The Sweet Second Life of Darrell Kincaid

  Contents

  Title Page

  Acknowledgments

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  EPILOGUE

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Thanks to David, Callum and Finn for coping without me for many, many weekends. Thanks to Bron for liking the first draft. Thanks to Lesley for all those years ago lending me Destiny Bay by the late Donn Byrne. It was the inspiration for most of the gypsy words and names and may well be my favourite book ever.

  I was in love with happy endings until approximately a minute and a half after I’d written my ninth. I typed the last full stop and waited to feel the usual regret that I could no longer lose myself in my characters’ lives. But what I felt was nothing like regret. What I felt was force ten, full-fat rage.

  It was so strong that I sat there, blinking at the page in astonishment. Normally I’d expect to feel a twinge of wistful sadness, as if I were saying goodbye to best friends who were heading off to live overseas. And without wishing to sound like a complete tragic git, that’s exactly what it was like. I loved having these imaginary people in my head. I loved their fantasy world – that of über-wealthy men with commitment issues and private jets attempting to seduce clean-living young women with excellent legs. Let me say right now that women’s lib has still only made a minor impression on romance writing. We like our males alpha and our women, after a brief display of spunk, compliant. I make no apologies. In my world, that’s how we roll.

  My characters really did come alive in my head, although I confess I stuck with a limited range of physical types. My men were either forty-plus, suave and with a hint of past tragedy, or late thirties-ish with a whiff of danger. My women were without fail mid-twenties, big-eyed brunettes. In my ninth book (Bought for the Billionaire’s Private Collection, in case you were wondering), she = Natalie Portman, he = Pierce Brosnan. Previous book, The Emerald Magnate’s Auctioned Mistress, he = Clive Owen, she = Anne Hathaway. I didn’t do blondes for some reason. Resentment, probably.

  They talked in my head, too. Often – too often for Tom’s liking – their conversations would wake me up in the middle of the night. I kept a notebook and pencil handy, because experience had proven that if I didn’t write it all down immediately, the only thing I’d be able to remember in the morning was that her chest was heaving and when, quite frankly, did it not? I’d also be left with a lingering suspicion that it was the best dialogue I had ever written, possibly the best in any romance ever written in the entire history of time. Which would make me Miss Ornery for the rest of the week. Unless I had total recall at three a.m. the next night, whereupon I’d sit bolt upright, switch on the light, grab my notebook and scribble furiously until I had it all down, then I would punch the air and yell, ‘Yes!’ Which would always make Tom sit upright and yell, ‘For the love of Christ! Will you shift those imaginary bastards into the same fucking time zone!’ Of course, in the morning the dialogue would never be as good as I’d convinced myself it was when I couldn’t recall a word of it. But I was usually so pleased to have remembered it that I didn’t care.

  I loved picturing the settings. Houses, cars, clothing, accessories – all so deliciously desirable and completely unattainable for peasants like me. I think if I ever stopped writing, the Condé Nast magazine empire would crumble. I buy a scrapbook for each of my romances – I prefer nice, classy ones with textured paper, but I’d settle for the Wiggles if that were all that was going down at the stationery shop. Into them, I glue-sticked glossy pictures of Greek villas, crisp white against azure sky; razor-sharp, minimalist New York penthouses; chicly faded Belle Époque Parisian apartments; stately English homes with lawns the size of a county; red Ferraris, silver Bentleys and Riva boats with piped cream leather seats and polished wood; classy bling, like Patek Philippe watches and Cartier emerald earrings; and all those movie-star photo spreads from Vanity Fair, which give me clothes and hair and faces to shamelessly plagiarise. To be safe, you can change one thing about them – eye or hair colour, for instance. (Though I noticed that when I changed Clive Owen to a blue-eyed blond, he became Daniel Craig, so it’s not foolproof.) In truth, though, I imagine the chance of someone famous recognising themselves in print is minimal. If you’re going to be paparazzi’d, you really want to be caught reading A Brief History of Time, not The Sicilian Marquis’ Reluctant Virgin.

