Temperama

The Adoption: Meet Jody

The Adoption has received a good review (scroll down) in today's Times, a newspaper which has suddenly and mysteriously risen hugely in my estimation. Now, the last extract from it I plan on publishing here. It introduces Jody, the three year old whom Jane and Darren adopt. This passage describes her first morning at the home of what will become her new family.

"The little girl sat in the niche between the end of the piano and the wall. In her arms she held the doll she had brought with her. On the floor beside her lay a book Jane had retrieved from the fluffy wilderness beneath Clyde's bed. It was called Grandpa's Handkerchief and Jane was perturbed at being unable to recall if she had bought it for Eliot or Lorna. She knew for certain, though, that she had read it aloud at bedtimes scores of times to both and also to Clyde to instill knowledge of colours and days of the week and, most of all, to be close to them in that special reading-together way.

So there lay the book, unopened.

There say the quiet little girl.

Her name was Jody: Jody Jones.

Jane knew that three-year-olds are leaving babyhood behind. They may still get scared by strange noises or imaginary beasts, and may still cling to comfort blankets. But mostly they are becoming sociable. They begin to enjoy the company of other children; they like to laugh and act daft; they start to grasp the shocking truth that grown-ups cannot read their minds and sometimes need to have things explained. Times passage, too, begins to have meaning. They start to talk about the future and the past.

The past: Jody's past; the mental space from which it was Jane's mission to rescue her. Jody got slowly to her feet.

'Come on, Jody. Let me give you a hug.' Jane held out her arms. Jody stepped into them, keeping hold of the doll and leaving Grandpa's Handkerchief behind. Jane lifted her up, shocked by her lightness yet almost breathless with the weight of responsibility. 'Let's find the others, shall we?' she said."

Tomorrow: buy a copy. Or even buy one today.

The Adoption: Meet Clyde

At the beginning of my new novel Clyde is the youngest of Jane and Darren's children. One January morning at the beginning of the book he invades his parents' bedroom, where Jane is contemplating her wish for a fourth child.

There was a small disturbance nearby. On Roadrunner legs it travelled to her side.

"Hello Clyde."

"Hello Mummy."

"How are you?"

"What day is it?"

"Friday."

"Is it snowing?"

"No."

"Why not?"

He was jogging on the spot. "Do you need the toilet, Clyde?"

"Yes."

"Then why don't you go?"

"Why isn't it snowing?"

"Because it doesn't always snow on Fridays."

A debate took place behind Clyde's wide blue eyes. He needed to know something. He needed to wee. Which, though, did he need more urgently?"

"Is January winter, though?" he asked.

"Yes, but it doesn't always snow in January either. Some winters it doesn't snow at all."

There was an interlude while Clyde, six years old, took this on board. What his mother had just said went against all that he believed but, then, she was his mother. He did a cartoon spin and whizzed away. The creak of floorboards reached Jane from above: she watched the ceiling grimly. Then she heard clyde again, this time scampering to the ground floor. "Clyde?" she called. "Did you flush?"

No reply.

Tomorrow: Meet Jodie, the adopted.

The Adoption: Meet Eliot

At the beginning of The Adoption, Eliot is eleven years old.

Now Eliot peeped round his parents' bedroom door, expecting to find his father sleeping there. Instead, sprawled sideways across the bed, lay Clyde, fast asleep. Eliot eyed his [younger] brother critically for a moment, then withdrew and stepped into Clyde's room where he found Darren sleeping on Clyde's bed in a tucked-up sort of shape that reminded Eliot of a stranded prawn. It was a shock to see his father like that. He was dressed for the daytime except for his shoes, which lay kicked off on the floor. His glasses were on the bedside table next to a Science Museum safe. He had Clyde's duvet, with its space-rocket cover, half twisted round him. Eliot edged closer. There was a pallid stillness about the body on the bed that concerned him until at last he detected the shallow rise and fall of Darren's ribcage. Then he returned to his own room and closed the door.

He had already forgotten why he'd gone back there; forgotten totally about his birthday present for Darren, which was concealed beneath his bed...Eliot's room was a small, cluttered square with a blocked-up fireplace, a well-stocked bookcase full of fantasy fiction "for older readers", a large poster of wild horses galloping through an open field and a Yamaha keyboard on which he practised every day, enjoying the warmth of his mother's praise. Right now, though, he needed an instant distraction. He got down on his knees, took up the gyroscope he'd been given for Christmas and set it spinning at an angle on its little plastic plinth. He stared at it, hoping to become so absorbed that his mind would wander from the terrible place where it had become trapped yet again.

