Louise Leverett - Love, and Other Things to Live For

Author photo © Scott Kershaw

LOUISE LEVERETTgraduated from Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in London on a full scholarship before moving to study at the Lee Strasberg Institute of Film in New York. Since establishing her own business ‘Rock the Tribes’ she is now working on a collection of writings that will eventually be turned into adaptions for screen.

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019

Copyright © Louise Leverett 2019

Louise Leverett asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © April 2019 ISBN: 9780008237042

for mum, dad

and alex…

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One – The Curse of a Burning Flame

Chapter Two – The Art of Intent

SUMMER

Chapter Three – How to Get Lost in Reality

Chapter Four – Virtual Insanity

Chapter Five – Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy (Or, in human speak – ‘To die of a broken heart’)

Chapter Six – Cheap as Chips

AUTUMN

Chapter Seven – Oh, Starry, Starry Night

Chapter Eight – There Once Was a Girl Who Swallowed a Lie, Perhaps She’ll Die

Chapter Nine – Goodnight, Head/Good Morning, Heart

Chapter Ten – Doing the Wrong Things to the Right People

Chapter Eleven – You, Me… Oui

Chapter Twelve – So Human

Chapter Thirteen – It’s a Girl Thing

WINTER

Chapter Fourteen – Trying to Catch Water: Part One

Trying to Catch Water: Part Two

Chapter Fifteen – And a Partridge in a Pear Tree

Chapter Sixteen – Going Against the Tide

Chapter Seventeen – Rah, Rah, Relationship

Chapter Eighteen – A New Chapter

Chapter Nineteen – The Deep Blue Sea

SPRING

Chapter Twenty – The Magical Hour

Chapter Twenty-One – Once Upon a Time…

Chapter Twenty-Two – Pushing Through Purgatory

Chapter Twenty-Three – Seeds of Change

Chapter Twenty-Four – Seek Happy Nights to Happy Days

Chapter Twenty-Five – Rainbows

Chapter Twenty-Six – Human Nature

Chapter Twenty-Seven – Love, and Other Things to Live For

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

Chapter One – The Curse of a Burning Flame

I awoke to the sound of a clock.

Tick.

Tock.

Tick.

Tock.

Opening my eyes to the beginnings of a new day.

I don’t smoke, barely drink, have never experienced casual sex and so this was the tasting menu of new discoveries. I had decided to dip my toe in the final waters of youth as an almost goodbye to my carefree years, complete with late nights and a series of events that had caused my heart to pound and my head to spin. What began with a plethora of shots and inappropriate dancing with a man I barely knew but had worked with my friend, so not a total stranger; perhaps emotionally but certainly not geographically, had now ended with the realisation that the answer to my predicament did not lie at the bottom of a bottle. I had persuaded myself I would see him again, clinging onto the slim thread that last night meant something. But it didn’t. And to be totally honest, lashing out at the world as redemption for a broken heart just wasn’t as fun as I had imagined it would be.

I was getting over someone. Charlie. Perhaps not going the right way about it but trying all the same. And although my appearance suggested I was carefree, inside I was hurting. Slowly seeping through the cracks of my show, my life, was the added complication of a career low. On a whim that was no longer whimsical, I had left university and a path to study law, exchanging it for the butterflies-in-your-tummy notion that you should chase what sets your heart on fire. I’d lit the match only for it to fizzle into charcoal once the reality hit that photography jobs aren’t exactly easy to come by. My dreams had been dowsed cold by stress and financial burden. And now, adding the salt to my wounds, having made the somewhat optimistic decision to move in with a man I’d just met and barely knew, I was back in my old bedroom and back in the flat I’d shared for years with my best friend, Amber. Despite many a raised eyebrow, I’d ridden the wave of infatuation all the way to the shores of his flat overlooking the Thames and now I’d slunk back, just three months later, humiliated and alone.

As I sat on the edge of the bed waiting for my head to stop spinning, sipping on a glass of stagnant water filled with stale, iridescent bubbles, images from the previous night cascaded through my mind. There was wine, spirits, more wine… more spirits… and dancing. Lots of dancing. Crazy moves, big moves, bold moves, total abandonment of body, mind and self-control. Dancing with friends, dancing alone, dancing with the man now lying next to me. I slowly massaged my brow in a belated attempt to melt the thought away.

Looking over at him, the semi-stranger sleeping beside me, I slowly shuffled my way out of the bed and across the corridor to the bathroom. I glanced in the mirror at my reflection: tousled hair with last night’s make-up, a squiggly smear of mascara underlining each eye like a spelling mistake. If this was being young and free it certainly wasn’t as enjoyable as my friends had suggested. It was all their fault, obviously.

I crouched above the strange, cold toilet pan, the back of my thighs skimming the bowl, my mouth stinging as if stripped by a razor blade. I wasn’t about to play the blame game. It was all my own choice, a mess that I had gotten myself into in a moment of panic – a searing fear that I might be getting left behind. But falling behind whom? Myself? As I spun the empty cardboard toilet roll hoping to magic a stream of paper, it seemed as if I’d forgotten to learn the rules to a game that I was now, apparently, an expert at playing.

It was late December, and waking up was beginning to hurt. I made my way across the pavement, halfway between streetlights and sunlight, and turned onto the street that was familiar. I started the day carrying make-up in my handbag, using a public toilet as my vanity: a wanderer, a nomad in between places. And that’s exactly where I was, in between places.

I longed for my early twenties: the days of the invincible and raw misconception of youth. It was all fun and games back then. If you don’t invest fully then no one gets hurt. But unfortunately, my recent experience with one particular man – the only man, in fact – had become a harsh lesson that I was wrong. We’d met, feelings were felt and it was now over. I’d been hurt.

In my mind the cause of these relationship problems is that men and women don’t understand one another; that, as the well-known book says, we literally are on different planets when it comes to matters of the heart and relationships. Of course, what transpired, in human form, was a cosmic connection that no amount of textbook knowledge could account for. My friend Sean assures me that when it comes to the formidable topic of that four-letter word beginning with ‘l’ ending with ‘e’, both on the outskirts of ‘o’ and ‘v’, there is no distinct correlation between the sexes. It’s just quite hard, for all of us.