  I loved seeing my name on the covers. My parents called me Darrell, which as far as I know has never been a girl’s name. But having done battle on its behalf for several years in the playground, I’ve grown quite attached to it. And my married name was Kincaid, which meant I didn’t need to invent a pseudonym for my books. Romantic fiction authors often write under assumed names. Not necessarily because they find their real names embarrassing; more that when you’ve finished with Lord Valentin Ripley swooping upon Lady Alethea, Duchess of Boscastle, signing off as Susan Hughes can feel a tad pedestrian. Much better to be Suzanne Hughendon or Susannah Highfield or the like. Darrell Kincaid has a certain rhythm to it. And in this woman-heavy industry, you can generate a bit of interest by being thought a bloke.

  And the bit I love – that I used to love most? The bit where it all works out. When my hero and heroine finally admit they are destined for each other. The happy ending.

  But not this time. As I typed the last full stop, then read over my last few pages, I was overwhelmed by a rage so intense I wanted to go out and provoke some unsuspecting person into being rude to me, just so I’d have the excuse to smack them one. At first, I thought – this is nuts: I’m just tired. It was true; I had been tired all the time since … But as I read again the bit where billionaire Pierce admitted that no Impressionist masterpiece could hold a candle to Natalie’s beauty, and that Monet wasn’t everything, I realised I wasn’t tired. I was so completely and utterly enraged that it’s a miracle my laptop wasn’t suddenly replaced by a scorched hollow with the faint echo of a sound that can only be written as ‘Woomph’.

  How dare my characters be happy? How dare it all work out for them? How dare romantic fiction be so patently, manifestly and absolutely unlike reality? How dare they, in short, have everything I did not?

  I needed a break. I made myself a cup of tea and spread butter on two digestives. I nearly added a slice of cheese to each but decided against it. That’s one of the things Tom and I could never agree on – digestive biscuits with butter and cheese. I’d always considered the combination a type of super-food, like goji berries or wheatgrass, only edible. Tom said he would rather eat his own sick. ‘It’s wrong,’ he used to say. ‘Pure D wrong. Go and eat it in another room. A room in another country, preferably.’

  Other things Tom and I could never agree on:

  Kate Bush. Tom thought Kate had been designed by a committee formed exclusively for the purpose of frightening small children. His evidence was her mad cat-lady’s hair and the opening note of ‘Wuthering Heights’, which has been known to resurrect dead people. I thought this was a bit rich coming from a man who listened to a Scottish pirate metal band with a tattooed midget guitar-pl
ayer called Alestorm (the band, not the midget guitarist). But I suppose he had a point. Even so, she has been a great comfort to me.

  Running. My God, it’s tedious. And it hurts. And I’m convinced it undermines the structure of your boobs. That’s why normal-sized women don’t run. They’re afraid of ending up looking like a spread from National Geographic. Tom (who, let’s be clear, had no boobs) ran every day, for miles. He loved it …

  Reading. I don’t feel fully dressed unless I have a book in my hand. I read all the time, even when cooking, and occasionally when driving. When they invent a way to read in the shower, I’ll have reached Nirvana. Tom read running magazines and occasionally the TV Guide. Yet somehow he wasn’t the mentally stunted ignoramus you’d expect. He knew a lot. Where he picked it up, no idea. There were times I would have liked to have had a cultured discussion – I have a degree in English literature, which I suppose goes to show how much one of those is worth. The closest we got was watching a rerun of Brideshead Revisited, when Tom said, ‘Hey, doesn’t that guy do the voice of the bad dude in The Lion King?’ He was right. Why is it your memory hangs onto stuff like that?

