Jane is Trying

by Isy Suttie

Genres: Humor & Satire

Synopsis

'Tremendous' Adam Kay
'Heart-warming' Sarah Pascoe
'So well-observed' Daisy Buchanan
'Hilarious' James Acaster
'I LOVED it' Aisling Bea
'The perfect concoction of warmth and grit' i Newspaper
'Wonderful' Stylist

Jane is trying.

She's been trying for a baby, with increasing desperation as her thirties sail by.

Now, she's trying to make a new start back home with her overprotective, charades-obsessed parents - having left her career and cheating fiancé behind in London.

With an increasing load on her plate, friends and family who think she'll have a perfect life if she only listens to them, and a brain which questions every decision she's ever made, can Jane conquer her demons and step forward on her own?

Release date: July 22, 2021

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 304

Sample

Chapter One

‘God, sorry, Stuart,’ I gasped, bursting through the door, a half-eaten chicken drumstick gripped between my teeth.

I’d taken to gauging Stuart’s mood from whereabouts his glasses were perched on his nose – something that had served me well so far. Today they were pushed right up past the bridge, his eyelashes brushing the insides of the lenses. This meant he was energised, jumpy.

‘Mum took her keys to evensong,’ I said. ‘And they might be in bed when I get back – Mum and Dad, not the keys – so I had to wait for her to run down from church and give them to me.’ Stuart looked blank. ‘So I don’t wake them up later,’ I added. I knew Mum was secretly glad to have nipped home. Going to church in the evening always felt a bit wrong, she said, like eating pizza for breakfast. ‘I’ll get some cut at some point,’ I said, chucking the chicken drumstick in the bin behind the counter.

Stuart jerked his head down sharply so that his glasses jumped onto the end of his nose. This was a new move, and I didn’t know what it meant. ‘Well, here you are now,’ he said, hauling himself out from behind the counter. He looked at my mouth and shoulders rather than my eyes, which meant he was warming up. He was going to forgive me. I wasn’t going to lose my job for being half an hour late.

I’d only worked three shifts in the bookshop, but already, being with Stuart was like putting on an old pair of slippers. There might be a bit of Lego stuck inside one, but you knew any discomfort was easily resolved. His sulks floated on top of him like petrol in a puddle.

‘OK,’ he said, ‘one of us needs to go across to the pub for wine, and extra chairs, and punters maybe? No, no, no, not punters. We’re not that desperate.’ He trudged across the shop floor. ‘You go? No, I’ll go. You’ll hurt your back with the chairs. Well, you might. I might. It doesn’t matter. I’ll carry them in stacks of four. We might only need four. Two. None. No one’ll come. It’s too warm out.’ He opened the door. ‘She’ll be here in a minute. She only drinks Pinot Noir, apparently. Not even tea. These bloody poets.’

I watched him cross the narrow road to the pub opposite, The Rainbow’s End. I hoped punters were going to come, for his sake. My window display was perfect, written in my best calligraphy: Fenella Burch. Foodie and Wordie Poetry Reading and Book Signing. Tuesday night, 7 p.m. I’d even made a fried egg and saucepan out of tissue paper.

Squinting at the screen so I couldn’t see what it said, I placed my mobile onto the counter, face down. It doesn’t matter if he’s texted or not, I said to myself. Breathe in for six, out for eight. My eyes were so swollen from crying I’d had to apply two layers of make-up. Patting my fingers to my face, I could already feel the cracks forming in the powder as I glanced around.

The room I was in – the main bit of the bookshop – contained fiction. A rickety staircase led to the upper floor, which consisted of tiny rooms full of books on everything from origami to local history, plus the customer toilet – complete with a working bath, which books were normally stacked in – and our kitchen. I wasn’t too enamoured with the hygiene implications of the bath being used as a storage unit, but I wasn’t in a position to complain. Stuart lived in a little cottage behind the shop but spent most of his waking hours in the shop itself. He was fastidious about books being in the right place, which was lucky, because we had so many of them. They were packed into the wooden shelves, crammed into display stands, piled in boxes labelled Valentine’s present for someone you loved six years ago and Buy one of these books for your parents and you’ll get more in their will than your brother.

Stuart and I had conducted the ‘interview’ right here at the counter, with me standing awkwardly, like a customer. Dad had stayed in the corner with his back to us, like he was in an odd remake of The Blair Witch Project, leafing through books and tapping his foot out of time to the Debussy in his head. I kept wondering when the interview element was going to start, and afterwards realised that it had just happened. All I’d said to secure my new job was that the only book I’d read in the last three years was Sharon Osbourne’s autobiography, and that I loved sniffing the centres of second-hand books. And one of these was a lie – I hadn’t actually finished Sharon’s book yet.