For some months now, especially when he was alone, Eliot had fallen prey to dreadful imaginings. Sometimes these were reveries of physical revulsion, such as the one in which he put a fat slug in his mouth, the one that had made him jump when he'd found it in the kitchen in October. In the fantasy he didn't want to put the slug into his mouth and no one was making him do it, but somehow he had to anyway. Another vision was darker still, and this one had taken hold of him. From a helicopter's hatchway he he would be staring down helplessly at the swirling ocean waters into which [his cat] Simba had just fallen. There was rescue equipment - a harness, rope and winch - but sharks were already circling. He could see poor Simba, drenched and flailing with his little paws, but being lowered by the winch would take too long. He'd have to dive into the sea and maybe die, but it was the only way that Simba might survive. Eliot was a good swimmer: level eleven, and doing advanced coaching sessions every Tuesday and Thursday evening. But did he have the courage to leap? Could he find the boy hero inside?

Tomorrow: Meet Clyde.

The Adoption: Meet Lorna

Jane and Darren, the mum and dad of the family at the heart of my new novel, have three children when the story begins. The eldest is Lorna, aged thirteen.

Lorna woke at ten to eight hoping, deliciously hoping, that at last she had found a best friend. How they had talked, Kazea and she! How they had walked, too! Up and down Oxford Street, in and out of H&M, Top Shop, Gap, trying on all sorts of things, even though the sales assistants looked down their noses at them, and even though Kazea said she could spot the store detectives a mile off, and they were definitely being watched. Kazea was looking for jeans but she didn't buy any. She'd said it was more fun helping Lorna choose her T-shirt, which they'd eventually bought from a big, bazaar-type shop where they had Goth stuff and surf stuff and loads of really freaky shoes. The T-shirt was tight and pink and had a kitten on the front, and Lorna was wearing it now, all curled up in her bed, and thinking about the stuff that Kazea had said and the stuff she had said to Kazea.

The real talking and walking had begun after the shops. Kazea had led the way down Regent Street, which Lorna knew only from Monopoly but hadn't said so, and then through Piccadilly Circus, though Lorna hadn't realised this until Kazea had mentioned it later. Trafalgar Square was next and they'd both climbed up on the lions, then chased the pigeons, flapping their arms and making the tourists stare.

Tourists: sad or what?

It was in a nearby McDonalds, where they'd had milkshakes and fries and looked on in a superior fashion from their high-stool counter seats at everybody else eating death-burgers and heading, Kazea said, for only, like, guaranteeed bowel disease, that Lorna had asked Kazea about her dad.

"He's a bastard," Kazea had said.

"Oh. Why? What happened?"

"He was, like, really, really nasty to my mum."

This had begged so many more questions that lorna hadn't know where to begin or, more worryingly, how. She'd only known Kazea since September, when Kazea had started at Lorna's school..."So," Lorna had said, looking tentatively at Kazea across the globalised fast-food prducts both so thoroughly despised, "don't you see him, then? Your dad?"

"No. Not any more."

Kazea's brown eyes became quite hard.

"I don't mean to be nosy..." Lorna began, suddenly fearful.

"Oh, it's OK. He left my mum when I was ten. I used to see him a bit at first, but not any more. No way."

"What happened?"

"He was just a bastard to my mum. I don't know too much about it. He's gone back to France now and good riddance." That seemed to close the subject. But Kazea opened up another front. "Anyway, what are your parents like?" she asked.

"God, I don't know," Lorna had said, reflexively. "They're just a bit boring, really."

She knew this wasn't nearly good enough. She was intimidated by Kazea's vitriol towards her father and the sheer glamour of her lone-parent plight. She needed a grievance, a wound, something to maintain the precious empathy, which seemed fragile now. She'd reached for the first thing that came to hand. "They're just desperate to have another baby," she'd said, working a little moan into her tone. "God knows why."

"Well, yeah. How old is your little brother?"

"Six."

"And how old are your parents?"

"Forty-four. Well, my mum is already and my dad will be on Sunday."

"Forty-four? That's really pushing it!"

"Tell me about it," Lorna had agreed, surprising herself with the phrase, which she had never used before, only heard from the mouths of harder girls. Not until later, as they'd sashayed together across Hungerford Bridge, had it dawned on Lorna that she'd dug herself into a hole.

"So, do they, like, talk about having another baby?" Kazea had asked, returning to the theme out of the blue.

"Well, yeah."

This was totally untrue.

Tomorrow: meet one of Lorna's two brothers, Eliot.

The Adoption: Meet Darren

Here's a second excerpt from my new novel The Adoption. Yesterday's introduced the main character, Jane. Now here's a passage about her husband, Darren.

Several times Darren had considered revealing to Jane that he knew how closely she was monitoring her cycle, and every time he had decided against. It wasn't that he feared her finding out. He didn't even feel bad for poking around in her underwear drawers because they'd always made a virtue of invading each other's privacy. Aha, so that's what you're up to, is it? Oh, so that's what you really think! And he knew what she'd be thinking now. She'd be beating herself up. Tears, loss of temper, throwing up: this was her customary build-up to a big bout of self-doubt. Knowing it was helping Darren to forgive her for last night's fury, yet he was not proud of it. He shouldn't need to be weak before he could be magnanimous. For him, it polluted the sentiment...

