Page 26 of Plot Twist

‘Six hundred and sixty-two,’ I corrected him. ‘I’m taking one word off since you wrote it after the whistle blew. What was that last one you just had to sneak in?’

‘The,’ he replied, feebly.

I snorted. ‘Belter.’

‘How did you do?’ he asked.

‘I tried being a pantser. I hadn’t planned this scene at all but I’ve got about three hundred and forty-six good words and four hundred and fifty that are kind of shit. But it’s the most I’ve written since. . . well, in ages. So I’m chuffed, actually. Maybe I could be a pantser, after all.’

‘You should schedule some pantser time into your timetable,’ Riley quipped.

‘Oh ha ha,’ I retorted. ‘Very good.’

‘I might even keep some of these words, you know,’ he mused. ‘I’ve done writing sprints before with a group online. Everyone sits on a conference call and just writes until the timer stops. Then you read your work out at the end, if you want to. Or just leave the meeting. This is the first I’ve done in real life, though.’

‘Wow. The secret seedy world of writers, eh? A quick hit, run and you’re done.’

‘Yup,’ he said. ‘I never read stuff out loud, especially not to people I don’t know, in case they trash it. Look what happened to poor Kate that time on our writers’ forum. She got torn apart.’

‘I know, but you swooped in and stopped it! I was hiding behind my keyboard dying slowly on her behalf.’

‘Writers can be brutal. Anyway, what does the timetable say now? Is it break time yet?’

‘Nope,’ I replied. ‘We have another half an hour. Let’s try another sprint and see if you can beat your personal best. No more words after the alarm has sounded this time, cheater.’

‘Slave driver.’ He grinned as I set the timer again.

‘Bestsellers don’t write themselves, Riley,’ I reminded him.

‘Don’t I know it,’ he said with a sigh. ‘OK, let’s do it. I’m definitely going to beat you this time.’

‘Not if I beat you first.’ I grinned.

12

Bridget and Ellie arrived for dinner later in the day, bearing a basket of colourful fruit and two bottles of wine.

‘We’ve brought grapes for Ivy and grown-up grapes for us,’ Bridget called as she entered the kitchen.

I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself, left to my own devices in a house that wasn’t mine. Ivy had managed to persuade Riley to take her to the park after nursery, and I’d volunteered to wait in for Bridget and Ellie’s arrival. I wanted to avoid looking like the Utter Nutter, making myself at home in someone else’s house, at all costs, and had shuffled around for a while. I concluded that loading the dishwasher was a safe move: helpful but not in a manic I’m-taking-over-your-lives-and-am-never-leaving kind of way.

But Bridget and Ellie didn’t seem to care.

‘We’re so excited to meet you,’ Bridget said, enveloping me into a huge hug. She was so warm and inviting, I had to stop myself from burying my body into her generous bosom. Her long, jet-black hair spilled down her back against her bright pink top and I realised she didn’t look much like Riley, though they shared the same sparkling green eyes. She then kind of spun me around and Ellie gave me a hug, too. The one who thought I could be the Utter Nutter. She wore her blonde hair cropped neatly around her chin and was dressed primarily in black, from her tailored trousers to her square-shaped glasses.

‘Lovely to meet you.’ Ellie’s hug was looser than her partner’s, but her smile was just as warm. ‘Riley tells us you’re a children’s writer.’

I blushed. ‘Oh, I don’t think I could call myself an actual writer. . . not like him, anyway.’

‘Whatever you do, don’t make his head any bigger.’ Bridget rolled her eyes. ‘He’ll think he’s Jackie fecking Collins.’

‘He is very good though, isn’t he, Becca? He’s making quite a name for himself,’ Ellie said, and I nodded. ‘Even if his sister is loath to admit it, she’s really his biggest cheerleader.’

Bridget shrugged but her beaming smile betrayed the sense of pride she obviously took in Riley’s success. ‘Let’s just hope the second book lives up to all the hype. Riley said it’s coming along really well. Flying along, he said. Isn’t that just brilliant?’

I paused. I wouldn’t exactly have described Riley’s work as ‘flying along’, despite our attempts at writers’ sprints earlier. After we’d finished, he confessed that a lot of his writing for the day was going in his ‘backstory’ folder as notes. It wasn’t a complete waste of time, he’d said, but I wasn’t one for bursting his sister’s bubble.

‘Isn’t it?’ I replied, grinning.