‘Mum said the vicar looked a bit annoyed when she got up and left to give me the keys,’ I said, when Stuart returned with the stools from the pub. ‘Can’t blame him, I suppose. She was in the middle of playing “Guide Me, O Thou Great Redeemer”.’

‘Well, that vicar’s a spy, I reckon,’ Stuart said. ‘We think he’s just concentrating on his sudoku, but he’s taking it all in. He knows when his disciples are having their windows cleaned, what kind of mortgages they’ve got.’

‘Not like God needs to know all that,’ I replied.

‘Maybe he does,’ sang Stuart. ‘I am weak but thou art mighty, dah dah dah dah something hand.’

This was often how conversations with Stuart ended: him saying, ‘. . . Maybe something something,’ and then there was a feeling that you just had to shut up. Adding anything else was like when someone buys a sambuca no one wants at the end of the night.

‘I’ve never been to a book launch,’ I confessed. My only experience of launching books had occurred on the last day of A-level exams, when my best friend Megan and I had lobbed all our schoolbooks into the river, screeching and clutching one another as Tricolores and Jane Austens sailed over our heads into the thrashing water. ‘So long, Foley!’ we’d screamed that day. ‘We’re out of here, you losers!’

‘It’s not a launch,’ said Stuart, sellotaping a balloon to a shelf. ‘That was in Sheffield. It’s just a reading. She’ll read some poems, you’ll ask some questions, she’ll sign some books. Then pub. Pub, pub, pub.’

Me ask some questions? ‘Hey, listen,’ I said. ‘What’s this? You’re the book guy. I can’t ask the questions.’ I felt barely able to get through the evening as it was.

‘The last time I asked some questions at a book launch,’ he replied, winding Sellotape slowly round his finger, ‘Foley Joe ended up raiding the stage with his guitar, then I got so pissed they found me trying to lick the grey off the pavement. So maybe’ – he pushed his glasses right up onto his nose – ‘you should ask some questions.’ He mumbled something about getting his money’s worth from me, and although his eyes sparkled with mirth, I realised I didn’t have a choice in the matter.

‘I’ll just revise her stuff,’ I muttered, grabbing a copy of Fenella’s book from the display pile and rushing behind the counter. It wasn’t like I hadn’t had ample time to read it: we sometimes had two customers an hour. How would the knowledge of Sharon Osbourne’s never-ending feud with Dannii Minogue serve me now? I thought frantically about Mum or Dad taking my place. But Mum would be finishing the service, and Dad was still at the office. Within two weeks of arriving back in Foley, I had reverted back to thinking my parents could solve all my problems. My hands shook as I opened the book. I closed it again.

Come on, I told myself. You can do this in a heartbeat. You’re Jane Wildgoose. I’d stood up and pitched hundreds of times in front of blank faces glued to phones, often having not slept the night before. I’d improvised workshops about the art of advertising copywriting. I’d challenged – and convinced – clients over the best way to communicate that a cake is moist without saying the word ‘moist’. What was I possibly scared of about a book event in my tiny hometown, which I only visited a couple of times a year anyway? No, I could do this.

I opened the book more firmly this time. When Foodie and Wordie Meet/Mate: A Seductive Poem for Every Item in Your Kitchen by Fenella Burch.

Courgette

Smooth as cream

A cuisinier’s dream

Taut and green

Did I see you in a dream?

As field becomes fallow

Courgette begets marrow

Mash, roast or fry

Then I’ll kiss you till you cry.

I skimmed through the quotes on the back of the jacket: Surely a must-have lingual ingredient in every future feminist’s kitchen – Time Out. What? As risqué and relevant as ever, Fenella’s poetry is best consumed raw – The Poetry Guide. What the fuck? Relevant – Poetry Train Magazine. Always suspicious, those one-word quotations. And two relevants. I mean, everything was relevant, wasn’t it? Even irrelevant things were originally relevant. I should be a poet. This was all going to be fine. I felt my shoulders relax. Poets were airy people, gracious, and light as gossamer, overjoyed that normal people were taking an interest in them. I flicked to another page.

Anchovies

No

Thankchovies.

Did you pretend not to like anchovies so you could make up the word ‘thankchovies’? I wrote on the back of some till-roll paper. I scribbled it out. Better to keep it broad.

Why do you write? I scrawled. Do you get all your ideas while you’re eating? Is it true there’s no rhyme for orange?

*

Cakes and Ladders

I used to bake you cake, my love, I used to bake you cake

Then I saw you were a snake, my love! I saw you were a snake!

I threw you in a lake, my love, I threw you in a lake

And now I stand and eat my cake

While you get scoffed up by a hake

And though I pause to call you fake

I do not miss a single chance to bake for Jake he’s late I ache for you for him for us for them

And now

My

Cakes

Go

STALE.

