One Day in December

by Josie Silver

I’m not a bitch though; or maybe I’m just a quiet one inside my own head. Isn’t everyone?

I love that this line resonates with readers! It makes me feel less of a terrible person, because it’s a direct reflection of what happens inside my own head! Joking aside, I think it connects because we all keep a fair chunk of what we think inside our head in order to keep the peace, but there is definitely guilty pleasure in imagining what might happen if you just let it out!

Sarah is my best friend in the entire world, and however much and for however long it kills me, I’ll never silently, secretly hold up signs to tell Jack O’Mara, without hope or agenda, that to me he is perfect, and that my wasted heart will always love him.

Honestly, this line reflects my enduring affection for all of those wonderful nostalgic Christmas movies, Love Actually in particular. I think I actually sighed with pleasure as I wrote it, it’s my tribute to the comfort and joy those movies bring us.

“I wanted to kiss you back there in the pub, Laurie, and I want to kiss you even more right now. You’re one of the loveliest people I’ve ever met in my whole life.” He looks away, down the length of the deserted street and then back at me again. “You’re beautiful and kind, and you make me laugh, and when you look at me like that with your summer hedgerow eyes…only a fucking saint wouldn’t kiss you.”

From the moment Laurie and Jack locked eyes at the bus-stop, this moment between them feels inevitable. It was, however, really important that neither of them felt easy about it – Laurie is vulnerable and distressed and Jack is moved to comfort her. Heightened emotion breaks down their usual defenses, they act instinctively in the moment and it changes everything for both of them from then on. Writing the kiss… you know, it was almost as nerve-wracking for me as for them!

There’s something about living in a different place that allows you to be whoever you want to be.

Laurie is in Thailand when this thought goes through her head, sun-kissed and on her first date with Oscar. I think it’s regularly highlighted because it speaks to the secret part in us all that fantasises about running away from our day-to-day responsibilities – packing lunches, doing the laundry, walking the dog. We wouldn’t do it, of course, but there is comfort in the idea of living a different life somewhere beautiful and care-free.

I told him that there comes a point where you have to make the choice to be happy, because being sad for too long is exhausting. And that one day, you’ll look back, and you’ll not be able to remember exactly what it was you loved about that person.”

We’ve all had our heart broken at some point, haven’t we? The pain of waiting for the phone to ring, the heartache and desperation to see someone who doesn’t want to see you anymore. It’s a tough life lesson, and it takes a long time to reach the point of feeling properly okay again, doesn’t it? I remember my own first heartbreak well and a good friend telling me that in time I’d reach a point where it wouldn’t hurt anymore. I didn’t believe her at the time, but they were right. So right that when he finally came back, my life had moved on and there wasn’t room for him in it anymore.

“But I also said that sometimes, rarely, people can come back into your life. And if that happens, you should keep those people close to you forever.”

Laurie was terribly frightened by Jack’s accident, we see her true emotions seeping out here. She knows he’s drifting to sleep and probably won’t hear her, but then perhaps he will, and he’ll understand she’s talking about their own unbreakable bond and be comforted. It’s not a subject either of them ever bring up under usual circumstances, but here the sanctuary of a quiet hospital room feels close to a confessional for Laurie.

She’s standing in front of me in the wedding dress, wide-eyed and beautiful. More beautiful than I’ve ever seen her, or anyone else. The dress has come to life around her, turning her into a barefoot wood-nymph bride.

The scene where Laurie finds her perfect wedding dress in the second-hand shop is one my personal favourites. I was inspired by a very similar shop I stumbled across one rainy afternoon in my home town – I stepped through the door and felt instantly transported back to the 1940’s. There was a wireless playing in the background, and wardrobes opened to show off beautiful vintage silk dresses and coats. Chests of drawers stood with drawers pulled open, strings of pearls and evening gloves spilling from them. It totally enchanted me, so I was excited to be able to recreate it in the book. Funnily enough, it had closed down the next time I went into town – I like to think it was there just for me, and just for Laurie

You tread lightly through life, but you leave deep footprints that are hard for other people to fill.”

Jack was always going to make a speech at Laurie’s wedding, wasn’t he? I actually found his speech one of the most difficult things to write in the book, I really needed him to come through for me and say something special. He didn’t for several days of tinkering with it, and then, finally, thankfully, he delivered the goods. Every now and then (rarely!) I write a line that I know instinctively will resonate with readers, and this was one of them.

And then he looks down at me, and his eyes say all the things he cannot. His gaze holds mine as we dance slowly, and I silently tell him that I’ll always carry him in my heart, and he silently tells me that in another place, another time, we’d have been pretty damn close to perfect.

I’m someone who visualizes the whole manuscript as I write it, it’s like a movie playing in my head. This particular scene needed to feel late night and intimate, so it went through several rewrites – both Laurie and Jack were in other relationships, it was important to walk near the line without actually crossing it. But at the same time, we see them both at their most vulnerable and honest here, close to admitting things that couldn’t be said. My hope for the reader is that they feel both Laurie and Jack’s heartbreak during this scene, it certainly made me tearful as I wrote it.

The truth is that I’ve walked around the edge of being in love with Jack for too many years. It’s made me realize something inevitable, something that’s been a long time coming: he and I would be better off without each other. I need to unwind the roots of Jack O’Mara from my life. He’s too much a part of who I am, and me a part of him. The problem with uprooting things is that sometimes it kills them altogether, but that’s a risk I have to take. For the sake of my marriage; for the sake of all of us.

This scene needed to be such a poignant, pivotal moment of self-realization for Laurie. She’d tried to suppress her feelings for Jack for as long as she’s known him, but here we see her finally admit, to herself at least, how integral he is to her, and that ultimately, he’s a threat to her marriage. There’s also an element of letting go for Jack’s sake as well as her own, too. She knows he feels strongly for her, especially after their dance earlier that evening when Jack talked about how much their only kiss meant to him. I remember writing this paragraph last thing very late one night, and closing my lap top feeling wretched for Laurie.

“Sometimes you just meet the right person at the wrong time,” I say softly. “Yeah,” he says. “And then you spend every day afterward wishing that time could be rearranged.”

Oh, how I loved writing this scene! Laurie and Jack (and the readers!) had worked so hard to reach this point in the book, I really wanted to give their love story a bells and whistles ending, hence the viral twitter hunt and taxi dash across Edinburgh. The whole ‘Rhona’ conversation on the radio gave me all the festive feels as I worked on it, especially Jack’s revelation that he’d recognized Laurie instantly all those years ago. I don’t mind sharing that I was an emotional wreck by the time I reached this point of the manuscript. I couldn’t rest until Laurie had tinsel in her hair again!

Acknowledgments

Thank you so much for reading and loving One Day in December, writing it honestly changed my life in so many ways. My brand-new book, One Night on the Island, is out now! It’s a very escapist kind of read – Cleo is a jaded dating journalist who retreats to a remote lodge on a windswept Irish Island, only to find Mack, a grouchy, brooding American has already claimed the place as his! It’s another big, sweeping love story with lots of complications and twists, and features some of my favourite characters I’ve ever written. Jack and Laurie will always have a special place in my heart, but Cleo and Mack have claimed themselves a big slice of it too! I hope you love them as much as I do. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59078993-one-night-on-the-island Josie xx