Lifesaving for Beginners

seconds; do you copy, Alistair?’
    A man’s voice with an English accent, high and halting, quivers down the line. ‘Er, yes, Minnie. We – I mean I – I’m reading you, ah, loud and clear, as it were.’
    Minnie looks at me. ‘Fall in,’ she says and I do because Minnie is on a roll and so, I suppose, am I. The crowd parts like curtains and we make it to the podium at the other end of the bookshop in exactly T minus twenty seconds.
    Brona introduces me. She says lovely things, all of which are untrue to a greater or lesser degree. She calls me ‘charming’ and ‘cooperative’. She says it’s always been a ‘pleasure’ working with me. She tells them about my work ethic, which she describes as ‘exemplary’. HA!
    Minnie can’t wait to get her hands on the microphone. For a moment, standing on the podium with her huge blue eyes and her blonde hair in a plait down her back and her belly swelling against the silk of her pale pink maxi-dress, she looks adorable. She looks like the type of woman who might make cupcakes and help little old ladies across the road. Then she snaps on the microphone and says, ‘Kat won’t be doing a reading so if you want to know what the book’s about, you’ll have to buy it. If you have a question, put your hand up. If I point to you, ask your question. If I don’t point to you and you ask a question anyway, you will be removed from the premises.’ She nods towards two enormous men swaddled in sombre black suits and wearing matching black wraparound sunglasses. The same pair from the press conference, which seems like a long time ago now. They stand on either side of the entrance, silent and unmoving and a little bit magnificent. Minnie ends with a curt, ‘Kat will sign copies of the book afterwards. Form an orderly queue in single file at the right-hand side of the shop.’
    For a moment, nothing happens. It’s hard to know where to look. Then, one by one, the arms go up until the bookshop is a sea of disembodied hands, all waving at me. Minnie points to a journalist near the back and barks, ‘YOU.’ The journalist – a woman with a meaty red face – looks at Minnie and points to herself with a questioning expression and Minnie nods impatiently, hands me the microphone and so it begins.
    ‘Kat, first of all, may I offer you my congratulations on the book. I finished it last night. I couldn’t put it down.’
    Killian Kobain would know what to say to that but I can’t think of anything.
    She goes on, ‘The book is not a Declan Darker book.’
    I would have thought that was pretty obvious.
    ‘Why did you decide not to write another Darker book?’
    Finally. A question. I look at the front row where Mum, Dad, Faith, Milo and Ed are sitting. Milo looks like he’s been attacked with Dad’s Brylcreem because his fringe is pasted against his head. He smiles at me and gives me the thumbs up sign. He uses both thumbs. I wink at him and then return my attention to the journalist. ‘It was time to write something new.’
    Hands go up. Minnie points at a middle-aged man wearing a beanie hat in the second row and shouts, ‘YOU.’ I’m surprised because beanie hats on middle-aged men are one of the items on Minnie’s pet-hate list.  She says they’re a foil for either baldness or sticky-out ears or a combination of both and that they fool no one.
    The man in the beanie hat says, ‘ Lifesaving for Beginners is about a teenager who gets pregnant and gives the baby up for adoption. Is it autobiographical?’
    I’ve been dreading this question but it’s not unexpected. The details of my life have been wrapped around a fair amount of fish and chips in the last few months. I say, ‘No, it’s a work of fiction,’ and I’m about to leave it at that and then I don’t. This keeps happening recently, since I finished the book. It’s like I’m springing leaks. I’m coming out. I keep coming out. I take a breath. ‘But it’s true to say there’s a lot of me in this book. I didn’t realise that until I read it myself for the first time. I had buried that part of myself. That fifteen-year-old girl. I hadn’t thought about her. I abandoned her, in a way. And then I read the book and there she was, on the page. It was like meeting someone I used to know but hadn’t bothered to keep in touch with. It was a shock. But it was something I needed to do.’
    There is silence in the room. I’ve been taciturn these past few months. The media has interpreted this