Fenella slammed the book down onto her knee, glaring at her audience as if goading them to challenge the fact that her cakes go stale, perspiration glistening on her forehead. She’d been sweating since she arrived. She and Clare, a solemn woman she introduced as her ‘manager’, had crashed through the door at five to eight, their breathing ragged and their hats wet with drizzle, a distinct aura of ‘hot wet dog’ about them.

Muttering about delayed trains and events in the middle of nowhere, she’d immediately begun to aggressively shed endless coverings of chiffon and velvet, like a pass-the-parcel that would never be finished. The excited audience had gazed at her, whispering. Tiny trinkets had emerged with the removal of each layer. A Fox’s mint rolled onto the floor, followed by a screwed-up tissue, a tube of lip balm, two biros, a sanitary towel, a box of paracetamol, a single raisin.

As I’d taken a final petrified glance at my questions, I’d spied a woman with a string of tinsel around her neck (it was July, but it had been raining earlier, so it could possibly have been acting as a scarf) peruse the floor and lazily pocket the lip balm like she was choosing a prize at a tombola.

This woman comprised a twentieth of the crowd, which was mostly made up of people I had already come to regard as regulars, clutching plastic cups of lukewarm white wine and looking towards Fenella with excruciating apprehension. ‘No photos till the end!’ Clare had breathed into their bemused faces.

Foley Joe stood next to Stuart beside the counter, jumping from foot to foot and stroking his palm in a circular motion. ‘Round and round the garden,’ he mumbled to himself.

There were a few strangers who must have been fans of Fenella’s from out of town – one was wearing a home-made appliqué T-shirt, which said: If you can stand the heat . . . get Fenella in the kitchen. A boy of fifteen or so sat in the front row with a notepad and pen on his lap. A reviewer? Bring it on.

‘Wow,’ I breathed from the seat next to Fenella, her first poem complete, the word ‘stale’ fresh on her lips, painted that nineties shade of beetle blood. ‘That was powerful.’ She nodded once but didn’t respond verbally. ‘Powerful indeed,’ I said. Still nothing. I could hear my blood pumping in my ears. Time for my first question. ‘So, Fenella, why do you write?’

She looked at a woman in the front row. ‘Wow,’ she drawled. ‘Hear that, love? Never had that one before.’ She turned to me at last. ‘So, human,’ she said, ‘why do you talk?’

I glanced at Stuart. He nodded as if to say, ‘Keep going.’ ‘Just make sure there’s no silences,’ had been his last words to me as he’d patted me on the shoulder before introducing us.

‘Why do I talk?’ I said. She nodded, her eyes dancing. ‘Well, I guess the other options are sign language – which I don’t know – or writing everything down. When I was thirteen, I got glandular fever and couldn’t talk, so I made signs that said “yes”, “no” and “Neighbours”. But generally I think if you can talk, you should. Speech is an instinctive thing . . .’ At this point, Stuart moved his finger across his neck, guillotine style. ‘Even in executions, at the . . . the lowest point of life . . .’ I continued – was this what he meant? – ‘. . . speech . . . is important. A prisoner might shriek, “No! I’m innocent!” as they’re about to die, or, “I didn’t want ketchup with my last meal!” It’d take ages to write all that down, so . . .’ I looked to the people in front of me for help: a mixture of puzzled faces met my gaze.

Foley Joe shrieked, ‘Cut! Cut!’

Fenella was grinning from ear to ear. ‘Who are your favourite three authors and why?’ she said. ‘Fenella feels like asking a few questions tonight.’ She turned to the room. ‘All I do is go to these events, and – I mean, I love the Play School-style window display and the one balloon, Stuart’ – he smiled sheepishly – ‘but I sell about three books afterwards, and all I get asked is, why do you write? How do you write? Do you think poetry can survive in the modern world? – and all this shit.’

‘Fenella—’ said Clare from the back.

Fenella turned to me again. ‘Favourite three authors, and why. Go.’

My mind raced. ‘Jane Austen,’ I said, ‘cos, erm, she changed the face of fiction.’ That sounded good, I thought. My mind was completely blank, though, and I couldn’t think of a single other author. Susan . . . Kennedy? Wasn’t she a character from Neighbours? Who’d written Tricolore? My eyes darted frantically round the room until I spotted a book I recognised. ‘Max Porter,’ I said. I hadn’t read any of his books, but I knew they were well regarded. ‘He’s changed the face of grief.’ I was on a roll with this ‘changed the face’ business. ‘And Sharon Osbourne,’ I said. ‘She’s just changed her face.’

I was very chuffed with this impromptu joke, but there was no reaction from Fenella. ‘I don’t think I want to ask you anything else, human,’ she said.