  Tom died. There doesn’t seem any point in being less blunt about it. He died over a year ago. Nineteen months and fifteen days ago, to be rather pathetically exact. He dropped dead, and I mean that literally. He had just completed a half marathon. It wasn’t called that; it was called a fun run. (I don’t need to comment. This whole story is a study in irony.) Tom crossed the finish line (see?), checked his watch, and collapsed. The first aid crew was promptly by his side and he was promptly loaded into an ambulance and rushed to hospital, where he was promptly pronounced dead. My fit, young husband had just run twenty-one kilometres in a personal best time of one hour, twenty-two minutes. It took him less than ten minutes to die.

  The correct medical term is sudden cardiac death. It wasn’t a heart attack; it was a heart malfunction. In older people, the cause is usually heart disease, fatty build-up and all that stuff we’re warned about by Jamie Oliver. In younger people, it’s most often an undetected abnormality – a dodgy heart rhythm, a weakness of the valves. Undetected meaning that the first hint of there being anything wrong is when something triggers it. Something like adrenaline released during intense physical activity, for example. And then it’s like flicking a light switch – the heart just shuts off. Sometimes it can be restarted, but not in Tom’s case. His heart was buggered, and no one knew. No one had the slightest idea.

  And I wasn’t there. At the finish line …

  You see, I met Tom when I was twenty-three and he was twenty-four. We were married a year later. When he died, we’d been married ten years.

  Which is the point of this story. When you’re in the first throes of love, you’re thrilled to get up at the crack of dawn and hang out for hours watching hordes of stringy, sweaty people pound past you, so you can be there to applaud and hug one of them, even though the amount of sweat dripping off him is, quite frankly, repulsive. But after ten years, you’d rather stay in bed, read a book and hug him after he’s returned and has showered and changed. So I wasn’t there when he died. I was at home. Reading Barbara Pym.

  I had the book in one hand and was still glancing at it when I opened the front door. There were two policemen on my doorstep, looking absurdly young and not very happy to be there. I don’t remember what they said. All I could think, when they took me inside, sat me down and told me, was how difficult it must have been for them. While one was talking to me, I noticed the other one take off his hat, drop his head and run his hand over his hair. Poor boy, I thought. You poor boy, having to do this. They took me to the hospital. And I really, really don’t remember much about that at all. Except that Tom didn’t look peaceful. He looked dead. Sort of collapsed and grey and strangely featureless. Like a skin shed by some alien. Not like my Tom.

  I spoke at the funeral. Everyone remarked on how well I held myself together. I do remember that I had no intention of crying – my grief was for Tom alone, so it seemed right to keep any tears just between him and me, as it were. It was a very good speech, apparently. I have no recollection of it at all.

  You’d assume that my life changed dramatically that morning. In fact, it was extraordinary how much of it continued as normal. I continued to write my books. I continued to live in our house. My relationships with friends and family kept on pretty much as they always had. True, I was suddenly several hundred thousand dollars richer from Tom’s life insurance, but that was still in the bank, mainly because I couldn’t bring myself to spend a cent of it. My own earnings were enough to pay the mortgage, and I had only myself to feed.

  Of course, the loss of Tom was a change. Ridiculous to say otherwise. Better writers than I have described what it’s like to lose someone you love. All the things you do that, in any other circumstance, would peg you as borderline mental but that here and now just seem poignant. Like keeping their unwashed clothes, so you can bury your face in their ‘Motörhead: No Sleep ’til Hammersmith’ t-shirt and inhale their familiar scent. Like playing old videos, and listening to their voicemail message, because you crave that ache of familiarity and because you’re terrified that you’ll forget what they looked and sounded like. Like refusing to throw out any of their stuff, even their sports bag, which you know has a blackened dead banana in it. Like continuing to share the morning coffee between two cups, being careful to pour the last into his cup because he always liked the kick from those strong, treacly dregs. Like remembering to record the London Marathon, even though he’d never see who won.