They'd met a punk night in a Clapham pub. As was the custom at the time the headline band - an art-school outfit called Pollock's Scab with a four track DIY EP to its name - was supported by anyone eager to make a din. Among them had been a poet known as Gobb, whose free form anti-verse on themes of psychosis, impotence and rusks had been augmented by an electronic keyboard backing, played by a small female wearing a flying cap and fingerless gloves. At one point Gobb attracted a hail of the substance from which he took his name and not all of it found its mark. His sputum-flecked accompanist had completed her contribution from beneath her instrument, picking out dole-queue death chords blind. Darren had felt strongly drawn to her, and when Gobb's set was over he'd slipped away from the group of fellow students he was with and sidled over to her at the bar. "You were very good," he'd said.

She was sipping a glass of Guinness, miserably. "Very stupid," she'd replied.

"Oh, do you think so?"

"He's mad, isn't he?" she'd said.

"Who is?'

"The poet." She'd nodded across the smoke-fugged bar. Gobb had been leaning against the cigarette machine doing an interview with a fanzine. Judging by his volume and animation it might have been a reprise of his show. "I only did it as favour. He's on my English course. Hello, by the way."

"Hello. I'm Darren."

"Darren. That's a groovy name."

"Oh, do you think so?"

"That's twice you've said that."

She'd removed the flying cap and looked up at him with kohl-blacked eyes. Her hair was tied back with a big bow. Darren had liked that, and her cut nose. She was quite good-looking, he'd thought. Better-looking than he was. Still, he knew how to nurture findness in a girl.

"Does it make me a bad person?"

"No. On the whole I don't think so."

"That's very nice of you," he'd said.

"Groovy glasses too," she'd replied.

"Comulsory for neuroscientists," he'd said.

"I'll bet you say that to all the girls."

They still reminisced about this scene, sometimes as an aspect of foreplay.

"What was it you liked about me first?"

"You were so sweet and sexy."

"But I was all covered with spit!"

"Details, details..."

Darren, though, had long since speculated that some corner of his subconscious had spotted and, even then, been drawn to the stuff her quirky prettiness and sense of humour belied: neediness and fragility - the weaknesses that made him feel strong.

[Tomorrow, meet Jane and Darren's eldest child, Lorna].

The Adoption: Meet Jane

My new novel is formally published today. Its main character is a woman called Jane. This excerpt is from the first chapter of the book.

"Darren waved on his way out; one of those comic-melancholic glove-puppet waves he'd been giving her since the May morning in 1978 when they'd woken up together for the first time. She waved back in the same way, then pictured him in her imagination as he went down the stairs and rooted for his coat and briefcase. Keys rattled as he unlocked and passed through the front door, closed it and headed off into the sludge-light of the Bow dawn.

Jane looked at the clock again. Six twenty-three. The house was quiet but it wouldn't be for long.

She switched on the bedside lamp with its silken orange shade and bathed in the illusion of sunshine. The glow sustained her as she got up and walked a little stiffly to the chest of drawers she'd bought from a junk shop back in the days before all discarded furniture was rebranded retro or antique. She slid open the third drawer down, reached to the rear of a tangle of underwear and touched the Cellophane-sealed carton it contained. Momentarily, she dithered: now quickly, or at leisure later? Later, she decided: a more meditative mood was required.

She closed the door, pantomime-padded to the landing, paused to listen outside the adjoining bedroom, heard nothing, then descended the short stairs to the bathroom. It was still steamy from Darren's shower. She used the toilet, washed, cleaned her teeth and confronted the misty mirror warily. "Gorgeous hair!" she gushed, and poked out her tongue. It was a deeper brown than Darren's and infinitely more obedient. Even on bad days it fell straight to her shoulders like dark honey pouring from a jar. Despite the first threads of grey she still considered it her most attractive feature, and cherished it but, being Jane, she felt ambivalent about it too. From the rear she looked lovely, but what did people think when she turned round? It wa an old-companion worry: she'd been tormenting herself with it since she was ten.

Back in the bedroom Jane dressed rapidly: comfortable jeans, slipper socks, old green cardigan over old black T-shirt.

Six fifty-two.

She pricked her ears. No waking-up sounds reached her from above, below or from next door. She stole back to her underwear drawer. This time she drew out the carton. What a rip-off, she thought - twenty quid for something so flimsy and light! Yet she held it with reverence and read the directions for the thousandth time.

'Once you have decided you would like to have a baby, it's important to know when you are at your most fertile. These days occur around ovulation when an egg is released from the ovaries. Boots ovulation test allows you to identify these days by detecting the sharp rise, or surge, in the level of luteinising hormone that occurs 24-36 hours before ovulation. Making love in the 36-hour period after the surge has been detected should maximise your chance of becoming pregnant.'

Jane thought: how I love that word 'surge'.

"

[Tomorrow: meet Jane's husband Darren.]