I sometimes wonder if I made a mistake by chasing my rainbow, but I know I didn’t. I’ve found everything I ever wanted. From now on, there’ll be no more ‘what ifs…?’ No more uncertainty. We’ve all got life sussed out.
‘Sometimes I can’t believe we all managed to settle down and sort out our lives,’ Kate says one Sunday morning as we sit around her kitchen table eating brunch. ‘Especially you, Cooper,’ she adds, to the amusement of the others.
‘I know. It’s miraculous,’ I tell her, breaking off a chunk of cinnamon bagel from the pile on the plate in front of me. ‘We’re like fully formed grown-ups.’
‘You know what I was thinking about the other day though?’ Carol asks, then waits for an answer, as if we could genuinely read her thoughts. Eventually she realises that no one is going to take a guess and she carries on. ‘What will we all be like when we’re fifty? Because you know what they say, with age comes maturity. And bunions, but we can get them lasered off.’
There were giggles and groans all round.
‘I reckon we’ll be drama-free and enjoying quiet, peaceful lives,’ Jess offers.
‘Really?’ asks Sarah, one eyebrow raised in cynicism, and I catch her glancing at me.
‘I agree with Jess,’ I say indignantly. ‘Look, I’ve already had enough dramas and disasters to last a lifetime. There’s no way I’m messing up my life again.’
The others nod in agreement and I sit back, satisfied, happy and positive that from now on I’m in for a smooth ride.
But what if… what if I couldn’t be more wrong?
Acknowledgment
Twenty-one years ago, I was working as a sales manager and had been married for five years to a bloke I got engaged to a week after I met him. I was a bit spontaneous like that.
And despite having a good job, a nice flat and a first name relationship with our local travel agent, I was in the midst of a premature mid-life crisis on two fronts. I’d been trying to get pregnant for years but my ovaries weren’t obliging, and I’d harboured a dream to be an author ever since I was a teenager who, like Carly Cooper, secretly read eighties bonkbusters using the light on my electric blanket so I wouldn’t get caught.
‘I just want to be a writer,’ I’d wail at my husband. Eventually, the poor man snapped. ‘Well, maybe it would help if you actually wrote something,’ he suggested gently.
Despite being knee deep in a self-indulgent whirlpool of woes, I had to admit he had a point. The problem was, I had no idea where to start. I’d never written a word of fiction, or been part of a creative writing group, or studied at college or university, so I had absolutely no idea how to pen a book.
However, I had a story floating about in my head, so I decided to try. For the next fortnight, I wrote every night after work and then sent my first ever 10,000 words off to agents and publishers.
On a chilly afternoon in March, I got a phone call to offer me a book deal. Twenty minutes later I discovered I was pregnant. A parade, a brass band and a Red Arrow flyover wouldn’t even have come close to our feelings of celebration.
In November 2000, my first son was born and in January 2001, my first novel, What If? was released.
Two decades, two sons and twenty-six novels later, I’ve been lucky enough to have made a career out of writing. There have been many high points and some awful lows, disappointments and jubilations, skint panics and sales peaks, but I’m still here and happier than ever to have found a home with the brilliant team at Boldwood Books.
A few months ago, my first novel came up in a chat, and it set off a thought in my mind. Where would those characters be now, twenty years later? Would they still be friends? Would their dreams have come true? Would they have had happy lives?
I was desperate to answer the questions, so for the last few months I’ve been locked away writing the sequel to What If?. It’s called What Now?, and it will be released in January 2021, twenty years after these characters first made it to the book shelves. I’m loving spending my days with them again.
The 20th Anniversary of my first book also feels like a great time to thank the people I’m eternally grateful to.
I first worked with Amanda Ridout and Caroline Ridding over a decade ago and I’m so happy to have joined them, the wonderful Nia Beynon and the rest of the fantastic team when they set up Boldwood Books in 2019. Ladies, thank you for your endless encouragement and for being the finest publishers I’ve ever worked with. Caroline, you deserve extra points for being my brilliant editor, a force of nature who inspires me and always has faith that we’ll get there, even when it’s all going wrong. Which it often is!
Thanks to the copy editors and proof readers, and to all the reviewers, bloggers and book sellers who have supported me so faithfully with every new release. I appreciate every one of you.
Thank you to the incredible women in my life, the pals who sit round my kitchen table, the far-away friends who are always on the other end of the phone, the aunts, cousins, sisters-in-law, nieces and grandmothers who have cheered me on.
Thanks to my husband, John, my sons, Callan and Brad, and my stepdaughter, Gemma, for the love, the laughs, and for twenty years of bringing me tea while
