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Inspirations

BOTTOM DRAWER

the book MAEVE BINCHY never published

I have a file called Think About Later. It contains a few nightmarish things that I haven’t actually got the strength to think about now, like my plans to make my own loose-leaf recipe book, or the names of my friends’ grandchildren. It has one manuscript, 143 pages long, called Novel About Revenge.

I began it years ago. It was about a girl called Rita who was open and honest and decent, and she fell in love with a guy called Shane who was the reverse of all those things. Rita was astounded when he left her saying it had all just been a bit of fun, and that he was the man of her holiday not the man of her life. So Rita, totally devastated, tried turning her distress to revenge.

I’m not good at Revenge, I realise that now. I was exhausted thinking of ways to get at Shane and punish him and make his life a misery when all the time I felt that Rita should just move on. Forget him and find a new love rather than torturing him because of his huge crime which was that he didn’t love her even remotely.

Lots of people can write Revenge, and they make it very exciting. Barbara Taylor Bradford, Fay Weldon, many others. They do it brilliantly; they could make the story of Rita and Shane a page-turner. But I can’t. I don’t see the point of it – every moment brooding about the lost love is a wasted moment. I want Rita to get a life rather than lose the one she has.

Shane’s best punishment is to be forgotten. So I keep the manuscript in a drawer, just in case I am tempted to start again.

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