The Sweet Second Life of Darrell Kincaid Read online

  My mind started to turn him into a character in a book. This is a terrible habit and one I need to watch. I only do it with people I don’t know very well, and it’s for the best that we remain unacquainted – because I have met the odd person again and begun talking to them about something they’d done, only to realise that that something was a product entirely of my own invention and they didn’t have the first clue what I was on about. Quite embarrassing. Not to be recommended.

  Hard to stop, though. Fantasising, I mean. By the time he returned to the table, I had mentally made him over so he now looked like a very tall Clive Owen, given him a murky past – how did he make his fortune? – and decided he was locked up emotionally, in denial about his deep love for an innocent, beautiful school teacher (Anne Hathaway with a bun and glasses). I was musing on a name for her – Clare wasn’t bad, but I was leaning towards something even more old-fashioned and intellectual, like Margaret.

  He’d said something. I knew he had because he was looking at me both expectantly and a little askance. Lost in my own head, I had heard not a word, and was quite surprised to find he looked nothing like Clive Owen.

  ‘Sorry?’

  He continued. ‘I said, my wife was supposed to meet some bloke this morning, but she had to go to work instead, and asked me to do it. I swore she said it was for eight o’clock, but she insists she told me nine. I’m not about to argue with her; I’m too attached to my parts. But only bacon and coffee are going to make it worth hanging round here any longer, worse fucking luck.’

  A small bell rang. ‘Wait. Your wife is called Clare?’

  ‘Yeah. Why?’

  ‘I may be the bloke.’

  He regarded me for a beat. ‘I can’t even begin to–’

  I stuck out my hand. ‘My name is Darrell. Unusual, I know. Not sure of my parents’ rationale, but there you go–’

  He returned my handshake. ‘I’m Patrick. My parents were Irish. Don’t have to be Einstein to make that link.’

  I clocked his dark hair and eyes and olive skin. ‘You don’t look very Irish.’

  He hesitated a second. ‘Gypsies.’

  ‘Really? How romantic!’

  ‘If you classify dirt poor and socially untouchable as romantic, then – yeah.’

  Mentally, I slapped myself. I could be a real retard sometimes.

  He saved me by changing the subject. ‘So you’re OK to live with all the building work going on?’ It seemed more a question of my sanity than anything.

  ‘I can’t afford not to.’

  He nodded. Despite his affluent appearance, I got the distinct feeling he knew exactly what it was like to count his pennies and find there simply weren’t enough.

  ‘You done with that coffee?’ he asked.

  As he’d drained his in one mouthful and was already half out of his chair, my answer could only be ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s go to the house.’

  Then he lifted my wheelie-case with one hand as if it were no heavier than his newspaper and headed to the door. I hurried behind him, trying to keep pace with his long strides. The nice Italian called after us, ‘Ciao. See you tomorrow.’

  I’m sure he meant the man in front, his regular customer, and not me. But as I took a last glance over my shoulder at the small café, I wondered. If I came here again – who else might I meet …

  And then I realised a really big man had just taken my wheelie-case and if I didn’t get a move on I might see neither of them ever again.

  LADY MO: The house is gorgeous! I love those little square Victorian terraces. How many bedrooms?

  DARRELL: Only two. Mine has a big white squishy bed in it. I feel like the Little Princess. Before she got imprisoned in the attic, of course.

  LADY MO: Lovely colours – all that soft greeny-blue in the living room. Chad’s mother insists on calling it the parlour, which is why I always call it the lounge. Her neck veins bulge but she can do nothing to me. I am mother of the Heir.

  DARRELL: My mother has what she calls a drawing room. I think it has been occupied by actual humans only twice in living memory. And never by dust. Any sensible dust speck would be far too afraid.

  LADY MO: Thank God and Germaine Greer that we don’t feel compelled to keep our houses like that. Although the apple porridge layers on my kitchen table are reaching critical mass. I may have to get out the blowtorch. Speaking of which – when is your gorgeous house due to be demolished?