  But – and how can I explain this? – the lack of Tom in my day-to-day life was not the worst of it. It was the lack of Tom from now on that was destroying me. That’s why my happy ending enraged me so much. Because a happy ending isn’t an ending at all – it’s the start of the rest of a perfect life. We, the readers, know that. We can play out the rest of the story in our minds as clearly as if we had a sequel to hand. It’s not the happy that’s important – it’s the ever after. I missed Tom with every ounce of my being, but his absence had not altered the basic structure of the life I lived. What it had altered was everything we – Tom and I – had expected would happen next.

  Don’t get me wrong. We hadn’t developed some soulless and rigid ‘Life Plan’, with actions and milestones and all that. All the details of our future might not have been fully worked out, but the sense of it, the look, the shape, the flavour of it, certainly was. We knew how our future would feel, and we knew how we would feel about each other. We would live a full life together, and together, we would happily and contentedly grow old.

  We’d done pretty well so far. Thanks to Tom, I’d finally made it as a published romance author. Before I’d met Tom, my stories existed only in my head, which was where I used to escape to with a frequency that didn’t do a whole lot for my ability to, say, arrive places on time or recall what someone had been saying to me for the last fifteen minutes or indeed remember who the heck they were. Tom persuaded me to start setting my ideas down on paper. It was he who sent my first story off to a weekly woman’s magazine, which, to my astonishment, accepted it and even paid me for it. I remember Tom flicking through one of the tragically huge stack of copies I’d hoovered up from the stationery shop with a bemused look on his face. ‘So, let me get this straight,’ he said. ‘There’s a diet section and then a whole bunch of recipes for cake. There’s the latest star-fucking gossip tosh and then four pages on how to knit a potholder.’ He shook his head. ‘Why don’t they just cut to the chase and tell their readers how to knit a bloke who looks like Brad Pitt and wants to tap fat chicks?’

  But he encouraged me to write more, and when I’d written and submitted my first full-length romance to a series of publishers, he pulled me out the funk that I sank into with every rejection letter. ‘It’ll happen,’ he said. ‘Not every firm’s going to be staffed by retards.’ And he was right. The night I got the call, we blew a stack of our savings on dinner at the flashes
t restaurant in the city, where Tom insisted on addressing the maître d’ as ‘My good man’ and we were almost kicked out for rolling around with laughter when the wine waiter called the pinot gris ‘audacious’.

  Not long after that, our savings took another hit when Tom scored his dream job as a marketing manager for the national sports body in charge of running. And not long after that, we bought our first house in the area we liked most. It was a bit of a trek to the city, but we were bounded by sea on one side and a forest park on the other. It was peaceful and smelled of ozone and pine. The perfect spot for running and writing. Good for body and soul. Good for the two of us.

  We were so happy with the house, and with each other. We were a good match, Tom and I. Of course we argued, but no disagreement ever felt terminal, or even, after a night’s sleep, that important. We enjoyed each other’s company, enjoyed talking to each other and enjoyed the life we were building together. Tom made anything seem achievable. Mainly because he truly believed anything was. I know now that if it hadn’t been for his single-mindedness and his unwavering self-belief, I would never have become a writer. I’d still be retreating into my head and trying desperately to remember the name of the person in front of me.

  We were really looking forward to the next stage, too. The plan was that within two years, we’d have saved enough money to take six months off work, rent out our house and travel around the world. When we came home, we’d start earning again and have children. Two, at least. We knew we’d be leaving it late – I’d be thirty-seven, thirty-eight by then. But we knew heaps of couples who’d started at that age, and even later. We’d be fine, we thought. And then we’d get a dog. We could never agree on the dog. I wanted a big woolly cream-coloured retriever thingy. Tom wanted a chihuahua. It seemed an unusual choice for a man who believed the air guitar was a real instrument, but he insisted that chihuahuas were cool. They had attitude, he said. They were the tattooed midget guitarists of the dog world, whereas big woolly cream-coloured retrievers were Barry Manilow.