That was another thing Sara neglected to mention at our meeting last week.
When Nicole died, she left behind not only an unfinished manuscript and a grief-stricken husband, but a five-week-old baby daughter, as well.
Life can seriously suck.
Charlie is talking in low tones in the living room. Another wave of nerves washes through me.
Babies freak me out. They don’t seem to like me, and I don’t particularly like them. What if I make them cry? What if I make this one cry? If she takes offence at me, Charlie probably will, too, and he may well pull the plug on this idea.
Earlier this week, I met up with Nicole’s editor, Fay. She’s a lovely, warm woman in her late forties and she revealed that the decision to go ahead with the sequel came down to Charlie. He wasn’t at all sure, from what I gather, but he felt a responsibility towards Nicole’s readers and in the end, gave the go-ahead, as long as the job was done well by the right person. I’m still not convinced that I’m the right person, but, after reading Nicole’s book, I’m as keen as anyone to find out what happened next. Even if I have to write it myself.
The prospect is admittedly terrifying, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. If this meeting with Charlie doesn’t go well, there won’t be a bridge to cross.
The kettle boils, so I distract myself by pouring hot water into the mugs. A moment later, Charlie returns.
‘CBeebies only distracts her for so long at her age,’ he says, knowing he doesn’t need to explain his circumstances because I’ve already been made well aware of them. ‘Milk?’
‘Yes, please.’ I move away from the worktop to give him some space. ‘How old is your daughter?’ I ask.
‘Eight and a half months. Sugar?’ He flicks his eyes up to meet mine.
‘No, thanks.’
‘My mum was supposed to be here, but she had an emergency at work,’ he reveals, stirring two teaspoons into his own cup.
‘What does she do?’ I ask.
‘She and my dad run a campsite. They had a burst water main or something.’
‘The campsite on the hill?’
‘No, they’re about an hour away. A couple of mates of mine run the one on the hill. Do you know it?’ Charlie picks up his cup and finally looks at me properly. I thought his eyes were green, but they’re getting on for hazel.
‘Only because my dad mentioned it. He’s stayed there a few times in his campervan,’ I explain.
His daughter cries out again.
‘We’ll go through,’ Charlie says quietly, nodding at the door. I wait until he leads the way.
I see her legs first, bare and chubby and kicking back and forth like nobody’s business. Then the rest of her comes into view – her pastel-coloured babygrow adorned with bunnies, and fine, slightly curly, light-blond hair. She’s strapped into a bouncy chair in front of the television, and Charlie drags the contraption across the wooden floor towards him as he takes a seat on the sofa nearest to the bay window. He pushes on the back of her bouncer to make it move and she giggles.
‘This is April,’ he says, sticking his tongue out at his daughter before nodding at me. ‘That’s Bridget,’ he says more civilly.
‘Hello, April!’ I reply, cringing because my voice sounds too loud and overeager.
April looks over her shoulder at me, her expression vacant. Then her mouth breaks into a toothy grin and she says something unintelligible. Charlie pushes on the back of her bouncer again and she happily returns her attention to him.
I’m tense as I sit down on the second sofa, hoping she’ll ignore me from here on in.
‘Where are you staying?’ Charlie asks, back to making courteous small talk. He picks up the remote control and turns the volume down on the TV, not quite muting the ludicrously enthusiastic and eccentrically dressed man doing something bizarre with an egg carton.
‘A B&B in Padstow. It’s cheap and cheerful. My bus leaves early in the morning.’
‘You’re only here for one day?’ He seems surprised.
‘Yes, but… Obviously I can come back if…’ He looks at me expectantly, waiting for me to complete my sentence. ‘If I get the job,’ I finish awkwardly.
‘Oh.’ He averts his gaze and takes a small sip of his tea. ‘Fay said you’re a travel writer.’
‘That’s right.’ I smile with relief. This territory I can talk about for hours. ‘My mum works on a cruise liner so I grew up seeing the world in my school holidays.’
‘Bet that was an interesting childhood.’
‘It was. I lived with my dad during the term, but we visited Mum pretty regularly.’ He nods, listening. He doesn’t ask any more questions, so I carry on pitching myself to him. ‘I used to write about the places that I saw, then I built my own website and eventually started to pester magazine and newspaper editors for work. I can pretty much get work writing about anywhere, these days.’
‘That would’ve been Nicki’s dream job,’ Charlie says with a fond smile. Nicki, not Nicole, I note. ‘Before she got a book deal,’ he adds.
And before her life was cruelly stolen from her.
He breaks the long, awkward silence. ‘So you liked her novel?’
‘I loved it!’
He smiles properly now, a smile full of pride, but its light reaches his eyes only briefly.
How bad do I feel? He shouldn’t have had to prompt me – I should’ve been raving about his lovely wife’s book from the moment I got here.
‘I really loved it.’ I’m trying to make up for my gaffe, and for the next few minutes it’s all I can talk about.
In Nicole’s novel, the heroine, Kit, is a travel writer who falls in love with two men at the same time: Morris, a laidback surfer-turned-entrepreneur from right here in Cornwall, and Timo, a sexy Finnish rock climber who is based in Thailand. At the end of the first book, Kit goes to Thailand to break up with Timo because Morris – her first love – has proposed to her. But, before she can come clean, Timo asks her to marry him, too. And she says yes.
I know! WTF, right?
‘I detest cheating with a passion, so I shouldn’t have liked this book on principle,’ I tell Charlie, arguably too honestly. ‘But somehow Nicole made it… I don’t know. It’s so believable. She wrote in such a heart-wrenching way that I couldn’t help but be swept up in the story. I felt like I was inside Kit’s mind, feeling every emotion she was feeling and somehow understanding the crazy decisions she was making. It was…’ I shake my head, finally, yes, finally lost for words.
I think I’ve said all the right things from the look on his face.
‘Do you know what was going to happen in the sequel?’ I ask. ‘Do you know who Kit was going to end up with?’
He shakes his head. ‘I’m not sure even Nicki knew.’