Screw You Dolores Page 5

  Here’s what happened.

  One day in Dublin, Ireland, Anne Herlihy was taking her son to school and noticed a new mum in the playground with a boy of a similar age. When she started talking to the new mum, she recognised the New Zealand accent.

  ‘Oh, I have a friend who lives in New Zealand,’ says Anne. ‘Her name is Sarah-Kate Lynch.’

  ‘Not the Sarah-Kate Lynch who’s editor of the Woman’s Weekly?’ asks the new mum.

  ‘She used to be, but now she writes books,’ says Anne.

  ‘That’s a coincidence,’ says the new mum, Dale, ‘because my husband writes books.’

  Dale’s husband turned out to be Stuart Harrison, who had a bestseller out at the time called The Snow Falcon. After Anne Herlihy facilitated a swapping of email addresses, Stuart and I started corresponding, and eventually I sent him my first novel, Finding Tom Connor.

  He read it and, while it might not have been his own cup of tea exactly, he was kind enough to forward it to his agent, Stephanie Cabot, at the William Morris agency in London. She emailed me saying she would like to represent me, and that I should give her a call.

  So clueless was I that I didn’t even realise what representing me meant. I was even more clueless when her first question was, ‘What are you working on next?’ Next? I was working on sweet fanny adams, was what I was working on. I’d not long ago finished Finding Tom Connor, and thought it was totally amazing and that I was terribly clever for managing to write something that long and have it actually be printed and distributed. It had honestly not occurred to me to start on anything else.

  But Stephanie was not interested in Finding Tom Connor, because with its New Zealand main character it did not have a broad enough international appeal for her to sell overseas. Whatever I was working on next would have to.

  And so pretty darn quickly I came up with the idea for Blessed Are, the story of two Irish cheesemakers trying to find a new generation to carry on their empire, which turns out to be more about babies than dairy products. Stephanie loved the idea, so I wrote the book, and when I sent her the finished product, the film option was snapped up almost immediately by Working Title. Then there was a UK book deal and a US book deal, with other territories eventually following suit.

  If there had been someone in novelty socks in the vicinity, I’m sure I would have been told to tighten my seatbelt, but there wasn’t. And even if there had been, I wouldn’t have believed him. And I would have been right to do so. There’s nothing like the adrenaline rush of a first success, but one book does not a #1 bestseller make.

  I think some of my publishers (definitely the original American ones) wanted me to write Blessed Are (The Unpasteurised Version) or similar, over and over again, and if I knew how to I probably would. But each book comes out pretty much according to its own prescription, a bit like children. There’s plenty of me in each one, and bits of the people and world around me, but actually they’re also something on their own, which sometimes doesn’t feel like it has much to do with me at all.

  If I thought I was going to be the next Jackie Collins or Helen Fielding after Blessed Are was so well received, I was in for a rude shock. It did well, better than many, selling in a bunch of different countries and being translated into a cacophony of different languages. But I am not, as I say, living the high life in the South of France.

  And some of the reviews were odious. A friend rang from London to say that it had starred in The Guardian, a quality newspaper, and a real feather in an author’s cap. However, he had not actually read the review, and when he faxed it to me (pre-scanning days, bless us), as it slowly emerged out of the fax machine I could soon put together the headline: ‘IN A BAD WHEY’. When you’ve written a book about cheese, you don’t need a science degree to work out that that baby is not going to glow. I didn’t even need to read it to find out that the feather was not in my cap, but had been pulled out from between my *rse cheeks.

  Regardless of this, I boxed on with my next novel, By Bread Alone, about a woman with a tragic past and a granny obsession who gets the chance to revisit the romance of her youth.

  And actually, it’s not quite true to say that I boxed on, because the boxing on had already been done. One of the best things about the novel-writing system is that by the time your latest one hits the streets you are generally well into writing the next one, so you can’t chuck your toys out of the cot because you’ve already got too much invested.

  In this case, I had already taken myself off to France to research bread-baking, and to the English countryside, where I’d settled myself into a nutty six-storey tower called the House in the Clouds. Look out one window and you could see the charming village of Thorpeness with the sparkling waters of the Suffolk coast lapping at its edges. Look out the other and you could see Sizewell nuclear plant.

  Naturally, I chose the charming, sparkling view, which was just as well, because in the weeks to come I was going to need all the charm and sparkle I could lay my hands on. I was about to get as far away from happiness as is humanly possible.

  Dear Sarah-Kate

  I am the janitor working for Jandy-Mark Lynskey’s fourth assistant twice-removed.

  I just read your novel The Uncommon Courtesy of Sugar Honey Wallace, and thought I would write to you and let you know I found it charming and readable. It would make a great film!

  But it made terrible toilet paper.

  Regards

  Xavier

  PS: This ‘green’ initiative bullshit is giving me an ulcer. As soon as I refine the app I am inventing to kill people without leaving a shred of evidence, I’m out of this sh*t hole.

  No funny chapter heading for this. SERIOUSLY.

  I’d recently turned 40, I’d dropped some weight, I was working on a third novel after a fabulous research trip to Europe — everything was coming up roses.

