28. Twenty-Eight

28

PRESENT

I ’m not sure the Bramblebury Village Hall has ever been as silent as it is now. It’s as if the entire village is collectively holding its breath.

On stage, Elliot’s publicist exchanges worried looks with the journalist who’s waiting to conduct the interview after what was supposed to be Elliot’s big announcement.

But the announcement hasn’t come.

Instead, Elliot stands at the microphone, and starts to speak.

“Ten years ago,” he says, in a low voice which is nevertheless carried easily all the way to the back of the hall, “I came here to Bramblebury to research a non-fiction book I’d been planning for a while; a biography of my grandfather, Luke Sinclair. You might recognize his first name from the pages of The Snow Globe. ”

There’s a murmur of excitement from the audience.

“Luke also came to Bramblebury,” Elliot goes on. “Many years before me. During the Second World War, in fact. And while he was here, Elliot met a woman called Evie.”

The crowd rustles again, excitedly aware that they’re hearing the story that directly inspired the book they all love so much.

“Luke and Evie fell in love. And so did I. With the town itself, but also with a local woman I met while I was here.” All around me, the heads of the villagers who know about me and Elliot turn to stare at me curiously. This part of the story, at least, is one many of them already know; Bramblebury’s worst-kept secret. Nevertheless, a small forest of cellphones is suddenly pointing at me. I can almost sense Levi regretting his decision to leave my side and go to the front of the stage; it’s making him miss out on a share of the limelight.

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’d happily hug Elliot, but might be waiting outside later to slap me . 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 in The 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. “That she would read it, and she’d find some way to get in touch. But instead, it did the opposite. The Snow Globe reached 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 already know what happens next: and it’s nothing . Elliot did give 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.

What is he 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. “But The Snow Globe isn’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.

“What the actual fuck?” he yells, almost dropping his phone. “How did we not know this? Paris, how did we not know this?”

He glares accusingly at his colleague, who glares back at him, fighting mode engaged.

“I’m going to assume most of you know what a pen name is?” Elliot interrupts them.

I lean forward in my seat, along with everyone else in the room. On the stage, Publicist Woman is frantically stabbing at her phone, a look of panic on her face. The journalist is beckoning frantically to his cameraman to keep filming. Levi appears to be about to explode.

For once, I relate.

“A pen name is a fake name an author adopts when they want to keep their real identity private, for whatever reason,” Elliot explains. “And there are lots of reasons authors do that. Some of them just do it because they want to try out a genre their audience isn’t used to, for instance. Others do it because they want to write smut and they’d rather not have to discuss it with their mom.”

He grins again, and there’s a ripple of laughter from the audience, plus an audible sigh from Sandra, who appears to be quite taken with the idea of Elliot writing smut.

“In my case, I used a pen name because the type of books I started writing were a little different from The Snow Globe ,” Elliot says. His cheeks are starting to turn red now, and he’s looking more and more like the younger version of himself who would never have believed he’d one day stand in front of a crowded room and … admit to secretly writing smut? Is that what he’s doing here?

“Not totally different,” he goes on, ignoring his publicist, who’s now abandoned her phone to hover anxiously by his shoulder instead. “They’re still about relationships. But while The Snow Globe was a love story, my other books are very much romance .”

The emphasis on the word romance is one that only the kind of people Paris describes as “book people” will understand. But I know what he means. Love stories don’t have to have happy endings. Romance books do. Which means Elliot’s been writing…

“Billionaires,” he blurts out from the stage. “Enemies to lovers. Fake dating. All that kind of stuff.”

The crowd murmurs, not really knowing how to react to this. Well, with the obvious exception of Levi, who appears to have expired, and is being fanned with a book festival brochure by Paris, who isn’t even looking at him as she does it.

“Well, well,” says Dad quietly from beside me. “Who would’ve thought it?”

I grip the edge of my seat tightly, feeling like I’m in the middle of some kind of weird fever dream as I wait for Elliot to finish.

“They’re not the kind of books that tend to win prizes,” Elliot says quietly, once the hubbub dies down. “But they’re the books my girl … that Holly used to love. Because every single one of them has a happy ending.”

His eyes somehow find me, all the way at the back of the room, but I’m finding it hard to focus on him because it would appear mine are somehow swimming with tears.

“I wrote all of my books for you, Holly,” he says. “You’re the heroine of every story; not just The Snow Globe . And I never knew if you’d read them or not, but I hoped you would. And I hoped they’d bring you some of the happiness I obviously couldn’t.”

“God, he’s good,” sighs a woman standing near me.

“I’ll buy every single one of his books,” agrees her friend. “I don’t care what name he writes them under.”

Everyone in the room is now staring at me; I mean, if I thought all the stuff about me being the inspiration for The Snow Globe was bad, it’s going to be absolutely nothing compared to this little bombshell. I will never live this down. I’ll probably have to change my name and move town. And, honestly, I don’t even care, because it’s embarrassing, and it’s awkward, and when I look back at the footage from today that’s inevitably going to end up on TikTok I’m going to really wish I’d taken the time to style my hair properly before leaving the house tomorrow.

But it’s also kind of wonderful, really. Because the man I’ve loved for a decade now is standing on a literal stage, telling the entire village that he loves me; and that he’s been trying to tell me that in dozens of different ways for years now.

At least, I think that’s what Elliot’s saying.

And, if he is, that would definitely explain all of these tears that are suddenly running down my face.

“What’s the pen name, though?” shouts someone from the middle of the crowd. “You have to tell us the pen name! Don’t leave us hanging here!”

I’m not remotely surprised to find the question is Levi’s. I’m slightly more surprised, though, when I look over to see him standing next to Paris, both of them squeezed together on the bronze ‘first kiss’ plaque in a way that suggests they’ve picked this spot on purpose.

If it was anyone else but them, they’d look quite romantic, really.

“Yes,” shouts Aunt Lorraine, who’s materialized beside me at some point during all of this. “Tell us so I can buy every single one of those books.”

The room falls silent.

Everyone looks at Elliot.

Elliot looks at his publicist.

His publicist looks at her phone, then back up at the audience, as if she’s trying to decide whether allowing Elliot to reveal his secret pen name has the potential to be the kind of news that will sell thousands more books, or the kind that will completely ruin his career.

For a full 30 seconds, those two possibilities compete with each other. Then the woman turns to Elliot and gives a tiny nod, before turning and abruptly leaving the stage, as if she’s washing her hands of whatever’s about to happen next.

Even from where I’m sitting at the back of the room, I can see the indecision on Elliot’s face. It’s evident in every movement; from the way he reaches up to adjust his non-existent glasses, to the way he swallows uneasily before speaking.

I get quickly to my feet, torn between the need to let him know he doesn’t have to tell us if he doesn’t want to, and the equally pressing desire to know what his pen name is, and whether I’ve read any of his books.

Elliot clears his throat.

“My pen name is one I think quite a few of you will know, actually,” he says, with a nervous laugh. “It’s Vivienne Faulkner.”