  DARRELL: Not all of it’s going to be demolished. Just the kitchen and bathroom.

  LADY MO: Bathroom singular? What will you do when out of action? Shower at gym?

  DARRELL: Ha! (Hollow laugh.) Cannot afford library membership let alone gym.

  LADY MO: What then? Rent a Portaloo? Dig a hole in the back garden?

  DARRELL: Why this fascination with toilet arrangements?

  LADY MO: Harry is starting potty training. It’s very exciting!

  DARRELL: For you …

  LADY MO: Point harsh but taken. Changing subject now. Assume you Googled your landlord?

  DARRELL: Of course. Adam was correct. He is fabulously rich. Made a fortune in property.

  LADY MO: Google images show a scary huge man. Is that ‘property’ with inverted commas? Like ‘waste disposal’ or ‘gentleman’s entertainment’?

  DARRELL: Admit his looks suggest that as a possibility. But he is far too lovely.

  LADY MO: Sudden passion for huge and scary??!!

  DARRELL: No! Loveliness refers to his personality! He makes me laugh. Swears like trooper. Feel I could talk to him about anything.

  LADY MO: Yikes! Besotted?

  DARRELL: Fortunately not. I’d be fresh out of luck if I were. He is COMPLETELY besotted with his pregnant landlady wife. No. Sigh. My affection stems from a whole other source. It’s like the time when you were eleven and the wallflower at the school dance and a boy finally asked you to dance and you were so grateful that you followed him round like a big-eyed puppy until you drove him nuts.

  LADY MO: I never did that. That is sad. Is your point to make me pity you?

  DARRELL: No. Point is that pathetic gratitude is making me latch on to anyone who is nice to me. Italian men at café are also nice. I order more coffees than I can afford just so they will be nice to me for a bit longer. Also having bursts of affection for a dodgy bloke on a bike who has twice yelled obscenities at me while riding by.

  LADY MO: Explain the affection aspect?

  DARRELL: At least he noticed me! I am feeling invisible. Swallowed up by big city.

  LADY MO: Why not look for another gorgeous house but in a small picturesque English village? You could have Miss Marple as a neighbour and a humorous address such as The Tit’s Nest, Upper Todger?

  DARRELL: Have you seen country cottage rental prices??? Only affordable picturesque village = in farthest part of Scotland where if frostbite won’t get you, mutant midges will.

  LADY MO: Then I will adopt the ‘no-sugar-coating’ tone of Dr Phil, and instruct you to get off your butt and go out and meet people.

  DARRELL: I would if not prevented by one thing. Namely, cowardice.

  LADY MO: You met Tom. He was a complete stranger.

  DARRELL: We met each other. I didn’t do anything to make happen. It just happened.

  LADY MO: When I met Chad he was surrounded by bimbos. I waded through and punted them out of the way. Bimbos had no chance. Nor did Chad for that matter.

  DARRELL: But what if I introduce myself to someone and find them so boring I crave to slit my wrists?

  LADY MO: Won’t know til you try. Ha, ha, ha!

  DARRELL: Wow. You’re the best friend a girl could ever have.

  LADY MO: Will be your only friend if you continue to be a big-girl’s blouse.

  DARRELL: Point harsh but taken. Sigh. All right. I will get off my butt and be brave.

  LADY MO: Atta girl! If he knew or cared that you existed, Dr Phil would be very proud. And remember – there’s no point getting
your knickers in a knot. It solves nothing and makes you walk funny. I read that on the internet, so it must be true.