  Then I got the measles.

  And when I say ‘measles’, I don’t mean ordinary measles, I mean the measles my Uncle John talks about because he doesn’t like the other word. You know, the one that goes with breast and lung and bone and ovarian. I don’t like that word either. I hate that word. That word is a f**king b*tch.

  I wouldn’t even mention it at all — in fact, usually I don’t — but it played a significant role in turning me from the sort of person who would say nothing to Dolores into the person who would say ‘Screw you’, so therefore I will talk about it here, but only here. You won’t hear me chatting about it on the radio or see me popping up on any anti-measles posters.

  This chapter in the book and my life is deeply personal, and I’m only telling you so that you know the reason why I think I might have something to say about happiness that maybe other people don’t.

  Every 40-year-old worth their salt who has had to consider that they might not make it to 41 learns something, and if they’re lucky it’s about happiness. And I mean real happiness, not shoe happiness or tiramisu happiness (both of which, nonetheless, obviously have their places ahead of many other happinesses).

  I’m talking about what-really-matters happiness. I’m talking about what-we’re-here-on-this-Earth-for happiness.

  My father died of colon measles when he was 60, and so my GP had recommended I have a colonoscopy at 40. A colonoscopy, in case you’re unaware, is a camera that goes up your bum to see if anything scary lives there — like the three cheeseburgers you raced your friend to eat back in the 1980s.

  Butt-cam sounded to me like about as much fun as … well, no fun. Less than no fun. So I put it off until a friend whose father had also died of colon measles put the wind up me (pleasant change of direction, that) and I made the appointment, despite having not a single symptom, the year I turned 40.

  I was as healthy as a horse. I did not for a moment consider there would be a problem. I merely wanted to tick the colonoscopy off my list so I didn’t have to think about it anymore.

  The Ginger dropped me off at the clinic and went shopping. ‘See you in a bit, and we can get
fish and chips for dinner,’ I said, thinking ahead to the next meal, as usual.

  But to my horror, the colonoscopy revealed that I had an aggressive tumour sitting in my colon, just lying there waiting to kill me.

  Well. How rude!

  What’s more, the nice folk at the clinic gave me photos of it. Now when someone looks at a picture of me and says it’s not my best side, I want to bring those butt-cam babies out and say, ‘Really? You think?’

  But I don’t.

  Finding out you have the measles truly happens in real life the way it does in the movies — and that’s actually pretty rare. No one falls in love like they do in the movies, or gets blown up, or has sex with an alien, but when you’re told you have the measles you actually do tend to go a bit NATO and cry ‘Why me?’ and beat your chest and weep and wail, and immediately jump to the bit of Terms of Endearment where Debra Winger is dying and saying goodbye to her children even though the really good bits of that movie have nothing to do with her and everything to do with Jack Nicholson and Shirley MacLaine.

  Anyway, what the movies don’t prepare you for is how lonely it feels.

  I think all bad news to do with a person’s own health probably has the same effect, because even though you might share every other aspect of your life with someone else or a bunch of someone elses, when it boils down to it, your body is just you and you alone.

  Alone.

  On the day I found out I had the measles I have never felt more lonely in my whole, entire life. I felt like a tiny pea at sea on a stormy ocean. Every time I closed my eyes I could see that pea being tossed around in infinite huge Perfect Storm-style waves — hopeless. Not even George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg showing up, together, shirtless, looking all rugged and handsome, could pull me out of this one.

  However, that same wonderful GP who recommended the colonoscopy in the first place gave me two treasured pieces of advice: first was to have a glass of wine; second was that everything would feel a bit better tomorrow.

  Both proved invaluable pearls that I’ve since handed on to many others in crisis, although the feeling better tomorrow one is probably healthier.

  On the day of my diagnosis I was a tiny pea who assumed she was going to die a lingering death without getting to do any of the things she had not even bothered to put on a list. On the day after, I was someone who wanted to know what I could do to make sure that didn’t happen.

  The answer was to have a lot of bad bits of me cut out, which I did, and I may be somewhat eccentrically plumbed these days, but I am most definitely alive and well, not to mention extremely vigilant when it comes to my health.

  It was, as you can imagine, not a happy time in my life. I had no sense of humour about it then, and I have none still.

  — Nil. —

  — Nada. —

  — Niente. —

  My lovely Ginger husband used to burst into tears every time he looked at me, and if I got so much as a sore fingernail I thought I was ‘riddled with it’ — the technical term for having a lot of measles that will kill you.

  Too many people asked me how I felt ‘in myself’, which made me want to punch their lights out, but not long after the diagnosis someone I barely knew simply asked me how I was and I told them I was terrible because I had the measles. I cried and so did she, and we were in the middle of a busy store, so it was embarrassing.

  Once outside, the friend with whom I’d been shopping and who had watched the whole frightening display said to me, ‘Why didn’t you just say you were fine?’

  Ha ha. Good idea. After that I did it her way, and it worked out much better.