‘Well,’ I said, heart hammering, ‘it’s all food for thought.’ I inwardly congratulated myself on this pun, considering. Surely that would have been a better title for her book, in fact. Best continue on this tack. Talk about the text. I had to pretend I liked her poetry, or my job was probably on the line. I felt sick. ‘You write a lot about cake,’ I said. ‘I like cake, too.’ This wasn’t a question. ‘Who here likes cake?’ I asked pleadingly. A muted cheer rose from the audience. The tinsel woman unscrewed the lip balm and began slathering it on. ‘I know, Fenella,’ I said, making my voice as level as possible, ‘you can look at my list of questions and choose which ones you want to answer.’

She perused the scrap of till roll leisurely, screwed it up and threw it in the air, then turned to me. ‘I don’t even know your name,’ she said. ‘And’ – she put up her hand to cut me off – ‘it doesn’t matter. Your questions are shit. Your reserve questions were about my favourite pet and whether I prefer being indoors or outdoors.’ People chuckled.

I looked at Stuart as his head folded down towards his hands. In fact, no one would meet my eye. Only Foley Joe was grinning, leaping from side to side, ready for the next bit.

‘I mean, they’re like . . .’ Fenella stood up, her eyes glittering. ‘They’re like –

Why? What? How? Who?

Without direction, without any true’

She stood up and started to gesticulate, dewdrops of spittle launching from her mouth.

‘You sit in the bookshop like Anne of Green Gable

But the only thing you’ve read is the bus timetable.’

Everyone in the room cheered and the ‘reviewer’ put down his pen. With relief, I saw he’d in fact been beavering away at a drawing entitled Daenerys from Game of Thrones, who resembled a cross between a lion and Dean Gaffney.

Locked into a rhythm now, Fenella continued. I felt colour rise up my throat, sharp and warm.

‘You want to know what it’s like to write poetry,

But the best you can do is,’

She mimicked a little girl’s voice.

‘“Does tree rhyme with me?”

It lives in the heart, in the brain, in the soul,’

She squatted beside me, her face close to mine, grinning.

‘It is the moment that your team scores a goal,

But you’ve got to give in, you’ve got to let go,

’Stead of counting out your money like Ol’ Queen Cole!’

Everyone whooped and clapped along, entranced.

‘It’s not just you, it’s them, it’s him,’

She pointed at Stuart, whose biggest crime, to my knowledge, was feigning innocence when there were no biscuits left – but he didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he was hanging onto her every word.

She beat a rhythm on the back of her chair.

‘It’s the estate agents, it’s the politician’s grin,

If you let art into your heart, for a start,

You’d be happier, and sadder, you’d buzz, you’d smart,

But, moreover, you’d be you, but you squared, or you cubed,

You feeling every moment, you ready and lubed,

You’d drink, you’d dance, you’d scream, you’d mange,

And you’d be able to rhyme with the notorious l’orange!’

She stood panting, her broad shoulders stooped, her head craned slightly forward towards the crowd’s wild applause. A tiny halo of greying hair topped her head. She rocked slightly, as if more words might tumble out at any given time. Like food poisoning, when you never really know if it’s over.

Chapter Two

The sky was a flamingo pink, the sun on its way to setting, as I left the pub and bookshop behind me to walk down the hill to my parents’ house.

There was no doubt that the evening had been a roaring success. Everyone in the bookshop had bought Fenella’s book – even Foley Joe, who’d ‘paid’ with a battered astronomy book from the bottom of his bag and three cigarettes, to her delight. People had come in off the street to see what all the cheering was about during Fenella’s improvised rant, and they’d bought copies, too. One woman wanted five of them to post to ex-boyfriends anonymously, which Fenella had adored, writing: Eat shit! Fenella xx on the inside cover. Afterwards, everyone had decamped to the pub.

‘You off, duck? That were great,’ Foley Joe had said, nabbing a sausage roll off Stuart’s plate and taking a big bite. ‘No one else would have sat there and taken that shit. You were in cahoots with her anyway, though, weren’t you, duck?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I’ve never met her before, and I hope I never do again.’

He’d tapped the side of his nose like I hadn’t denied a thing.

‘Would thee like to buy any puppets, Fenella?’ I heard him say as I opened the door to leave. ‘I’ve got dogs, cats and Prince Charleses.’

Foley Joe’s congratulations – and Stuart’s, for that matter – had done nothing to assuage the unsettled feeling inside me. The truth was that things hadn’t been a success because of me, it was despite me. This hadn’t stopped me from milking the temporary goodwill in the air by asking Stuart for some more hours. He’d responded by giving me an extra fiver for doing the Q&A, which I’d gone through the motions of refusing, while simultaneously stuffing it into my pocket.

Why couldn’t I have stayed for a drink with them all, singing along with whoever picked up the guitar tonight as more sausage rolls and shots materialised?

Why couldn’t I just trust that everything was going to be. . .