Page 44 of We All Live Here
Not if you like someone. You message straight back if you like someone.
Lila, you haven’t dated in almost twenty years. This is not how the world works now.
Also I have to write about having had loads of wild sexytimes for my new book. Can I borrow your experiences and pretend I’m you?
Only on one condition.
What’s that?
YOU get laid first.
I’m trying! I literally just told you I asked Hot Architect out for a drink. So can I?
Good luck! Let me know how you get on Xx
Eleanor can bereallyannoying sometimes.
El, I need to get this chapter written asap. I’m hardly going to be able to start a whole relationship by then, am I?
What century are you living in??? Who said anything about a relationship?
•••
Anoushka has senta follow-up email, including bits of the original from Regent House.
We absolutely love this project and are passionate about Lila’s writing, but we all felt it was a little too downbeat in the early chapters. There is a lot of hurt and betrayal and it is a little gloomier than we had expected. We would love for the book to open with, say, one of her crazier escapades, just so the reader knows that this is going to be a story of redemption, a sexy phoenix rising from the ashes, before we go into how she got there. Plus we are all desperate to hear how fun life canbe on the other side of divorce—and we know a multitude of female readers will be too! We are very much looking forward to reading—the wilder the better!
Lila glances away from her screen and down at her phone. It is now two hours and forty-six minutes since she sent the text and Gabriel Mallory has not responded. Perhaps he is even now wincing as he tries to work out how to let her down gently. She has had no intimate contact in almost three years beyond a routine smear test. She is suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling that this book idea is going to fail, that she has promised something she has no possible chance of delivering. She is going to have to tell Anoushka the truth. What on earth had she been thinking?
No. She ponders Eleanor’s words.
There is anotherway.
Chapter Fourteen
For all that having a piano in your front hall is a little irritating, Lila has to admit that the sound of two people playing “Someone to Watch Over Me” as a duet has a definite charm. She has been paused at her desk for twenty minutes now, just listening to the sound of the keys, Penelope Stockbridge’s slightly breathless laughter—the way she apologizes every time she laughs, as if that much naked emotion is something to be embarrassed about. She can’t hear Bill’s response, but his tone is cheerful and reassuring. Lila had never even considered Bill having a relationship with another woman after her mother, but she observes distantly that if it turned out to be Penelope Stockbridge she probably wouldn’t mind.
“Oh, I messed up the left hand. I’m so sorry.”
“Please don’t worry. Let’s go again from bar twelve.”
All sound echoes up the central staircase of this house. You can hear conversations from the top floor as the words float upward, so when the front door opens, even if Gene wasn’t bellowing,Hey, I’m back!shewould have known immediately it was him. He seems to make twice as much noise as a normal human being, his footsteps heavier, the door slam more emphatic. It is as if he is determined to imprint himself on any environment in which he finds himself. Her heart always sinks when he arrives back.Hey! The piano! Shall I sing along? I once met Ella Fitzgerald, you know. Down in a little bar in Los Feliz…
Gene insists he is going to auditions, but she suspects he is just sitting in the pub, as she never hears him rehearsing anything. When she asks him how the auditions are going he says his agent is sure something will come up soon, and invariably changes the subject.
And something about Gene being in the house always makes it impossible to work. It is as if his presence means she is permanently braced for some kind of explosion, or the sound of something breaking, or even Truant’s incessant protest. She stares at her screen for fifteen minutes, then gets out of her chair with a sigh of resignation.
She is on the first-floor landing heading downstairs to make another mug of tea when the music stops abruptly. She hears Bill’s voice. “Are those my socks?”
Gene’s voice, innocent and surprised: “Uh…I dunno. Are they?”
“You’re wearing my socks!”
“Oh. I guess they got mixed up in the laundry.”
“You know they aren’t yours. You wear those awful cheap white sports ones, and they all have holes. Those are my Falke one-hundred-percent wool ones.”
“Okay, pal, keep your hair on.”
