Steel

STEEL

Word of the year:

insouciantadjective. Free from worry, concern or anxiety; carefree.

28th February 2019—what would have been our eleventh anniversary

Dear Adam,

It isn’t our eleventh anniversary of course, because we didn’t last that long. I now live in a thatched cottage in Scotland, and you’re in our London home. With her. But I still wanted to write you a letter. I’ll be keeping this one to myself, along with all the other secret anniversary letters I wrote over the years. I know it might sound crazy—especially now that we’re divorced—but I sat out by the loch and read them recently. All of them. My goodness, we had our up and downs, but there were more good times than bad. More fond memories than sad ones. And I miss you.

Firstly, I wanted to say sorry for the lies. All of them. I grew up surrounded by books and fiction—it’s hard not to when your father is a world-famous author. My mother was a writer too, but I never told you about her either. I don’t expect you to understand, but I couldn’t talk about them with you.

When we first met, I believed in you and your writing, but I was impatient, and I wanted your dreams to come true too quickly so that we could concentrate on ours. Having not spoken to Henry for years, I called him and asked him to let you adapt one of his novels. It was only ever meant to be one adaptation. I thought it would lead to success with your own screenplays, but by trying to help your career, I sometimes worry that I killed your dreams. Henry used you as a way to try and get close to me. He wasn’t interested in me at all when I was a child. But I think his own mortality made him realize I could be useful as an adult—someone to look after his precious books when he was gone. My father cared about each of his novels far more than he ever cared about me.

These last two years have taught me a lot about myself. Now that I’ve left it “all” behind, I’ve realized how little I had. It’s too easy to get blinded by man-made city lights, even though they could never shine as brightly as the stars in a cloudless sky, or white snow on a mountain, or sunbeams dancing on a loch. People confuse what they want with what they need, but I’ve realized now how different those things are. And how sometimes the things and people we think we need, are the ones we should stay away from. My hair is more gray than blond these days—I haven’t visited a hairdresser since I left London, and it’s grown very long. I wear it in plaits to avoid too many tangles and knots. I do miss our home, and us, and Bob, but I think the Scottish Highlands suit me. And I’ve realized I have more in common with my father than I used to admit, even to myself.

Henry liked his privacy so very much that he bought everything in this valley, along with the old church and cottage, before I was born. The Scottish laird Henry purchased the land from had a few too many gambling debts, and just happened to be a fan of Henry’s books, so sold it for a ridiculously small sum. Henry even bought the nearest pub a few years later, so that he could close it down. He just wanted peace and quiet and to be left alone. Completely alone.

The locals had been unimpressed by an outsider owning so much of the valley. There were petitions to stop Henry converting the church—even though nobody had used it for half a century—but he did it anyway. He was a man who always did what he wanted and got his own way. When local interference continued, he made up ghost stories about Blackwater Chapel, so that anyone who didn’t already know to stay away, would. Why he wanted to live such a lonely life, hidden away from the world in self-isolation, used to baffle me. There are no shops, or libraries, or theaters, or people for miles, there is nothing here except the mountains and the sky and a loch full of salmon. The man didn’t even eat fish. But now, I think I finally understand.

I have almost nothing but almost everything I need. My father’s love of good wine meant that the crypt was crammed full of it, and his old housekeeper left a seemingly endless supply of homemade and hand-labeled meals in the freezer. Henry’s personal library is stocked with all of my favorite books, and the ever-changing views here take my breath away every single day. But it can be hard to enjoy the good things in life when you don’t have someone to share them with. I miss our words of the day and words of the year. I don’t eat especially well—I’m a little too fond of tinned food these days—but I feel better than I ever did in London. Maybe it’s the taste of fresh air in my lungs, or the long walks I take exploring the valley. Or maybe it’s just feeling free to be me.

It can be hard to step out from a parent’s shadow when you inherit their dreams. I often wrote stories as a child, but Henry’s shoes were always too big to fill. Plus, he let me know from an early age that he didn’t think I could write. I never thought I might be able to write an entire novel, but dreams can only come true if we dare to dream them in the first place. My self-confidence divorced me long before you did, but life taught me to be brave and to always try again. If you never give up on something you can’t ever fail.

Whenever I weighed my father’s words against my own, his seemed heavier, stronger, more permanent than the thoughts inside my head, which always seemed to come and go like the tide. Washing away my confidence. But castles made of sand never stand tall forever. I am free of his judgment now, and have realized the only person who forced me to live in his shadow, was me. I could have stepped out any time I wanted if I hadn’t been so afraid of being seen.

Sometimes I sit in front of the loch when the sun is starting to set and pretend that you and Bob are here sitting next to me. I like to smoke Henry’s pipe in the evening, and watch the salmon jumping across the water, before the moon rises in the sky to replace the sun. Then I listen to the sound of frogs singing, and watch the bats swoop and soar in the sky, until it gets so cold and dark, I have to head back to the cottage. I don’t like to sleep in the chapel—too many unhappy memories haunt the rooms—but I have fallen in love with Blackwater Loch. This place never felt like home until I left it. I wish I could share it with you, along with all the secrets I was forced to keep. You promised to love me forever, but I wonder if you still think of me or miss me at all?

It’s hard to picture Amelia in our old house in London, sleeping in my bed with my husband, walking my dog, cooking in my kitchen, working in my office at Battersea in the job I helped her to get. I still can’t believe you gave her my engagement ring. Or that she’d want to wear something that was once your mother’s, and then mine. But stealing things that belong to other people seems to be a habit of hers. She’s the kind of woman who expects something for nothing, and thinks the world owes her a debt. She was always reading magazines on her lunch breaks—never books—and liked to enter all the competitions inside them, or on the radio, or on daytime TV, hoping to win something for free. That’s how I knew she’d never turn down a free weekend away. It was almost too easy to get you to come here.

I’m sure I’m not the first ex-wife to want revenge. I sometimes imagined killing you both try not to think about it. My personal variety of fury has always been surprisingly calm. I read and write instead. It’s a loneliness coping mechanism that I developed as a little girl, when my father was always too busy working to notice me. It sounds daft now, but I never realized before how alike the two of you are. I seem to have spent a lifetime hiding inside stories: reading other people’s when I was a child, and now writing my own.

There is one secret I want to share. I wrote a novel and now I am writing another. Dreams are like dresses in a shop window; they look pretty, but sometimes don’t fit when you try them on. Some are too small, others are too big. Luckily, my mother taught me how to sew, and dreams can be adjusted to fit, just like dresses.

I think my new book is a good one and you’re in it.

Rock Paper Scissorsis all about choices. I’ve made mine, the time will come when you’ll need to make yours. The only good thing about losing everything, is the freedom that comes from having nothing left to lose.

Your (ex) wife