Fred stared at her then like she had accused him of murder. He shook his head. “No way. It can’t happen like that. That’s terrible.”
“It is terrible. It is sad and horrid and something one might instantly regret, perhaps for the rest of one’s life. That’s the point. That is life, full of regret.”
“But if he doesn’t dance with her, we will hate him.” Fred stared at the floor now, his face red and sad.
Jane spoke softly. “I liked the little boy a great deal. He was a delicate soul, with a great sadness in his heart. He cared for his sister and loved his mother dearly.”
Fred looked up at Jane and their eyes met. His gaze fell once more, like that of a scolded child, and Jane saw the novel’s subject in front of her. She likely sat in the room where the scene she spoke of had played out.
She spoke again, softly. “Did you run a footrace for your mother? One meant for adults, though you were still a child?”
“It was a walk from John o’ Groats to Land’s End. A fourteen-day endurance event.”
Jane gasped. “How old were you?”
“Twelve. I entered without telling anyone. When I turned up at the starting line, they tried to stop me. But I ran past them. People cheered for me along the road—a little boy trying to run a man’s race. It was great for a while. But on the fourth day, I grew sick. I didn’t know how much water you were supposed to drink. I kept walking until I collapsed. I woke up in hospital, with dehydration. A doctor told me I almost died. I wanted to keep going, I even tried to escape the hospital bed, but a nurse caught me.” He laughed and bowed his head.
“How far did you go before you collapsed?”
“Two hundred and thirty-two miles.”
“You walked two hundred and thirty-two miles?”
He nodded.
“What funds did you need to raise?”
“My goal was to raise eight hundred pounds. It was to fly my mum to America. They had invented a new cancer treatment there. Eight hundred pounds was the cost of the plane ticket.”
The words flew at her and she received them with curiosity and wonder. How on earth did one fly to America? Like a bird? And what magic treated cancer? She reminded herself to remain with the issue at hand. “Did you raise the sum?” she asked him.
“My story made the news. I raised twenty-three thousand pounds.”
A fantastical sum. Jane gazed at him with wonder. “Goodness! And your mother, how did she react?”
He smiled, then shook his head and said nothing. He shifted his feet and scratched his head in a way Jane imagined he must have done since he was small. Finally, he spoke.
“I was horrible to my mother,” Fred whispered. “I was a spoilt little boy. She did everything for me, and I teased her and was cold to her. I never danced with her, and then she died. I never told her I loved her, not once. Though she said it to me every day.”
“You were a little boy. Boys never tell anyone they love them.”
“I could have said it once. She died thinking I didn’t love her.”
“You walked across England to save her. Your mother knew you loved her,” she said. Fred shook his head. “It means more if the little boy does not dance with his mother in the novel,” she whispered. “We will love him more, the more human he is.”
Fred’s eyes darted back and forth across Jane’s face.
“Are there more pages? I could only find half a novel when I—with an ungallantry which haunts me—entered your quarters.”
“I never finished writing it,” Fred replied.
“You must!” Jane cried. “Why did you stop?”
Fred shrugged. “I didn’t know what to write next. Maybe some of the scenes rang false.” He leaned across and tapped her arm with his fist in a playful way. She shivered and blushed at the affectionate touch. “Besides, do you know how hard it is to get a novel published?”
“I have some idea,” Jane replied.
“Do you know how many people write novels every year, and they go nowhere? There are enough books in the world. We don’t need any more.”
“What a dreadful thought.”
Fred shrugged. “It got too hard. I didn’t know if it was any good. I showed some of the early pages to a friend at work. They offered a few benign, constructive comments, and I shriveled into a ball of embarrassment and vowed never to try anything creative again.”
“That is the point at which you must persevere,” Jane declared. “The blackest time is before a breakthrough. That moment when all seems lost? That is the moment to keep writing. You must trust your heart, though no end lies in sight. No one can write this story but you. Writing is a lonely profession.”
“And what about when the words don’t come?” he asked.
Jane nodded. “You grit your teeth and grip the pen and keep going.”
“Sounds like agony.”
“It is,” she replied. “And you fill the page with words, and you read them back and despair.”
“Great,” he said with a laugh.
“Then the next day, you read it once more, and find two words in the page that were not terrible,” she said. “And your heart will sing in a register to shatter a stone.” She cleared her throat, aware her voice had risen. “Or so I have heard.”
He raised his head and stared at her. When she could no longer meet his eyes, she looked away. “I’ll think about it,” he said.
“Good. Do,” Jane said. She coughed again.
He met her eyes once more and fixed his face in a different look. “Thank you, by the way,” he said. “Not for the invading-my-bedroom part, but thank you for the rest. For reading my novel and telling me you enjoyed it. That’s not nothing.”
“You are welcome,” Jane said.
He excused himself to attend to a
