‘The problem is that there’s nothing to write about round here,’ she complained.
‘You make it sound like it’s Cornwall’s fault,’ said Jilly with a hint of a smile.
‘Well – it is!’ said Erin. ‘I’m not doing anything. I’m not experiencing anything. What am I supposed to write about? Seagulls?’
Erin saw a look of sadness pass over Jilly’s face and felt an immediate stab of guilt. She hadn’t meant to sound so critical of the warm, welcoming village she had called home for the last twenty years, nor did she want Jilly to feel in any way inadequate. She owed her grandmother everything. Erin’s father Phillip had committed suicide when she was five, and her mother Hillary had disappeared twelve months later. Erin had immediately moved in with Jilly Thomas, her maternal grandmother and had been brought up as her own daughter. And she had had an idyllic childhood in Port Merryn, running along the beaches, playing in the narrow, twisty streets. It had been like one long summer holiday; even the winters were cosy and warm in Jilly’s kitchen. But, like much of Cornwall, Port Merryn was a dying community. The Atlantic was all but fished out, removing the village’s traditional income, so the quaint stone fishermen’s cottages circling the harbour were being snapped up by rich Londoners as holiday homes. With property prices soaring and no prospect of work, the families had moved to the cities, leaving only a retired community and a handful of locals running tourist-trap cafés and fudge shops. It had been five years since you had been able to buy a pint of milk in Port Merryn, and in the dead of winter the village was like a ghost town.
‘I’m sorry, gran, I didn’t mean to make it sound like I wanted to leave …’
‘Now, now, lovey,’ said Jilly, wiping her hands on her apron and reaching over to touch Erin’s hand. ‘You’re only saying the truth. I know you love the village, but it’s no place for a young girl, not when you’ve seen what’s on the other side of the hill.’
Erin nodded with melancholy. It had seemed like a good idea to move back to Port Merryn after she had graduated from university six months ago. She could save on rent, and move to the city when she’d made a proper start on her writing career. At least, that had been the plan, but it hadn’t quite worked out that way. Raised on a diet of Daphne Du Maurier and John Fowles – Jilly had always made sure the house was full of books to enrich and inspire her granddaughter’s mind – Erin’s one ambition had been to write the Great British Novel, and had spent every spare moment of her time at uni crafting her debut book. By the end of the last term it had been ready: 120,000 words, double spaced and printed on one-sided white paper. She sent it to a dozen agencies and waited. She had almost given up hope when she had been summoned by Ed Davies, senior partner in Davies & Sisman Literary Agency, to his office in London. Almost numb with excitement, Erin had spent three days deciding what to wear in order to give the right balance of ‘literary genius’ and ‘commercial winner’ and had spent the whole journey there planning her Man Booker Prize acceptance speech. She had thus been badly deflated when Ed Davies had sat her down in his Holborn office and spent twenty minutes telling her why he thought her novel sucked. However, he had seen enough promise, he said, that he was prepared to represent her.
‘I’m taking a chance on you,’ the agent had told her, ‘and this book certainly isn’t going to be your debut novel. But if you can come up with the right premise and execute it as well as I think you can, then I want to be the one negotiating your first deal.’
Erin looked across at her battered old laptop sitting at the desk by the window, almost buried under a mound of papers and notebooks. The screen blinked at her, an open document white and empty. The novel, her great escape route from the village, just wouldn’t come,
however hard she tried.
‘Someone called for you while you were out,’ said Jilly, waving an oven glove towards the phone. She was removing a thick crusted pie from the oven, which she placed on the gingham tablecloth.
‘Who was it?’ asked Erin, picking up a Post-it note scrawled with illegible writing. ‘Richard?’ Her relationship with her boyfriend at university was still limping along, even though Erin was now back in Cornwall and Richard was based in London.
‘No, lovey,’ smiled Jilly sympathetically. ‘Katherine someone from an agency, I think?’
Erin felt a rush of excitement. ‘The Deskhop Agency?’
‘That’s the one,’ nodded Jilly. ‘Who are they, then?’
‘It’s a secretarial agency in London,’ said Erin slowly.
‘Secretarial work?’ said Jilly, raising one eyebrow. ‘What about the book?’
‘Gran …’ she replied, hoping not to sound too exasperated, ‘the Deskhop Agency acts for all sorts of media and publishing companies. I thought I might be able to get in through the back door. But don’t worry, it probably won’t come to anything.’
Her grandmother smiled kindly and put her oven gloves down. ‘Erin, don’t you dare go worrying about me. You have a talent, and a talent should take you places, not leave you stranded in a cold little backwater with a pensioner and her stodgy cooking.’
‘But I love the village and I love your cooking!’ protested Erin.
‘I know you do, love,’ said Jilly, running her hand up and down Erin’s arm, ‘but you’re climbing the walls. It’s about time you got out and had some fun while you’re young.’
‘I don’t have enough money to move to London.’
‘You know you do,’ said Jilly.
‘But I can’t use that …’
Erin thought about the nest egg sitting in the bank. Her father had died almost bankrupt, but over the years he had squirrelled away money for his daughter, which had added up to a tidy sum. Erin had never touched it, keeping it for ‘something important’.
‘Maybe it’s time to use it, lovey. Your mum would have wanted you to.’
Erin looked at her grandmother’s deep blue eyes and knew she loved her more than ever. But she also knew she was right.
‘Well, I’ll think about it,’ said Erin, wondering how much of Jilly’s rice pudding she would have to eat before she could slip off and make the phone call.
‘Ah, Erin Devereux. Good of you to call back. I tried your mobile but I’m not sure it’s working.’ Catherine Weiner’s voice was brash and over-friendly. It had been so long since Erin had been up to London for her agency interview, but she remembered how scarily efficient the woman was.
‘Then I tried this number on your CV. Didn’t recognize the dialling code. Where are you? Surrey?’