This still wasn’t publishable, but it was better. This Sal was more consistent with the London Sal, and she was frightened rather than bullying. That gave her leeway to travel somewhere emotionally.

The big surprise was the way that Thornhill took over some of the old Sal’s lines. They suited him better than her. His character was shifting, too.

As I rewrote scene after scene, I realised that the ‘broad-brush’ conversation with Michael was allowing me to become once again a person who created writing rather than a person who analysed it. In writing the first draft, I’d been exploring, writing into the unknown, trusting the unconscious and using free association as the mechanism by which it could speak. Once that first draft was down, I’d shifted gear, trying to understand and refine what I’d done. Both processes were necessary. But Michael had relieved me of the job of analysis and criticism, and invited me instead to go back into the unconscious. Now, right at the end, my job was as it had been in the beginning: not primarily to understand what I was doing, but to travel forward into it.

27. INTO THE WORLD

27
Into the World

It was the end of the day, April 2005. I’d just sent Michael the last changes on the last set of proofs. We’d worked hard together, and discussed every sentence in detail. Now I stood at my desk, aimlessly moving pieces of paper into piles. The frantic notes to myself, the lists of changes, the mail that had gone unanswered, even unopened, during this last race to the finish-line: I jumbled it all together and put it on one side of the desk.

It was over. Next time I saw those words I’d written, they’d be a bound book. Too late for any more thoughts.

It should have been a joyful moment, but it was an anticlimax, even something like panic: a gap in my life where this book had been for the last five years. What now? What do I do now?

Outside, the sun had set but it wasn’t quite dark. I couldn’t bear that desk, that window with the yellow sticky notes all over it, that lamp, that laptop, for one more moment.

That good feeling, calling out to Bruce that I was going for a walk, swinging out the door and pulling it closed. Out the front gate, along the footpath.

I was heading downhill tonight. Down to the park and the harbour instead of up the hill towards the pub. It was probably not as safe, but it was nicer, and there was still a bit of light in the sky to frighten away the rapists.