Small Acts of Kindness, page 32
Except there’s no word. No line. Just an odd laughing sound exploding out of me, and there are tears in my eyes too, and now they’re running down my cheeks. But mostly I’m laughing.
I’m smiling and crying and laughing this odd-sounding laugh.
Because I’ve been waiting for this for so long. And now I’m here.
I’m here. Finally. And the best I’ve come out with is ‘ho’.
And even if I can’t hear it, I know Ned’s laughing too.
If you enjoyed Small Acts of Kindness, you will love
Caroline Day’s heartwarming debut novel,
Hope Nicely’s Lessons for Life.
I don’t have any friends, only dog ones, because they don’t make you do bad things. I don’t want any human friends, actually. It’s for the best . . .
Hope Nicely hasn’t had an easy life.
But she’s happy enough living at 23 Station Close with her mum, Jenny Nicely, and she loves her job, walking other people’s dogs. She’s a bit different, but as Jenny always tells her, she’s a rainbow person, a special drop of light.
It’s just . . . there’s something she needs to know. Why did her birth mother abandon her in a cardboard box on a church step twenty-five years ago? And did she know that drinking while pregnant could lead to Hope being born with Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder?
In a bid to find her birth mother and the answers to these questions, Hope decides to write her autobiography. Despite having been bullied throughout school, Hope bravely joins an evening class where Hope will not only learn the lessons of writing, but will also begin to discover more about the world around her, about herself and even make some (human) friends.
But when Jenny suddenly falls ill, Hope realises there are many more lessons to come . . .
Hope Nicely’s Lessons for Life is a heartwarming, coming-of-age novel about loneliness, friendship, acceptance and, above all, hope.
Available now
AUTHOR’S NOTE AND THE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
‘. . . that best portion of a good man’s life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love’ William Wordsworth
‘This stroke was a gift, not a curse, you’ve just got to shut out all of the negativity and see out the heartbreak, then own what happens next’ Howard Wicks, founder of the Locked-In Trust
It’s a cliche to talk about a book as its writer’s baby but, just like a child, a book has a tendency to take on a life beyond the author’s expectations. As a parent, I soon learned that my children were too much their own little people to have any of my parental whims easily imposed. And maybe other authors who meticulously plot every tiny detail have more obedient manuscripts – but my own two book ‘babies’ have followed their own rebellious path. Small Acts of Kindness is quite a different book to the one I planned to write – better for it, I hope.
Back at the end of 2019, if I remember right, I wrote a tentative chapter in which an elderly woman pulls a red thong from her clean laundry pile. I wasn’t sure where this would lead but it made me chuckle. I didn’t know yet how this item of clothing had made its way into her washing, or to whom it belonged, but I did know that this was going to be a story about unlikely friendships. I also knew that Mrs Malley was going to find her life changed by a stroke and that the re-evaluation which this would bring, though frustrating and painful, would ultimately be rewarding as well.
During my career as a journalist focusing on the human side of health issues, I’d talked with many people who’d experienced unexpected changes to their lives and had needed to find the strength to adapt, including many who’d had strokes at very different ages and in vastly different situations, and who’d been affected in very different ways. I’d also spent time on a stroke unit after my own grandmother’s stroke. While, sadly, my lovely Grandma Betty would never recover, my time with her on the ward and in the day room whilst the nurses tended to her, gave me a glimpse into the tenacity of other stroke survivors whose lives had been changed in an instant, and who in many cases now had to relearn skills which they’d taken for granted since early childhood. It takes spirit and guts.
I knew that Small Acts of Kindness would be a novel about individuals whose worlds stop for a moment and have to find the way to restart. What I didn’t know was that the entire world itself was about to do this same thing. This is a novel which I started writing before Covid – a time which now feels a different age – so if we stick with the ‘book-baby’ cliche, this is my Covid book baby.
