The Home for Broken Hearts (42 page)

Once they had arrived at the E.R. Hannah hung back while Ellen bypassed the queue at reception to stop a nurse and tell her exactly why she had brought her sister in. Within minutes she and Hannah found themselves in a private room with a female doctor, who gently asked Hannah several questions and then asked permission to examine her. Ellen held her hand as the examination took place, keeping her eyes on her sister’s face as tears streamed silently down Hannah’s battered cheeks. They had stayed there for hours, until two women police officers arrived and took Hannah’s statement. Ellen told them about the clothes that she still had at home and they told her they’d check the CCTV footage of the places that Hannah could remember going to.

After the ordeal was finally over, Ellen and Hannah had stood at the hospital exit for a long time, clinging to each other, neither one wanting to set foot either back inside or outside. “Matt said he’d come to collect us,” Ellen said, reassuring herself as much as her sister. “He’ll be here in a minute.”

“This is hard for you, isn’t it? All these people, all this noise and the smell. Especially here, I know how much you hate hospitals.”

“This is a living hell,” Ellen told her candidly. “I don’t want to be here a single second more, but I wouldn’t leave you here, either.”

“I never told you how sorry I was, after you lost the baby and everything else that happened. I never told you that I cried for you; I knew how much you wanted more children. I wish I’d told you that I cried for you… but it seemed that anything I said made it worse.”

Ellen smiled wanly at Hannah. “I wish you’d told me that, too, it would have helped.” She took a deep breath of hot, exhaust-heavy air. “I had to come here to identify Nick, you
know. They took me that afternoon to look at him. All the way here I was praying, praying that they’d got it wrong because I just couldn’t imagine him not being alive… it was impossible. I was so certain that they’d got it wrong, I don’t think I took it seriously until I saw him… I remember there was someone outside laughing in the corridor. I remember wondering why they didn’t shut up. And thinking, how is it possible that life can go on for anyone when it’s stopped for me? Maybe that’s when I decided that I didn’t ever want to go out again. Maybe it was then.”

“You went through all of that alone,” Hannah said, linking her arm through Ellen’s.

“I don’t think there is really any other way to do it. You’ve just done the same.”

“If it helps you, even though everything that just happened was so awful and so horrifying, I feel better. I feel like I’ve done something about it. I mean, I hurt like fuck and it’s no fun having three broken ribs but… thank you. I must be the worst sister in the world.”

Ellen did not look at Hannah. Instead, as she saw Matt’s face in the window of a nearing cab, she simply said, “But I love you, I keep on loving you. How can I do anything else?”

“Will you drop me off at my place?” Hannah asked.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Ellen told her. “You are coming home with me. Where else would you go?”

When they got back, Sabine had helped Ellen get Hannah into her bed, while Allegra had prepared soup for both of them. Ellen had sat with her sister and spoon-fed her until the new pain medication she had been given had kicked in, and for the first time in a long time Hannah looked almost relaxed.

“You know,” she had murmured sleepily, “I think I knew that Nick would never choose me. I knew that he would drag me down and hurt me, but it didn’t matter, nothing mattered. I just wanted to be loved, and he loved me. Maybe it was all a
game to him, and maybe he never meant it, but he made me believe that he loved me and I thought I needed that more than anything else. That’s all I’ve been clinging to ever since.”

“So did I, once,” Ellen had said as her sister drifted off in a mercifully painless sleep. “Now I’m not so sure.”

A succession of dark images and shadows parading through her mind, threatening to engulf her at any minute, and unable to sleep in the unfamiliar box room, Ellen had got up and gone downstairs to the kitchen, half hoping, half expecting Matt to be there, but it was empty. She had taken her writing pad and pen out of the drawer it had languished in for the last year, sat down, and begun writing. She’d written to keep the tigers at bay, and for the whole of Sunday had concentrated on making Hannah as comfortable as possible and readjusting her mind once again to change. But she’d been aware of the notepad sitting in that drawer, waiting to be written on. She conjured a whole new ending for Allegra’s book—one where Eliza made good her escape on her own, killing her hunters and then rescuing Captain Parker from certain death. And finally she had written the most erotic love scene between Eliza and the captain that she could think of, passionate, graphic, and best of all, with Eliza on top, taking charge.