  You might be thinking that ‘romance writer’ sounds intriguing and possibly even glamorous. In my head, it is both those things. In practical reality, it is a job, as it is for most writers who don’t have ‘#1 Best-Seller!’ on their book covers. Which is, as it happens, most writers. My job is to create a product that people want to buy. I need to put in regular hours and deliver to a deadline. I’m paid adequately but not a lot. I could be paid more if I promoted myself better, or if I wrote single title instead of category romances, or if my category was one of the hot favourites, such as paranormal …

  Sorry. Let me explain. Romance fiction is split into two basic types – category romance and single title. Category romances are ‘categorised’ by a specific theme or genre. The first romances were all in one category: Boy meets Girl. Now, the categories include Contemporary (sex and modern realism), Romantic Suspense (sex and mystery), Historical (sex and codpieces), Paranormal (sex and non-humans), Young Adult (thinking about sex), and Traditional (absolutely no sex as it spoils the lovely story).

  Category romances are sold as a packaged line, each identified by a name like Captivate or Smouldering Liaisons, which is essentially a key to how filthy the books are. A whole new set of books per line is issued around every three weeks, so they don’t stay on the shelves long.

  My books are in the Contemporary category, part of a packaged line called Love Magnates (yes, I’m sorry, but I had nothing to do with it). As a category romance writer, I am one of a pool of a few thousand worldwide. Most of my fellows are very happy to write categories. Some of us – me included, though I’d done nothing about it – aspire to move up to single title.

  Why? Because unlike category romances, single titles are just that: stand-alone books that stay on the shelf as long as they continue to sell. If you want to make a name – and more money – then you need to write single title. It could mean the difference between seeing your books on The New York Times bestseller list and in the airport bookshop bargain bin marked down to 99p.

  So how do you become a single-title writer? The easiest way is to be invited to do so by your publisher. If you’ve shown promise in your category romances, you might be asked to step up. So far, I hadn’t been.

  I could blame it on the Hipster. She is my editor, one of many employed by my publisher. Her name is – it sounds like I make this stuff up, but I kid you not – Hippolyte McManus. She hails from Queens, in Noo Yawk. I speak to her by phone maybe twice a year, and when she ends each call, she always says ‘It’s been real’. The rest of the time, we email. It is she who calls herself the Hipster. It says much about her personality that she never notices that I don’t.

  I am contracted to write three books a year. That might sound like a lot, but my kind of book is only fifty thousand words long – around half the length of a single title, and a fifth of the size of a Jilly Cooper, bless her. There is precious little research to do, apart from compiling my Condé Nast scrapbook, which I can do in an evening over a few glasses of wine. My sentences need not be literature, just literate. Usually, it would take me about five weeks to finish my first draft. Then I’d sit on it for a week, re-read it to check that it wasn’t total bollocks, and send it to the Hipster. She’d dash back an email with a list of questions – why does Pierce take the call from his ex on page eleven? Why is Natalie so polite to him when he’s being such an asshole? And what’s with the damn tiara – has anyone worn a tiara since Lady Di croaked? I’d do my best to explain and/or rewrite until she was happy with it. Then I’d be sent a few advance copies of the published book. Then I’d be paid.

  But this time I was a bit anxious. I’d sent her Bought for the Billionaire’s Private Collection before I left New Zealand, and normally by now we’d have started the toing and froing. An editor of action, was the Hipster. But maybe she’d had a deluge of manuscripts? Maybe she was away?

  There was undoubtedly a good explanation. And let’s face it – pretty much anything beyond the act of breathing made me anxious right now.

  Which meant that, despite Michelle’s pep talk, there was no way in hell I’d have the gumption to introduce myself to the other regulars at the café. I’d gone there frequently enough now to identify which people were regulars – but I hadn’t yet been brave enough to even catch an eye. All I did was hide myself behind my book.

  Like a coward.

  A chicken.

  Book, book, book …

  It was even more pathetic because my presence had taken the total of regulars from three to four. As in me and three others. You’d think I’d have the balls to say hello to three people. Ha! You’d be wrong!

