I’d promised my agent I’d get a detailed outline to her within three months. It’s been four now, and I’ve barely touched it.
At first, it didn’t feel like I was actively avoiding it, it’s just whenever I had a free night to devote to the book, something would come up. Rich would score tickets to a West End play I’d been wanting to see; a mate would call needing a shoulder to cry on, and I was terrible at saying no. But most of the time, I was just plain tired, and an evening with an Indian takeaway andStranger Thingswas all I could manage.
Charles did his best to gee me up; he’d gone properly gaga when I first told him the news. ‘My dear, imagine how good business will be once you’re a best-selling author. I can already see you on Graham Norton, wowing the nation.’
‘I’m not sure how many writers go on chat shows, apart from people like Richard Osman, so unless I throw in a murder in a care home, we’ll have to park that ambition.’
‘I know a lot of TV people,’ he’d said confidently. ‘I’m sure I can set up a meeting. They’ll be putty in your hands, especially if you wear that leopard print dress.’
Thatleopard print dress was a charity shop find for when Charles threw a Tarts and Vicars-themed office Christmas party. I still don’t know how he got away with it.
However, the chances that anyone would want to read a book by a therapist who claimed to be able to teach you about the five types of cheaters – and, crucially –how to avoid themafter she missed the fact her boyfriend was playing away, are roughly zero.
Yeah, I can see thatracingup the Amazon charts.
I close my laptop, too anxious to open the dreaded document. To assuage my guilt, I swing open my wardrobe and start hunting for clothes I could donate to charity. Who knows, I might even find something I still want to wear.
A couple of hours later, I’m at that panicked stage where everything’s been chucked on the floor, so I can’t just abandon the task, but I haven’t progressed enough to be able to see the end of this sartorial stocktake.
I’m saved by the bell – or rather, someone’s key. As soon as the front door shuts, Yan’s voice floats up the stairs.
I don’t know why I’m surprised he’s randomly dropped by. It was my habit, too, but in the last couple of years with Rich, I came less and less, usually blaming work and traffic. We’d see Rich’s parents, though, and they lived in Hampstead, which was just as far from Clapham as Ealing. He never said it outright, but I could tell Rich wasn’t a big fan of the noise and nosiness of my family. They couldn’t have been more different from the loose-tea-sipping, Mahler-listening Bensons.
Dad once told Rich he didn’t like the look of one of his moles.
‘Our window-cleaner had one like that on the back of his hand. He’s dead now.’
Rich was understandably freaked out when we got home.
‘Can you tell him not to terrify me?’
I tried to calm him down. ‘He worries a lot, but he means well. And I’m sure that mole is nothing, but maybe see the GP about it?’
When I go downstairs, Yan is rearranging the fruit bowl in the kitchen.
‘You can’t stay here, Nell. I’m filming Dad for his YouTube channel.’
‘You’re doingwhat?’
‘His cooking videos are going down a storm. We signed him up for his own channel so more people could find them.’
‘People other than his immediate blood relatives want to watch him?’
‘His clip on how to make the perfectshamishigot twelve thousand views.’
Dad was an internet sensation, and I didn’t know?
‘I even made him a title sequence.’
Yan pulls out his phone, navigates to YouTube, and taps ‘play’. The opening image is a sheet of A4 paper where crudely stencilled block caps announceVASILIS IN THE KITCHEN. There’s even a gif of a fluttering Cypriot flag. It couldn’t be more low-fi or home-made, but there’s something strangely hypnotic about it.
Then comes Dad, hamming up his accent as he explains what ‘Cyprus delights’ he’s going to offer his adoring public.
I’m about to quip that the advertisers must be flocking in, before I notice a Greek brand of olive oil strategically placed front and centre.
‘Am I going mad, or is there some product placement going on?’
Yan winks. ‘Dad says there’s no harm in some free publicity for our compatriots. He’s going to do a shout-out to Uncle Philip’s garage today. Get ten per cent off an MOT if you mention Dad’s YouTube channel.’
