The Presence of Peacocks, or How to Find Love and Write a Novel (extract)

Chapter 1: The Gazebo, Part 1

This is my story. As the Guru says, every story needs a strong central character, and in this one, I am it. Me. Moi. Hello.
 My grand plan is to be a best-selling writer. Nobody knows how often I sit on The Blue Sofa (sometimes, I confess, for a whole afternoon) and daydream of holding my first novel. Forgive my self-indulgence, but I regularly imagine running my fingers over the sleek cover, across the author’s name embossed in matt gold. If that novel were about me, the blurb on the back cover would read,
‘Meet Sabrina Bell, unrepentant romantic, chocolate connoisseur and fan of the full skirt. Life in her home town is filled with diversion and intrigue – but there are two things missing, and these she desires more than anything. More than world peace. More, even, than a triple-layer box of Godiva truffles.
She wants to meet her match, and she wants to be published.
Unfortunately, our heroine is drawn to old-fashioned items whose beauty is equalled only by their impracticality, including large hats, fountain pens, and handsome men with commitment issues. Add to this her sensitivity and tendency to become disheartened, and she may be writing herself into a tragic romance.
To succeed, Sabrina will have to learn to take life’s knocks less personally, for the life of an aspirant novelist in search of true love is a harsh one, stacked with false starts, setbacks and heartless rejections (and that’s just the computer-generated letters from literary agents).
Will she acquire the resilience to make her dreams come true…or will she lose the whole chocolate-smeared plot entirely?’

The Gazebo

A summer house in the city centre: the place I go for reassurance.

It is preferable to be sitting somewhere beautiful when you realise your world is falling apart. Ideally, this should be a quiet garden at the height of its summer bloom, so that when you arrive at a thought like My life is over, there is merely the sound of leaves rustling in a warm breeze. I have loved and lost, and sugarbirds flit among the flowers. What will become of me? and overhead clouds drift elegantly by. Loveliness is reassuring when you are about to lose everything.  
This year is turning out to be my worst ever. What I imagined would be a dream job – assistant editor of Glossy magazine – has revealed itself to be a nightmare, a soul-destroying grind that has me weeping in the office ladies’ room and howling with frustration while driving home.
From the moment I sat at that sought-after desk beside the editor a year ago, nothing flowed. Nothing. Each supposedly ‘hot’ new journalist I’ve commissioned to write for Glossy has disappointed; each sorry story I try to salvage mysteriously turns bad. Three hundred emails arrive daily in my inbox, along with last-minute copy changes from the editor, editorial director and nitpicking company chairman, none of whom seem to agree on anything. Have I mentioned the constant emergency meetings or the regular requests, delivered in an offhand tone, for the impossible? ‘Sabrina, won’t you write us a proposal detailing how Glossy could partner with Wonderbra to promote breast cancer awareness? Oh, and we need it by lunchtime tomorrow. Thanks darling, you’re a star.’
All that looms ahead is an infinite tidal pattern of deadlines, whooshing onto my shore with increased speed and intensity, each more draining than the last. I feel as if I’m drowning. 
It doesn’t help that I’m permanently ill. Colds, flu and throat infections involving grotesque balls of mucous have rampaged through my system since I accepted the job last September. Bright dots and dashes have begun infiltrating my vision too – escaped punctuation, perhaps, from the hundreds of magazine articles I’ve written during my career as a staff writer, from every shoddy piece of copy I’ve rewritten as features editor, from the many manuscripts of novels I’ve unsuccessfully sent to publishers and literary agents for a decade.
Clearly, I’m falling apart. I’d resign from the magazine world today if I could. I’d happily leave this season’s hippest handbags and the makeup department freebies behind me. But where would I go? What would I do? To establish myself as a freelance writer, I’d need six months’ savings to pay my bills and home loan until payments for my articles started coming. Moi? I’m hopelessly overdrawn. People, I’m trapped.