeks of my life.”
A collective ‘awww’ goes up from the audience.
“But my stay was cut short.”
The ‘awww’ turns to an ‘ooooh’.
“I was called home urgently because of a family emergency. I lost touch with the love of my life. I thought that was her choice. I thought she hated me. I thought I’d never see her again. I went from being the happiest I’d ever been to total and utter despair. Honestly, if you’d seen me, you’d have wanted to either slap me or hug me; it was all very dramatic. Even my mother struggled to put up with me.”
He gives a wry smile, and the audience gazes up at him, every one of them very clearly in the ‘hug him’ camp.
A few rows in front of me, a woman I recognize as Sandra, landlady at The Rose, turns and gives me a hostile look which suggests she’dhappily hug Elliot, but might be waiting outside later to slapme. My legs instantly start trembling again.
“I’ve recently found out that I was wrong,” Elliot says quietly. “That the woman I loved didn’t choose to cut contact with me. It was … not a misunderstanding, exactly. That’s the wrong word. It was something that wasn’t her fault, though. I know that now. But that’s a story that isn’t mine to tell.”
The audience sends up a murmur of disappointment. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Martin tugging at the collar of his sweater; a nervous tick of his that he always does when he’s stressed. I turn my head just enough to allow me to glare at him, while still keeping one eye on Elliot; a piece of multi-tasking which would be quite impressive if I hadn’t also broken into a cold sweat at the same time.
“I couldn’t live out my own love story,” Elliot goes on. “So I decided to write it instead. I used my story — our story — as the basis for the one that became Luke and Evie’s inThe Snow Globe.I hoped she’d see it. That she’d read it, and she’d know how much I loved her. Because I really, truly loved her. More than anything in the world.”
Okay, I actually think I might die now; I might just fall to the floor and die. I’m not sure whether it’s going to be from the words he’s saying, and the way they’re twisting painfully around my heart, or from the sheer embarrassment of all these people staring from me to Elliot and then back again, as if they’re spectators at a particularly enthralling tennis match, but, either way, death feels like the only option right now, and I will welcome it with open arms.
“I wrote our story because I thought that by doing it I could somehow change the ending,” Elliot says from the front of the room, where he’s blissfully unaware of the effect he’s having on me. “Thatshe would read it, and she’d find some way to get in touch. But instead, it did the opposite.The Snow Globereached all of these people — hundreds of thousands of them — but not the one person I wanted to reach. Not her. So she didn’t come looking for me.”
“For shame,” I hear someone mutter in a stage whisper. I think it might be Maisie Poole, actually.
“Heartless,” adds Elsie, not to be outdone. “Martin was right when he said she was frigid.”
“Holly isn’t frigid,” says Paris loudly. “Or, at least, not as far as I know.”
From beside me, there’s a scraping sound as Dad pushes his chair back. At first I think he’s about to challenge Martin to a duel for calling his daughter ‘frigid’, but instead he just takes my arm and makes me sit down in the chair he’s just vacated. Which I guess is a much more sensible reaction, really.
“But what happened next?” someone yells. “Please tell us you didn’t just give up?”
There’s a sudden flurry of movement as Martin rushes past me, en route to the exit. I get quickly to my feet again, wondering if I should follow him. It’s not like I need to hear the rest, after all. I alreadyknowwhat happens next: and it’snothing. Elliotdidgive up. So did I, for that matter.
I have a feeling this audience is about to be really disappointed in the end of this story.
“Oh, I didn’t give up,” Elliot replies, making me sit back down abruptly. “There was no real way for me to speak to her; or not when I was so certain she didn’t want me to. So I started writing to her, instead.”
There’s a muffled gasp of surprise at this. What’s even more surprising is that it comes from me.
This isn’t right. Elliot didn’t write to me. Or, if he did, I didn’t get his letters: or emails, or texts, or whatever it is he’s trying to say he did.
Whatishe trying to say he did, though?
“This is something I’ve never told anyone. I’m probably going to get myself into a bit of trouble over it, actually.”
For the first time since he took the mic, Elliot looks unsure of himself. He glances at his publicist, then runs a hand nervously across his chin, looking exactly like the bashful 26-year-old who walked into the bookstore that day, and handed me a snow globe.
“This will probably surprise any of you who’ve been following my career in any detail.” He grins ruefully. “ButThe Snow Globeisn’t my only published novel. I’ve written a few more since then. Well, quite a lot more, actually.”
In the silence that follows this statement, you can literally hear the intake of breath from the assembled crowd, before Levi’s voice rings out across the hall.