  And if you weren’t questioning my level of balls, you were probably asking: why the hell was she spending all this time in a café when the sights of one of the greatest cities in the world lay waiting and as yet unseen? Fair enough, and I had no good reason. I only had a bad one, which was the same as before: cowardice. I felt so tentatively connected to this new place that even venturing off to neighbouring Highbury seemed like a risk. I felt as if I were only just starting to become visible – the Italians knew my name now, the girls in the next-door chemist said ‘Hi’ – and if I left for too long, they might forget about me. I simply could not go off and be an anonymous sightseer without knowing I could return to a place where people acknowledged my existence. They might not know me personally yet – but at least they made me feel I was alive, and not some invisible, nameless ghost.

  That’s why I never really relaxed at the café. I was vigilant, observant – no one who came in escaped my notice. I began to know who worked in the shops and businesses next door. There was the chatty woman, who I think was from the NHS doctor’s surgery next to the chemist, who bought a custard tart for ‘Dr Graham, he does love his tarts’ (actually, I did make that up; sorry, but it was only a matter of time), the guy who looked like an architect (black polo-neck jersey, black-rimmed spectacles, smug expression) who’d take away a half-decaf soy latte, and an elderly man, most likely the vicar of the church up the street, who every morning collected a ham and cheese croissant and a sticky bun. Bearing in mind Patrick’s warning, either his cholesterol was excellent or he was looking forward to passing on.

  I never saw my landlord. He was at the café early, when he was there at all. I knew this because I had now met my landlady, his wife. Clare told me this when she came round to visit me. Her motivation for dropping by, it quickly became clear, was less to check out her new tenant and more to find out if I had designs on her husband – which would, of course, leave her no option but to stab me through the heart.

  It was the day after I’d moved in. The house came mostly furnished, so all I’d had to do was unpack the clothes I’d brought with me in my orange suitcase, find a place for my laptop, and put my four Anthony Powells on the bookshelf, where they sat surrounded by empty space. Before I left, I’d had a moment of book-separation panic, and seriously considered packing them all up and shipping them over. But then I had a reverse panic about them being diverted to Abu Dhabi or hefted overboard if the ship needed to shed ballast in a storm. I calmed myself by reasoning that I could always buy more books, or if that proved too expensive, I could join the library. All the same, on that first day, the empty bookshelf gave me a twinge. Even the Dance quartet didn’t deserve that kind of treatment.

  I got myself a mobile, so I could ring to get my home phone put on. This, amazingly, was done by the end of the day. I had thought Britain to be a nightmare of bureaucracy, where dead people moved faster than British Telecom, but apparently not. I got the power put in my name, too, and I was all set at home. Now all I needed was a bank account, a National Insurance number, and to register with the tax department as self-employed, and I would be a fully paid-up, contributing member of society.

  I should add, just in case you’re worried, that not any stray rooster from New Zealand can rock up
and live here. We are allowed to work here until the day we turn twenty-seven, whereupon Immigration comes knocking at our flat in Earls Court or wherever we hang out now, and tells us to sling our hook back home. After that, we need a British or EU passport. I had one because Dad was born in Guildford. Thank you, Dad. If not for him, my choice of escape venues would have been limited to Bondi Beach, three tiny Pacific atolls or Scott Base on the Antarctic ice shelf.

  Anyway, back to the visit from the landlady. She knocked on the door at seven forty-five in the morning. Fortunately, thanks to jet-lag, I had been up and dressed since five. Ever since the day the young policemen came around about Tom, I’ve found knocks on the door unnerving, and all the more so when they occur early. So I was already a bit unnerved when I answered the door. My anxiety increased tenfold when a very beautiful pregnant woman with glossy chestnut hair said accusingly, ‘You know, I thought you were a man, too.’

  Without introducing herself, she walked right in.

  ‘I mean – I know Adam said “she”, but I thought he was talking about one of the girls. That’s “girls” in the gay sense. Adam can be extremely camp sometimes–’

  She paused in front of the bookshelf and stared at my Powells. ‘Are those mine?’

  ‘Er, no, they’re–’

  She strode through into the tiny kitchen and lifted the lid of the kettle to check if it held water. She opened a cupboard and started to reach for a mug. Then her hand paused in mid-air and slowly she turned and said, ‘This isn’t my house.’