Read Online All We Have Lost by Aimee Alexander - Free Book Online Page B

what they’re taking on!’
    I laugh.
    ‘Let’s book your visit now.’
    I give him a look.
    ‘I’m serious.’
    ‘Connor, I’m at home with two kids,’ I say, feeling a bit Frances-y.
    ‘Bring them. And Ian.’
    I don’t drag up the issue of money. Knowing Connor, he’d offer to pay.
    ‘Sure I’ll see you when you’re in Dublin. I assume you won’t forget us.’
    He looks at me, serious suddenly. ‘How could I?’
    And I remember how close we once were.
     

CHAPTER TWELVE
     
    I drive Mum to Kilcoole, a pebble beach at the foothills of the Wicklow Mountains. Mum and Dad first met here when Dad’s football landed on her picnic rug. Five years ago, we followed Dad’s last wishes and scattered his ashes here. If we wanted to visit him, he said, at least we’d get a trip to the sea. I was only glad that he opted for cremation. It meant that we finally got the cancer. Burned it to ashes, every last bit.
    So here we are, sitting in silence on the very same picnic rug, looking out to sea.
    ‘Remember the dolphins,’ Mum says with a smile and I think she must be psychic.
    I nod, smiling too. Dad stayed in the water while we shot out, fearing shark attack. The dolphins came right up to him and they swam together. He called us back in. And we went. Such was our trust in him. God, how I loved him, a bigger kid than us always, a total messer. I don’t remember any of my friends’ fathers being such fun.
    ‘He was a great dad,’ I say.
    ‘He loved you both so much.’
    ‘Wish he’d got to see Chloe and Sam.’
    ‘He does see them, sweetheart. I’m sure of it. I know he was a stubborn man when it came to his lack of faith but I know he got through those gates somehow.’ She smiles again, staring at the horizon. ‘He had his own way of doing things, your Dad, his own way of looking at the world; but he was a good man, Kim, a good man.’
    On the way back, we stop off at a little church. Dad might have had his own way of doing things, but Mum does too.
     
    If anyone ever asks me for advice on writing (unlikely), this is what they’ll get: Don’t tell anyone that you’re doing it. All you get is pressure. Sarah, on the line from Bangkok, has just asked if I’ve set myself a deadline.
    ‘What kind of deadline?’
    ‘You know – if you’re not published by a certain date, you’ll move on to something else.’
    ‘No, Sarah, no deadline.’
    ‘OK, change that.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘It will keep you focused.’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘Well?’ she asks.
    ‘Well what?’
    ‘Have you come up with one?’
    ‘What, like now?’
    ‘No time like the present.’
    I bite my hand – rather than her head off.
    ‘I’m waiting.’
    ‘All right then! Two years! I’ll give it two years. Happy?’
    ‘Seems a little on the long side.’
    ‘Call me patient. We can’t all be an overnight success.’
    ‘Did you get on to Jackie?’ Jackie is acting editor at Girlfriend . Sarah suggested to her that I write an opinion column for the magazine.
    ‘She said she’d get back to me.’
    ‘Let me call her, put a bit of fire under her ass.’
    ‘Maybe don’t. She might just resent me.’
    ‘No. She’ll resent me.’ She laughs. ‘OK, let’s flick ahead two years. What’ll you do if the novel doesn’t work out?’
    ‘I’ve two years to worry about that.’
    ‘True. But it’s always good to have a back-up plan. What’s yours?’
    I hate the way Plan B keeps popping up – especially as it’s invalid – no money, no qualifications, no experience. ‘Open an art gallery.’
    ‘I can see that,’ she says as if she can’t see me as a novelist.
    ‘Anyway, how’s Bangkok?’
    ‘I’d give it a two on the dick front.’ She goes on to explain why, in sordid detail.
    ‘How’s Perfect Man?’
    ‘I’m keeping him keen.’
    ‘What, you’re not talking to him?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘But…’
    ‘I know what I’m doing.’
    OK, that’s a line I need to learn. I hear her pull on a cigarette. ‘Wait. Are you back