Sophie Jenkins - The Forgotten Guide to Happiness - The unmissable debut, perfect for anyone who loved THE KEEPER OF LOST THINGS

Hope flared – I could write about him! – and faded.

Once upon a time I had looked at all men with interest; and then I found Mark and I stopped looking. The end.

My breath clouded the window and I was just about to wipe it with my hand when Kitty said, ‘Don’t do that! It’s just been cleaned.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I have a lunch at one.’

I hugged myself in panic at being dismissed. ‘What do I do now? I need the “on delivery” money. I’ve got an overdraft. I’ve got bills to pay!’

Kitty brightened. ‘Good! That’s your incentive! Now we’ve got something to work with. Let’s forget about paying back the advance for the moment,’ she said briskly. ‘We’ll extend the deadline. You come up with a new story and we’ll talk it over. Love, and it goes wrong, but they get back together, happy ending. Find the characters, the emotions, the dialogue and we can stick a plot in later.’ She smiled. ‘Okay?’

I’m very susceptible to suggestion, so I nodded back. ‘Okay.’

She stood up and I realised we were done.

‘I’ll give you the typescript back,’ she said. ‘You can recycle the paper.’

She gave me a Tesco carrier bag to take it away in.

When I left her apartment I had a day-drinking feeling of light-headedness.

My book on rejection had been rejected.

Heading towards Camden Town, I decided to avoid the markets and the tourists by calling in the York and Albany for a drink. If you feel drunk and you drink, it makes you feel less drunk, like homeopathy. But I realised it was exactly the kind of place that Kitty might be going to for lunch. A bit further on, just off Delancey Street, is the Edinboro Castle, a place she would never set foot in, so I walked on and went into the bar, swinging my heavy Tesco bag. It was so dark it was like being momentarily blinded.

I took my wine out into the glare of the beer garden and sat at a table all to myself under a silver birch where I could think up a plan with no distractions.

A shadow fell over me. ‘Is this seat taken?’

‘Yes,’ I said automatically. Looking up, I saw a guy wearing a bright orange Nike sweatshirt and faded jeans. He had messy dark hair but, despite being unshaven, he had a friendly, open face with straight dark eyebrows and clear grey eyes. Realising I was being ‘difficult’, as my parents liked to put it, I quickly apologised. ‘Sorry, that was rude.’ Suddenly, having company wasn’t such a bad idea, even if it was with a stranger. ‘No. Help yourself.’

‘Cheers.’ He smiled, sat down and put his lager in front of him.

His smile looked like the smile of a man who has had an easy life, which is a good foundation for a warm character. People who have an easy life assume the best and tend to be generous and optimistic – I haven’t googled this or anything; it’s just my opinion, based on experience.

On the downside, I do remember reading that optimistic people die younger because when they’re ill they take it for granted it’s something trivial. But it’s not as if the optimistic people I knew were dying in droves, so it wasn’t much of a negative, currently.

As I was pondering on these facts about him, which I later discovered I’d got completely wrong, the sun slid out of the shadow of the pub and shone through my wine glass, throwing a radioactive reflection onto the wooden table. A phone rang.

We both sprang to life and patted ourselves down, but it wasn’t mine, it was his.

‘Jack Buchanan,’ he said. And then he frowned. ‘ What? ’

I heard the disappointment in his voice.

He listened for a few moments and then said, ‘I don’t understand. Embroidery scissors? What are they? How big are they? Well – okay, so she bit him, but what did he do to her? Yeah, well – how hard could she bite? She hasn’t even got a full set of teeth,’ he said with increasing indignation. ‘I don’t see how biting him makes her vulnerable. It’s the bar manager who’s vulnerable. Why don’t you put him in a home?’ He listened a bit longer and then said gloomily, ‘Thursday. At two.’ He ended the call and shook his head. All the happiness had gone out of him and he looked weary and troubled.

If you’re going through a bad time and you’re with someone who is happy, it makes you feel ten times worse. Conversely, if you’re going through a bad time and you’re with someone who is also struggling, things start to look a lot brighter.

‘Dog trouble?’ I asked.

He looked at me blankly. ‘What?’ His eyes were grey and distant. Then he saw where I was coming from, and said, ‘No. It’s my stepmother, actually.’

I’d been trying to work out where the embroidery scissors came into it, and it made more sense now. A warm and friendly feeling came over me, the sort you get when you see a man on his own with a baby. I hadn’t realised you could get the same effect with stepmothers, but there we are – my mission as a writer is to observe and report; something I learned from my journalism days.

‘She bit someone? I couldn’t help hearing.’

‘She’s been going to that bar for years,’ he said bitterly. ‘Now social services have got involved. You know what that means.’

‘Yes, I do,’ I said. Our two problems were very different, but who had the worse one? He had a feral relative and I had a whole novel to write. Just at that moment, a yellow birch leaf dropped into my wine glass. It didn’t exactly tip the scales but I did start feeling got at.

Jack Buchanan watched me fish it out. ‘Can I get you another one?’ he asked as I flicked it under the table.

‘Thanks!’ But like a warning vision I saw the whole week speeding by. ‘Better not, though. I’ve got to write a book. Well, an outline. I know Stephen King did all his best work while he was drinking but it doesn’t really work for me – it comes out gibberish, or sentimental.’

‘You write books? Who are you?’

‘Lana Green,’ I said.

‘Ah …’ he responded. He rubbed the stubble on his chin. ‘Sorry.’

‘That’s all right. You’re not my target market.’

‘So what’s your book going to be about?’ he asked.

‘It’s got to be a romantic novel. Love, and it goes wrong, they get back together, happy ending.’

He laughed. ‘Well, that seems easy enough.’

‘Yeah, it’s not.’

‘Subdivide it into where, why, what and how.’

‘It’s not as simple as that.’

‘No, I suppose it isn’t,’ he reflected. ‘Otherwise everybody would be doing it.’

‘Don’t get me started on that,’ I said, ‘because it seems as if everybody is doing it. Comedians write children’s books, models write romances, chat-show hosts write drama – it’s really annoying. How would they like it if I started doing stand-up, or hosted a chat show, or got famous for my boob jobs? People should stick to one occupation per person. On principle, I don’t buy any fiction written by people who are famous in other fields.’

Jack Buchanan laughed; it suited him. He had a face that was made for happiness. ‘My stepmother does a bit of writing.’

Incredible. ‘See what I mean?’ I looked at my watch. Half the day had gone already and I had work to do. ‘I’d better go. I’ve got to find myself a hero.’

‘And I’ve got to go back and do some firefighting.’

That was interesting. ‘You’re a firefighter?’

‘Metaphorically speaking. I have an IT company. Tell you what, you can write about me, if you like,’ he said helpfully.

I grinned. ‘No offence, but you’re not hero material.’

‘Why’s that?’ He looked hurt.

‘Sorry.’ As usual I wished I’d kept my thoughts to myself. ‘I didn’t mean it to come out like that. You seem perfectly nice and …’ I couldn’t point out that he was also scruffy and worked in IT and was worried about his stepmother, so I took another approach. ‘Are you fearless? And incurably romantic? Are you self-assured to the point of arrogance?’