It is no coincidence that Kiki found herself on a pilgrimage to Glastonbury Festival, although I hadn’t known this about her when I started writing. I’d been lucky enough to attend the festival in 2016, 2017 and 2019 – and researching this storyline provided an excuse to relive some wonderful moments of ‘Glasto’ in my head during a scary, restricted time, and to spend hours reading about the early years of Glastonbury and about David Bowie playing there in 1971 to a field of mostly sleeping festival-goers. Writing this book during Covid felt surreal – and losing myself in memories of festival freedom provided a temporary escape from the fear, boredom, claustrophobia and anger.
I want to thank those people who read and fed back their thoughts during my writing of this book, especially Anne and Cath, Emma, Belinda and Tim (I promise Tim, you’re not Mrs M, even if I may have borrowed your opinions on a hymn or two) and of course brilliant Ben, who has become quite used to having a computer thrust at him first thing in the morning with the demand: “does this read OK?” And a thank you, just because, to our funny clan of almost-adult Todds, as well as to my parents, Liz and Mike.
A big thank you also to Chris and the group of writers at the All Good Bookshop in Turnpike Lane. I read out early extracts in their interim space before the shop moved to its current spot – and, in between, when Covid pushed us online. Sharing this book as a work in progress and hearing your feedback was much appreciated – thanks guys, and apologies if I’m the one most prone to babbling while drinking all the wine.
I fully intended during the writing of this novel to do what I’d failed to do whilst writing Hope Nicely’s Lessons for Life, and to record every article, website, blog, organisation, book/book extract, case study and individual experience that I encountered and learned from. In the end, there were just too many and I am too forgetful. But the personal stories shared, through the Stroke Association and Different Strokes, for example, as well as the shared experiences of those living in a locked-in state, were especially invaluable. People are incredible. People living in locked-in states run companies, have relationships, write books and blogs and give life-affirming presentations which all of us can learn from, whilst living full and important lives. Ned is fictional. But he’s also a real star in my eyes.
Thank you to Howard Wicks, founder of the Locked-In Trust for giving his blessing to my using his above quote in my acknowledgments. His words perfectly encapsulate the sense of hope which I wanted this book to convey. Thank you also to the communication disability charity, the Sequal Trust for information on communication aids and to Michael Saguan, staff nurse at the Centre for Neurorehabilitation at Queen Square, for guidance on patient welfare, safety and trips out from hospital.
Thank you to the amazing team at Zaffre for all that you have done to bring this novel into the world – to Emma Rogers for the cover design (I love, love, love, that doggy), to Laura Gerrard for an edit which taught me I was not as knowledgeable as I thought about commas and speech marks, to Salma and Katie and to Melissa, for wisdom and calmness, also to Ruth and to everyone else whose involvement in giving a book the best possible launch is beyond this author’s radar. Thank you of course to Sarah Bauer – no longer at Zaffre but to whom this book owes not only its title but so much more. Thank you, Sarah, for all the ideas – you were right in every case. And thank you to my wonderful, brilliant agent, Sarah Lutyens as well as Anna and Tara and the rest of the fantastic team at Lutyens & Rubinstein. I am so proud and so grateful to have you in my corner.
Thank you, lastly, to my two extremely silly doggies, Snoopy and Charlie Brown, for unfailing moral support (I’m not sure all writers choose to work with a dog pal on either side of them, but it’s essential practice for me) – especially Snoopy for his inspiration on Basset Hound naughtiness.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
As a freelance journalist for national magazines and newspapers, Caroline Day wrote other people’s stories: happy stories and sad stories, stories of the greatest tribulations and triumphs. To do this right, Caroline spent many hundreds of hours trying to truly listen to what each of these people had to say. And although fictional characters are a little trickier to interview, Caroline loves spending time with them. Caroline lives in north London, with her husband, Ben, two greedy rescue dogs, and with occasional visits from her grown-up (but still lovely) children. Her debut novel, Hope Nicely’s Lessons for Life, was a Sunday Times bestseller.
First published in the UK in 2024 by Zaffre
This ebook edition published in 2024 by
ZAFFRE
An imprint of Zaffre Publishing Group
A Bonnier Books UK Company
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Copyright © Caroline Day, 2024
Cover design by Emma Rogers
Cover artwork © Shutterstock
The moral right of Caroline Day to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-83877-842-2
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-83877-843-9
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Caroline Day, Small Acts of Kindness
