Jessica’s most recent flash fiction, ‘Space‘, was longlisted for both the Fish Publishing Prize and the Reflex Fiction Summer 2020 prize. Her writing on new motherhood was published in the Born in Lockdown anthology.
Jessica’s first novel, Sylvia Said, was selected for the Arvon-Jerwood Mentorship Scheme, during which Jessica was mentored by Booker long-listed Nikita Lalwani. Sylvia Said tells one of the oldest stories there is: a love triangle. Except this one has a twist, in that two of the players are a mother and her son. Mother loves Son. Son loves Girl. Girl loves Mother. You can read an extract from the Prologue below.
Prologue
The island’s book-group was normally lively. They enjoyed reading and they enjoyed talking about the books they’d read. Today, though, no one wanted to talk about books; they wanted to talk about what had happened in their own lives, on the island, in the early hours of the morning. Their host, Laura McKinney, had more reason than most to raise the subject. But she didn’t. Just for once, she decided, let someone else be labelled a gossip.
Pat Jones, who had been woken at 2am by the coast guard banging on her door, was furious. Laura was well aware of the strange, still atmosphere in the room, the way people kept looking nervously out of the window, but instead of steering everyone firmly back towards the book, all Laura had done so far was make too much of the failure of her central heating to get the room warm. It was infuriating. There on their laps lay another perfectly drawn world into which they might all escape; a world in which the worst fog the island had ever seen was not pressing itself against the little house and that poor woman was not missing. But was Laura encouraging them to escape? No.
“It’s so odd about Bill,” Laura mused, to no one in particular. “He’s usually so reliable.”
“No, he isn’t,” snapped Pat. “He only comes when he approves of the book, which we all know is a rare thing indeed because his chief preoccupations are seagulls and illegal immigrants. Did you like First Love, Laura?”
Laura scowled. She was the host. It was her responsibility to get the discussion going. “Well,” she said, and then paused; this, Pat was sure, was meant to imitate the way she, Pat, sometimes paused before considering what she wanted to say. Her suspicion was confirmed when Laura smiled. “Well,” Laura went on. “I suppose it wasn’t quite so turgid as the author’s name suggests.” Here Laura offered up the little laugh that so irritated Pat. “But I was disappointed with the way the father behaved.”
This was classic Laura. She only liked a book if the characters were grounded and well-behaved and did not take drugs or sleep around or close their eyes while driving on dark country roads. This was exactly the opposite of what Pat wanted from a story. What Pat wanted from a story was life.
“Also,” Laura added smoothly, “I knew he was sleeping with the woman that the son loves.”
“No, you didn’t,” said Pat, who had not known, not suspected this at all. “You know it now you’ve finished it. You didn’t know it while you were reading it. You’re applying that knowledge retrospectively.”
“And why would I do that?”
“To make yourself sound clever.”
This, Laura knew, was more true of Pat than of herself, but she kept quiet. It was actually quite powerful, keeping quiet. Cheered by this observation Laura pronounced herself an excellent judge of character.
“Ha ha,” said Pat. “Ha, ha, ha.”
Laura hesitated. If she told them what she knew, what she’d seen the night before, Pat would shut up. But she wasn’t going to talk about that. She’d decided. Idly she picked up the book and pretended to study it. She could feel that Pat was still smirking at her; knew that Pat was thinking about the fact that Laura’s husband had stolen money from Laura and from her kids. His kids. Money he’d subsequently lost in the slot machines on the mainland. And so she repeated her assertion, more aggressively this time and then added, in a rush: “Because I knew that woman shouldn’t have come here. I knew it as soon as I saw her.”
“Sylvia,” someone said, quietly. “Her name’s Sylvia.”
A silence then, quiet, respectful. Pat found herself glancing once more to the window, just as a light, possibly from the lighthouse, went out. Almost involuntarily she shook her head. “She could be fine. She could be back in London for all we know. Got a late boat to the mainland.”
“No.” This was Laura again.
“For a woman so against anything sad ever happening you seem to be taking a macabre thrill in thinking the worst, Laura,” Pat said, then added, forgetting that she knew very little herself: “You don’t know anything about Sylvia.”
Laura drew herself up in her chair. “I spoke to her son last night,” she said and felt the room roll around on its axis. Somehow they’d all forgotten the son. The tall boy with the dark eyes and the dark hair. “I was out walking.”
Out snooping more like, thought Pat, but she let it go. She was anxious to hear the story.