Now, Monday morning had come and Ellen felt a little embarrassed that she had ever thought her amateur offerings were fit even for Allegra’s scrap-paper pile, but still, her new life was not about sitting on laurels, it was about grabbing thistles—even if Allegra could be a particularly prickly one.

“So anyway,” Ellen explained carefully, “normally when I felt like that I’d read one of your books, but last night I was so desperate to know what happened to Eliza next that I thought I’d write my own version; I mean, why should Eliza have to get rescued, why should she always be the helpless victim? After everything she’s been through she’d be a stronger, worldlier woman, wouldn’t she? I think she would, anyway, and it worked—writing did make the panic go away. It all seems a bit
foolish now. I only read it to you because I thought you’d think it was funny. So anyway, let’s start work on the real ending. I know that Simon is waiting for the next Allegra Howard.”

“Yes, he is, he always is,” Allegra said. “And I think I might have found her.”

“Huh?”

“Ellen, haven’t you noticed that it’s not really me who’s written this book at all, it’s you. You had a vision for how it should be, it was your thoughts and ideas that shaped the characters and the plot. In truth, this book really belongs to you.”

“To me?” Ellen laughed. “Allegra, that’s so silly. All I’ve done is a lot of typing and had a few thoughts. I’ve been here listening to you telling the tale, weaving the words together to make a story. I can’t possibly do that!”

“But you’ve just proved that you can,” Allegra said, nodding at the sheets of lined paper filled with Ellen’s scrawl. “That ending was as well written as anything I could have done. It’s not the right ending for my book, my readers would have mass heart attacks, but it could be the right ending for a book—for your book.” Allegra tapped one long finger against her thigh.

“No, I’m not a writer, I’m just me, Ellen Woods. I read books, I don’t write them. I can’t do that, Allegra, it’s too hard and too late now. You are very sweet to be so nice about my efforts, but I know my limitations.”

“Do you want to know my real name?” Allegra asked.

“Um, I do, don’t I?”

“Joan Fisher,” Allegra stated. “My real name is Joan Fisher. I wasn’t born Allegra Howard. I was born Joan Fisher, daughter of a dentist, who grew up in Hull. I am Joan Fisher, who just about scraped through secretarial college and got a job in a bank, who got married at the age of twenty-three in 1960 to Graham Howard, who gave up work and moved into a semi in Surbiton and spent the next ten years keeping house, cooking, wearing an apron, letting all the fun and frolicks of the sixties pass me by while I read and daydreamed and waited for children.
But children never came, and in 1972 Graham Howard told me he was in love with another man. Another man, Ellen. He said he couldn’t hide his true feelings from me anymore, that he loved me but that he would never love me in that way. We agreed that we would stay married, and perhaps adopt a baby. That he would have his life and I would have mine and we wouldn’t ask questions.” Allegra smiled faintly. “Graham was a lovely, kind man. He never wanted to hurt me, and at first I thought I would be happy with that. I’d lived one way for so long that I thought I would be… content. And then one morning I woke up alone and I realized that I was never going to be happy stuck in my semi in Surbiton and married to a man who felt more passionate about my Biba knee-high boots than he did about me. So I changed my life; it’s a long story, there were many ups and downs, mistakes and triumphs, but at the end of it all I had become Allegra Howard, romantic novelist. Simon’s father gave me my first book deal at Cherished Desires and I divorced Graham in 1978. By 1980 I was published in nineteen different languages. I changed my life, Ellen, I changed who I was, from the inside out. But the most important thing is that I didn’t change
from
the real me into someone false and made up. I changed
into
the real me, the person I was always supposed to be. It’s a cliché, but I found myself, and rather wonderful I turned out to be, too.”

“Wow,” Ellen said. “I had no idea, I just thought that you were always you.”