  So, I’m not going to tell you any medical horror stories — although I certainly have some — because I’m still here. The Ginger’s sister, Nicki Robins, was not so lucky.

  When I was still recovering from my surgery, Nicki came to visit and told me she had been having some problems in the down-below department herself. She’d had non-Hodgkin lymphoma as a teenager, and was fairly understandably afraid of doctors as a result. Because of this, she did not get a colonoscopy. But she did have colon measles. By the time it was detected, she had a burst tumour and 100 polyps. And you only need one to really f**k things up.

  Nicki was given a fairly dramatic diagnosis, which she quite cheerfully ignored. She did not want the recommended conventional chemotherapy or radiation therapy, a source of great sadness for her brother and me, among others, but she was told that all that this treatment would do was give her a five per cent chance of living another five years.

  Actually, she did live another five years without it, but in the end she took the chemotherapy and anything else she could get her hands on, to no avail. The end was horribly nigh and, while she was obviously devastated at leaving her three young sons behind, she was also FURIOUS that she was going to miss out on the rest of her own life. FURIOUS.

  There are a lot of very good reasons to feel stink about dying, but I’d never really considered that FOMO would be one of them.

  I loved Nicki to bits, and I’ll give you one example why.

  She lived in Perth, Western Australia, so we didn’t get to see her that often, but when we did she would drop everything so that the Ginger and I could spend as much time with her as we could manage.

  One time, after the diagnosis and her first bout of surgery, but when she was otherwise in good health, we travelled to Australia to see her. She picked us up in her little Hyundai Getz and I sat behind her, admiring the way her shiny auburn ponytail swung from side to side as she drove.

  She told us that she had just met a guy online (she’d recently split from her husband) and had been out on a couple of dates, and she thought this one was something special.

  ‘So, what does he think about the whole measles thing?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh that,’ she answered, her ponytail swinging. ‘I haven’t mentioned that.’

  In true bossy older-sister style, I told her that I thought she should tell him, because then she’d know if he was going to stick around or not, and she was better off knowing that sooner rather than later.

  They went on another date that night, and the next morning when I asked if she had spilled the beans, she said she had.

  ‘What did he say?’ I was obviously curious to know.

  ‘He said, “Girlfriends! There’s always SO METHING wrong with them!”

  Will remained her boyfriend and was there holding her hand when she died, at 38, of the measles. I don’t know many people who could pull off a love affair in the throes of departing this mortal coil, but Nicki did it with great panache.

  She was one of my biggest fans — so unbelievably proud of me — and when I dedicated my novel The House of Peine to her, because it was unlikely she would make it to see the publication of On Top of Everything (which anyone who has read it will know is far more apt), she burst into tears and hugged me so tight I thought she would do me a non-measles-related injury.

  She died the same week as our dog, Kit, while I was in London launching The House of Peine, wearing a wig because my own hair had fallen out in sympathy.

  It was a really sh*t week.

  But I am still here.

  And now, when I have other sh*t weeks, although they’ll hopefully never be as sh*t as that one, I remember that all may not be well in my world, but at least I’m not missing out on it.

  There’s more than a sliver of happiness in that, let me assure you.

  1. Truly Madly Deeply

  A ghostly boyfriend haunts his grieving ex until he drives her bonkers.

  2. Steel Magnolias

  Julia Roberts gets a really bad wig and breaks her mother’s heart.

  3. Titanic

  Kate Winslet and Leo DiCaprio get jiggy while heading for an iceberg.

  4. Brokeback Mountain

  Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal get jiggy while heading for that mountain pass up yonder.

  5. Boys Don’t Cry

  I did, in the theatre, all the way home, and f
or most of the next day.

  6. Terms of Endearment

  Jack Nicholson and Shirley MacLaine are hilarious; Debra Winger not so much.

  7. The Notebook

  Old age and true devotion collide in this tear-jerker from ‘love king’ Nick Sparks (Ha! More about him later).

  8. My Girl

  Lordy, Macaulay Culkin sure knew how to pull heartstrings once upon a time.

  9. Life Is Beautiful

  This World War 2 tale of Italian fatherly love could push you into three-tissue-box territory.

  10. Up

  An animated piece of brilliance that will make you laugh and cry — always a bonus.

  *11. The Blind Side

  I’m a Sandra Bullock fan, so this story of the rich folk helping out someone far less fortunate never fails to do it for me.

  * When I say 10 things, I actually mean 11

  Letter from MADRID

  Well, I spent four days on my own in Paris after the Ginger left and it was super-fun, and I wasn’t lonely or anything, but by the time the weekend came I thought it would be nice to speak English, so here I am in Spain.

  Of course not everyone in Spain speaks English, so I cleverly arranged to meet my sister and a couple of buddies here.

  And if you think I am a wimp for fleeing Paris just because I was on my own, you are wrong, because I have even more reason to avoid Spain on those grounds. In fact I am haunted by a Spanish demon from my past, and so I thought that by coming here I could face it, and hopefully chase it to an early grave. Or a later grave. A different grave, at any rate. Well, you know, a grave. Oh, whatever!