Bones Under The Beach Hut

'Well, you do seem to spend all day on your laptop.'

'That's not running a business. I wish it were.'

'Oh?'

'I hope ultimately to make money from what I'm doing, but I think that's still a long way off.' Carole hoped that silence would prompt more revelation, and was rewarded when Katie Brunswick went on, 'I'm writing something.'

'Oh?'

'A book.'

'Ah. Is it going to be published?'

'I hope so. I've got the interest of an agent.'

'That's a good thing for a writer to have, isn't it? I'm sorry, publishing is not a world I'm very familiar with.'

'Yes, if you're a writer it's good to have an agent.'

'So at least you've got one of those.'

'Well, I haven't exactly got one. I've got the interest of one. I met her at the Truro Literary Festival. And she said she'd read anything I sent her.'

'That sounds good. She must have liked your work.'

'No, she hadn't actually read any of my work.'

'Ah. Anyway, what kind of book is it you're writing? I mean, don't tell me if you don't want to. I've heard that some writers are superstitious when it comes to talking about "work in progress".'

'No, I don't mind talking about it. I always welcome feedback. You can get very isolated when you're writing.'

'I'm sure you can. But at least here you're surrounded by people.'

'Still isolated, though.' She sounded almost proud of the fact. 'You're often at your loneliest when you're with people.'

'So you use this beach hut as your writing room?'

'Why not? Where else round here are you going to get an office for six hundred quid a year?'

'That's true.'

'So I've got a "room of my own".'

'I'm sorry? I don't get the reference.'

'Virginia Woolf said: "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.'"

'Ah.'

'So I've got the room.'

'How about the money?'

'I've got two years' worth.' Carole looked at her curiously. 'I'd saved enough for me to survive for two years when I gave up my job.'

'You gave up your job to write this book?' To Carole that seemed a very odd thing to do.

'Oh no. I'd already written it. In my spare time.'

This was becoming increasingly confusing. 'So why did you take the two years off?'

'I wanted to make it better.'

'The book better?'

'Yes. On a course I went on I was told that the most important part of writing was rewriting.'

'Oh.' Carole supposed in a way she could see the sense in that. While she was at the Home Office she had prided herself in the accuracy with which she marshalled facts in memoranda. And that had involved a certain amount of redrafting. 'This was a writing course you're talking about?'

'Yes.'

'But I thought writing was something one either could do or couldn't do. It can't be taught, surely? I don't quite see how a course could help.'

'Oh, they do. There's lots you can learn. I mean, obviously you have to want to write, have an innate aptitude for it. Joseph Joubert said: "A fluent writer always seems more talented than he is. To write well, one needs a natural facility and an acquired difficulty."'

'Who was Joseph Joubert?'

'I don't know. I heard the quote on another writing course I went on.'

'Do you go on a lot of them?'

'At least two a year.'

'So, Katie ... if it's not a rude question . . . have you ever had anything published?'

'No.'

'But have you written other, unpublished books before this one?'

'No. I've really just been working on this one.'

'For how long?'

'Well, I suppose in this form for about twelve years.'

'Ah.'

'I mean it came from an idea I had for a short story. And then I started writing it in a different way. And then I submitted the first chapter in a First Chapter Competition for the Godalming Arts Festival and it got commended.'

'That must have been encouraging.'

'Yes. But of course the first chapter now has changed quite a lot from the first chapter as it was then.'

'Right.'

'Apart from anything else it was a first person narrative and I've changed it to third person.'

'Ah. So this is all improving the book?'

'I hope so, yes. There are some friends I get to read it, and some people in my Writers' Circle, and a lot of them think it's getting better.'

'And when do you think you'll finish it? I mean, this draft?'

Katie Brunswick jutted forward a dubious lower lip. 'Ooh, hard to say. I mean it's seven months since I gave up my job, that was just before Christmas, so I've still got, what . . . seventeen months to go.'

'So that's your deadline?'

The girl still looked doubtful. 'I don't know that I'll have finished it by then.'

'Look, I'm sorry,' said Carole, 'I know I don't know anything about writing, but I can't see why this book's going to take so long.'

'Well, I want to get it right. . .'

'Mm. Yes, well, I can see that would be a good idea.'

'And every time I go on a course, I learn new ideas.'

'I see.'

'And I want to apply them, you know, to the book.'

'So you start rewriting the book again, to accommodate these new ideas?'

'Yes, that's what I do exactly, more or less.'

The girl was silent. Carole didn't think it was the moment to comment that Katie Brunswick's way of writing a book seemed a rather odd approach to any enterprise, so she moved on to the real purpose of her chocolate-brownie subterfuge. 'I was speaking to Curt Holderness this morning.'

'Oh?' Katie was alert, alarmed even.

'He was offering me various ways in which he could bend the rules with regard to these beach huts.'

'Was he?' she asked cautiously.

'He did actually tell me that he's made an arrangement with you . . .'

'Mm?'

'. . .allowing you to stay here overnight when you want to.'

'Yes, well, I went on this course where one of the tutors told me two important things about being a writer. He said that you had to have a dedicated room of your own to work in — just like Virginia Woolf said. A space with the minimum of distractions in it.'

'Which you've got here.'

'Yes.'

'And he also said a writer never knows when inspiration is going to strike, and you must never ignore its summons. As soon as you have an idea you must leap to pen and paper, or the keyboard or whatever else you use.'

'I see. So sometimes you need to stay here overnight when inspiration strikes you?'

'Yes. Or when inspiration might strike me.'

'Ah.'

'Curt Holderness only charged me a hundred quid for the concession. It still makes this a jolly cheap office, doesn't it?'

'Yes. Well, I hope inspiration didn't strike much in the last few days.'

'What do you mean?'

'The most recent couple of times I've been here, this place was locked up.'

'Yes.' Katie Brunswick looked a little embarrassed. 'The fact was, when the police started investigating here on the beach, well, I didn't particularly want to be around.'

'Squeamishness?'

'No, I just didn't want to be questioned . . . you know, in case the fact that I was sometimes staying here overnight came up.'

'Ah. I understand.' Carole looked beadily at her. 'So when was the last time you spent the night here?'

Katie Brunswick screwed up her eyes as she tried to remember. 'Last Monday. I mean, not the Monday just gone, the one before.'

A little charge of excitement ran through Carole. 'And did you see anything that night?'

'What sort of thing?' came the cautious response.

'Any people on the beach?'

'I did see some actually.'

'Oh?'

'Normally if I stay overnight I close the doors, so that it's not so obvious that I'm in here. But it had been a hot day and was still pretty warm in the small hours. It was very stuffy in here, so I reckoned I could risk leaving the doors open.'