“No one arrives in this world like Aphrodite, born from the sea the image of perfection. It’s a struggle to become yourself, to find the path in life that is going to afford you the greatest satisfaction and joy. Many people never try, they simply let their lives dwindle away down whichever path takes them, and for some that is enough. But it wasn’t for me and it shouldn’t be for you, Ellen. Perhaps you don’t know it yet, but there is so much more to you than you realize. I see a lot of me in you, and you are like a butterfly who’s been trapped in a jam jar.
Now is your time to be free, to spread your wings and find yourself. And besides, you’d be doing me a huge favor. I’ve been trying to retire for years, but each year Simon persuades me to write just a few more books while he’s looking for ‘the next Allegra Howard.’ I keep telling him I’ll be dead soon. I’m tired of writing about beautiful, half-naked nineteen-year-olds. I want the chance to write something for myself, something about a woman my age—something for my own vanity and pleasure.”

“So you want me to take over as Allegra Howard?” Ellen asked, her head dizzy with thoughts and feelings that didn’t quite connect yet. “To become you?”

“Good God, no, darling. Let’s not try running before we can walk.” Allegra shook her head. “First, you should get all the credit—or otherwise—for whatever you write in your own right. And I don’t see you as writing carbon copies of my books; I think you have a lot more modern and forward-thinking ideas than I do. And second, I’ve earned this name, it belongs to me, I would never simply give it away. Even to someone I am as fond of as you. It took me a long time to become myself, Ellen, and I intend to hold on to that until I’m ashes in the ground.”

“Yes, but—Ellen Woods, romantic novelist. Somehow it doesn’t sound quite right, does it?”

“Of course not. Yours is a terrible name for grandeur. You’ll need to make something up. Try the porn-star-name formula. Your first pet’s name combined with the street name where you were born, that’s a good one.”

“Well, we had this long-eared rabbit and we lived on Waters Crescent, so that would make me… Velvet Waters,” Ellen said uncertainly. “It does sort of sound more like a porn-star name than a writer’s name.”

“Which is perfect,” Allegra assured her. “Velvet sounds exactly like the kind of woman who would write powerful, sexy women in charge—historical romantic fiction. Good.
Now all you need to do is have an idea, write a proposal, and we’ll show it to Simon and get you started on your first book. You’ll have to write it in between helping me put together my magnum opus, of course, but that shouldn’t be a problem—you seem to have a fondness for staying up all night ‘chatting.’”

“
That’s
all I need to do? That’s
all
I need to do!” Ellen exclaimed. “Allegra, life is not that simple. I can’t just have an idea—”

“You can if you try, oh, I don’t know, say, thinking of one.”

“I have no idea how to write a proposal.”

“I’ll help you,” Allegra said.

“And I wouldn’t have the first idea where to start writing a book.”

“Why not? You’ve read thousands of them, you’ve had plenty of ideas for
The Sword Erect.
Why couldn’t you put all of that insight and imagination into your own project?”

Ellen hesitated. She couldn’t think of a reason why not right then, except that it seemed so… otherworldly, as if Allegra were suggesting that she take up time travel or fly to the moon.

“Well, Simon will never take me seriously, not as a writer—why would he?”

“Because he knows you, he knows how good you are at your job and how much you bring to a book, how much creativity and vision you’ve brought to my book. And he is no fool, he wouldn’t let a talent like yours pass him by.”

“A talent like mine?” Ellen blinked.

“You heard me correctly. Now we have to think about getting Velvet into print and me off the hook.”

Ellen sat perfectly still behind Allegra’s desk, attempting to focus her thoughts. Could she really do this? Could she really have an idea and write a book? She felt a giddy sense of excitement at the idea, a half-baked childhood dream that she had assumed would always be impossible to make come true,
but could she have been wrong? After all, if the great Allegra Howard believed she was capable, then… well, she might be, mightn’t she?

“I suppose I have always been fascinated with the early settlers in America. You know, the pilgrims on the
Mayflower,
” Ellen mused. “I wrote my dissertation on it.”

“Perfect,” Allegra said. “Then you’d have the American market in your sites, too.”

“I suppose I could try to think of something, you know—a plot or something to weave around the history.”

“I suppose you could. You could take a chance, do something a little different, take a risk, and see if it just might change your life forever.” Allegra’s smile was warm but brief. “Now, as for my book—I have my ending ready and I think you’ll agree it is rather splendid. Let’s get it typed into the computer and finally deliver
The Sword Erect
to Simon. The poor man will die of shock when he realizes that I’ve actually finished at last. Although hopefully not before he’s paid me.”