Wishes Under a Starlit Sky. Lucy KnottЧитать онлайн книгу.
every rail on my way down the stairs I don’t hear the voices that are outside the front door until it’s too late to hide.
All I see are feet – two pairs of feet – as they step into the house. I really, really, don’t want to look up.
‘Harper, I just came to grab a few things.’ I hear his voice, but I can’t bring myself to look at him. He usually texts first. He can’t just turn up like this, unexpected.
‘And you thought it would be a good idea to bring her with you, to see our home, our happy home, the one you and she destroyed?’ I want to scream those words to him, but my mouth is dry, and nothing leaves my lips. Has she been in our house before? The thought hasn’t crossed my mind.
I can feel his eyes burning into the top of my head. It sends a chill down my spine and it feels so alien. I have known this man for nine years, but in this moment, he feels like a complete stranger, like I’ve never met him before in my life.
‘You brought her here?’ I finally mumble, hating that my words come out so small. I look up. She is standing in the hallway looking around at our belongings. I don’t know her, I can’t say she is a bad person, but I don’t see empathy in her eyes. Her features are harsh, her lips pressed into a slight pout. She looks at me with a face that reads she is bored of the predicament she has found herself in and if I would just get out of the way that would be grand.
I hold on to the banister with my suitcase-free hand to avoid humiliating myself should my knees give way and I go crashing down the stairs. I grip the banister tighter – not going to let that happen, I feel stupid enough as it is. Scott looks well and their relationship is clearly flourishing; I can’t show him how far I have fallen.
Scott sighs and turns to hand her the keys to our front door. ‘Look, I’m not doing this now, Harper. It’s not about her. She’s none of your business. I just want to get my stuff. Speaking of which, we need to sell the house. Please don’t play innocent in all this; it has both our names on it. I’m paying for a house I’m not living in.’
Any trepidation I had before about going to Colorado and being so far away from Scott if he needed anything, if he needed to talk, is gone. I pause as I place my hand on the doorknob. I’m not sure why; maybe I feel for a brief moment that he is going to call my name, to apologize for the hurt that he has caused me, to maybe tell me that this is just a quarter-life crisis but we can work through it – just something that would make me feel like the eight years of my life spent loving him have not been a total waste of time, or worse still that in all that time he never truly loved me. I twist the knob. He doesn’t call my name, he doesn’t stop me, but before I close the door behind me, I look back at the man I once loved and take a huge breath in. ‘I would like a divorce,’ I say with all the confidence I can muster, then step into the freezing London afternoon, closing the door behind me as though I’m closing a book at the end of a chapter.
With the ice in the air, the tears are falling down my face, stinging my skin as the frosty nip meets them. Then the tears truly come pouring out. The fight in me has gone, yet my body does not feel deflated or weak. There’s adrenaline coursing through my veins, something that I haven’t felt in a long time. It takes me a minute to register that the tears that are falling are not the same tears as before. I gasp, touching the water on my face. They are happy tears.
The exhausting, draining fight for Scott that I have been clinging on to has been replaced by a new fight. With those five little words ‘I would like a divorce’, I feel the weight that has been dragging me down over the last twelve months has lifted. I’m not fighting for Scott anymore. I’m fighting for me.
‘Switch it off,’ Madi says in a stern voice. I’m trying as quick as I can to read the email from Lara, my boss, while Madi is breathing down my neck and mumbling about how mobile phones and Wi-Fi connections can affect take-off.
‘You were telling me the other day about how I’ve let my work suffer. This is work. I need to read this,’ I say, shifting in my seat anxiously as I glance at an air stewardess looking my way. I make out the words ‘original script’, ‘deadline’, ‘sorry to do this to you before the holidays’ and ‘last shot for the romance department’ before I hear a polite clearing of the throat from a shadow looming over me. I look up and smile innocently. It’s not like we’ve moved on to the runway yet. I’m not exactly one for breaking rules; I will turn it off.
‘It’s Christmas, babe, didn’t you get all your work done before the break?’ Madi asks, offering me a chocolate button as the plane rumbles to life.
I squint, looking past Madi and out of the tiny aeroplane window, thinking over my to-do list. Though I can’t promise any of it was my best work due to my silly funk, I got all my edits and rewrites sent back in time for the Christmas break. I’m sure of it. Madi pops another chocolate button into her mouth as the plane starts moving towards the runway and I try not to panic over how badly I have let my life fall apart. I am normally more organized than this and remember work I have and have not done.
I absent-mindedly draw another button out of the bag, watching as Gatwick airport recedes into the background. I chew on the delicious chocolate morsel, preparing to keep my ears from popping painfully when it hits me.
I avert my eyes back to the top of the email, as my stomach begins to dance with nerves of excitement as the words start to make sense. I focus on reading in complete sentences, so I don’t get muddled up or mistaken.
‘Harper, I’m sticking out my neck here and putting your script forward. Out of all the submissions I received there are elements of yours I want to explore and keep going back to. You can’t let me down with this one, Harper. I need your best work. I need it submitted no later than Christmas Eve before it gets looked over by the Pegasus production team. Best, Lara.’
There is a small cough to the left of me and when I look up, I receive another pointed glare from the air stewardess. Nodding my understanding, I switch my phone off and stow it away in my backpack under my chair, a flush of red in my cheeks when I hear Madi’s teasing tut as I do so.
‘My script, Mads. It’s my original script.’ I gasp, ignoring her mock scolding. ‘Remember when, gosh it was ages ago now, when they had open submissions for original scripts and Lara let me enter one of mine?’ Madi sits up straighter in her aeroplane seat, munching on the chocolate buttons as though they are popcorn, her perfectly winged eyeliner making her beautiful blue eyes wide, but they are further accentuated by the excitement behind them as I speak.
‘She’s chosen my script to be sent for production, but she needs it edited and tweaked no later than Christmas Eve.’ I gulp, my words fading as I reach the end of my announcement. I lean back in my seat. I can’t remember the last time I looked at that script. It will take me weeks to connect with the characters, go over the plot and the actions and oh gosh, all that smushy romance stuff; how on earth am I supposed to edit it in six days and stomach all that fluff? Editing other people’s scripts over the past year has been hard enough; actually editing my own romantic thoughts, well, I’m not sure I’ve got it in me, especially at this time of year.
‘This is amazing, Harp. I’m so proud of you. She obviously believes it’s going to be picked up for production and sees its potential if she’s asking you for a finer cut. You’ve got this,’ Madi notes, stuffing a chocolate button between my pursed lips. I let the chocolate melt on my tongue as I try and steady my breathing. My confidence upped and left me right around the time that Scott did and just like my husband, it hadn’t returned. Twelve months of doubting myself as a wife, a lover, a friend and – worse still – a writer, has sabotaged one of the things I adore more than anything: my job.
I love smushy fluff. I was born to write smushy fluff. Love is my thing. So what if last Christmas my husband ran away with another women and left me without looking back? It doesn’t matter that I’m currently on the cusp of a divorce and have spent the last year in a gloomy dark hole writing scenes that better fit a horror movie. My job is on the