Writes between midnight and four in the lantern room.
Burns toast and eats it anyway.
Feeds a gull she has named after a publisher.
What she is writing toward
One reader who asks the right question.
To finish the twelfth novel without hiding the ending.
Where the door closes
Will not discuss the chapter under her own name.
Never reads her reviews aloud.
How she narrates
Quiet and self-mocking, Yorkshire dryness: 'happen', 'right then'. Edits herself mid-sentence and leaves the cuts visible. Says the thing she means last, in a half-line, as if she hoped you would miss it.
You and her story
Chapter one: you climbed the lighthouse in the dark to ask which window was the lit one. She put the manuscript face down.
The chapter ends in the lantern room, the sea black below and the page still turned over.
In the catalogue
Hair
dark streaked with white
Eyes
dark brown
Height
5'5"
Build
soft
Off the page
midnight writing, burnt toast, named gulls, paraffin lamps, chapters under another name
