What Does It Feel Like?

by Sophie Kinsella

It’s a nightmare. The words have jammed up for weeks and I don’t know what I’m doing. Everything feels turgid; everything feels pointless. Why did I want to be an author again?

“I do, actually. My advice is to write the book you would like to read yourself. Visualize going into a bookshop and finding the perfect book. The book you would buy immediately. What does it look like? What’s it about? What genre is it? Then write that book. And above all, write the truth. Write what you know and do it convincingly. I don’t mean write nonfiction,” she clarifies. “I mean write the truth about life, whatever genre you’re in.”

Back to the writing. She has an empty house; there’s no excuse. The trouble is, she’s lost any enthusiasm she once had for her plot, and there are still eighty thousand words to

Oh God, thinks Eve. What am I doing? She doesn’t have any glitzy parties to go to. When would she ever wear anything like this?

As the assistant is doing up the zip, Eve knows she’s going to buy it. At the same time, she’s racked with guilt, because “buy dress” was definitely not on her to-do list today. Her to-do list consisted of one entry only: “write book.” She has a deadline and a publisher waiting, not to mention her loyal readers.

What is his best quality? He has a very loud, generous laugh. He is my first reader and whenever he’s reading my latest book I pace around downstairs, hoping I will hear him laugh.

“Right,” says Eve, looking at herself in the mirror. She’s in her glittery Jenny Packham dress—she knew she would need it one day—and there are diamonds winking at her ears, courtesy of earrings loaned to her by Boodles. On her wrist is a bracelet worth £80,000. She’s not sure she’s going to be able to think anything tonight except Don’t lose the £80,000 bracelet.

Eve walks awkwardly into place and begins the rigmarole of trying to look svelte for the cameras while another wave of disbelief washes over her.

Eve knows there is interest in her brood of children. Five kids. It’s a lot, these days. It’s a talking point. “What does it feel like to have five children?” people ask, and all she can say is, “The same as having one child, times five.” The work is multiplied, the worry is multiplied, the joy is multiplied, the love is multiplied.

Well done, you brilliant brain, she thinks—then draws breath to reply.

“I’ve been so incredibly fortunate, it almost seems like too much luck for one person,” she says truthfully to Antonia Horton. “Now I’m just waiting for my luck to run out!”

Maybe, if she thinks hard enough, she can make one of them come true. She can influence the outcome. Like a manifestation. Or a prayer. Benign. Benign. Benign, she thinks, using every brain cell she has. Please. Please. Please.

Her head was bandaged and for a while it felt heavy and alien, as though it had been replaced by a metal robot’s head.

Other things aren’t so positive, he thinks. But you haven’t asked about those. Not yet.

You have incurable cancer, my beautiful Eve. But you keep forgetting and I have to keep reminding you and these are the hardest moments of my life.

He’ll give her the printout he’s already given her and that she’s discarded in frustration three times now, sitting up in her hospital bed, wailing, “I can’t learn these sodding carols!”

“I’ve been here the whole time,” says Nick. “The whole time?” she says in disbelief. “I wasn’t going to leave you, you silly girl.” He reaches out and squeezes her hand. “And the children are fine. Having a whale of a time with your mother, by all accounts.”

“She bought it herself,” says Nick. “She said, ‘Mummy can’t be in hospital without a teddy.’ So we went teddy shopping.”

“OK. I’ve got cancer. Well, it is what it is. Will I have chemotherapy? Or radiation therapy? Or anything like that?”

But then, within seconds, her natural optimism surfaces.

Within seconds, the results have appeared. She clicks and reads, then clicks on another page and reads, then clicks, reads, reads, reads, trying and failing to find a different answer, not believing what she’s reading.

And the blocks will taunt her with their shiny cheerfulness and refuse to fall into shape, and she will wonder what her children would say if they could see her now, sweating and breathing hard, struggling to make a triangle.

Five children. Five bundles of love. And five bundles of grief.

I may never see you grow up, my beautiful girl, and I can’t bear

“Hello, it’s Eve Monroe for the plastic chairs. Sorry, I mean, for a flat white.”

I cycle through denial, despair, shock, grief, and then sometimes ridiculous happiness. I appreciate small pleasures so much more than I did, but then along comes the brutal knowledge again. Sometimes I contemplate dying and leaving my family and I can’t bear it. I wait until the house is empty, then cry ugly sobs, inconsolable, loud, keening and wailing, punching the bed with ineffectual, powerless fists….

The way to get through an MRI scan: Don’t move. Pretend the noise is some piece of contemporary music or building works next door. Send positive, healing thoughts to your brain with mantras—e.g., My scan is clean, the disease has not progressed—in the hope that this will affect the result. (If your mind drifts to the Sweaty Betty sale instead, do not beat yourself up.)

The way to get through scanxiety: Is there a way? Please let me know what it

Fresh tears run down Eve’s face as she imagines Nick, all alone, sitting in a little hospital side room, having to deal with the news that his wife had a deadly brain tumor, and she feels sudden rage. Rage at her own stupid brain; rage at the doctor for upsetting Nick; rage at the whole thing. She wants to rail and shout and hit things. And she feels—yet again—consumed by guilt that she has been the cause of so much distress. She knows this cancer is not her fault—it’s just bad luck. But what she has learned is that you can feel guilty for having had bad luck.

“Of course they do. I love happy endings myself. So I’ve invented lots of them. But now here’s the irony: I can’t invent a real-life happy ending for myself.”

“You hate spoilers in books and films. We both do. But when it comes to this, all we want, above anything else, is a spoiler. We desperately want the doctors to give us the spoiler, but they can’t, because they don’t know either.”

I am a very private person, so it may seem strange that I have revealed so many raw details of my life to the world. However, I have always processed my life using writing. Hiding behind my fictional characters, I have always turned my own life into a narrative. It is my version of therapy, maybe. Writing is my happy place, and writing this book, although tough going at times, was immensely satisfying and therapeutic for

And finally, I wish everyone reading this a very happy ending.