Honeybee, page 27
‘I know you don’t want to hear this, Renée, but you suit Guernsey. You’ve got this earthy wholesomeness to you. You get it from Aunty Jo.’ I brace myself to be told to shut up. Renée has always seen herself as a future-big-city girl, but somehow that doesn’t seem to work with who she actually is. Surprisingly, she doesn’t say anything. She sort of smiles, like it was a compliment, then looks out to sea. Her hair is all tangled and she’s stopped wearing make-up. She’s got on a brilliantly casual green shirt with pedal pushers that used to belong to Lillian. It would look dated and unfashionable on anyone else, but on Renée it’s adorable.
‘I can’t believe we thought you were pregnant,’ I continue. ‘Imagine if you were, I wonder how you’d be feeling right now.’
‘Nervous but excited, probably. I wanted it. As soon as I thought it was happening, whether Ben was involved or not, I just knew without question that if I were pregnant, I’d keep it.’
‘No way, you?’
‘Yeah, me. I know. I think maybe you can kick about thinking you know yourself. Who you are, what you want, where you think you’re going. But then something happens, like you think you’re pregnant, and you get this really quick crash-course in everything you never knew you were. As it turns out, the idea of having a baby felt much more natural to me than most of the other things I’ve been hoping would happen.’
‘I wasn’t expecting you to say that, at all,’ I say, shocked.
‘Same. But what does it matter? I’m not pregnant and life goes on. But it’s opened up a part of me I didn’t know was there. Like in this weird way, thinking I was pregnant made my life feel bigger rather than smaller, if that makes any sense?’
‘You mean, more purposeful?’
‘Yeah, more purposeful, I suppose.’
We sit quietly for a while. Eating, looking at the horizon, taking long, deep breaths. I need to tell her, but I have to pick the right moment.
‘Mad to think the Germans occupied the island, isn’t it. They sat right here, pointing their guns out to sea, ready for battle. It wasn’t even a hundred years ago,’ Renée says, trying to imagine that scene. ‘The Channel Islands are the only British territory that Hitler ever conquered, I remember learning that at school. I never quite realised the magnitude of it all. But Guernsey was totally under German rule for five years, there are bunkers and Martello Towers on almost every beach. Nazi Germans were sitting right here while their army committed the most heinous act of human violence in the history of the world and now you can come to this pretty island and do a walking tour of all their hangouts. Humans are so disappointing.’
There is another long pause. I just need to spit it out.
‘Renée, I’m moving back to London. Guernsey just isn’t the place for me, no matter how easy it is, how beautiful. I like the city. The way I can disappear there. I can’t get my head around …’
‘Flo, it’s OK. I knew you would, I’ve just been waiting for you to tell me. It’s better for you, I know.’
‘Phew, yeah, and you’ll find your way there too. It just takes time, but you’re Renée Sargent, London won’t know what hit it.’
She puts a chip in her mouth and looks at what is left in the paper bag. ‘I don’t want to move to London, Flo. I hated it. I’m sure over time it would feel better, but for what? I want to write. I can do that here.’
‘You can, but surely all the opportunities are there? How will you make any contacts?’
‘I don’t know. And I sort of don’t care. All I know is that when I was there, I felt tiny, like one in a billion people who would have to fight so hard to get noticed. I get tired just thinking about it. I want to write a book, and until I’ve written it, I don’t need to be there. Aunty Jo wants to take some time off, so she’s asked me if I’d like to be manager of the garden centre and I’d actually really love that.’
‘Wow, yes, this makes so much more sense than “office Renée”.’
‘Right? I mean, what maniac would let me loose on their phone lines?’ She puts her head on my shoulder. ‘I’ll miss you,’ she says.
‘I’ll miss you too.’
I never imagined that it would be Renée who would stay on the island, and me who moved to London. But maybe that’s what adulting is, being honest with yourself about where you are supposed to be. I can’t do AA here, it’s too intimate for me. I’m going to rent a room from one of Mum’s friends who lives in Chelsea and find a meeting in another borough so I don’t bump into anyone I know. Unlike Renée, I want to go unnoticed. Guernsey doesn’t afford me that luxury.
‘I got a cheque in the post,’ she says, a smile on her face.
‘Wow, from your dad, how much?’
‘No, from Magic Marketing. A thousand pounds. In the envelope was one of the cheese flyers, my logo written across it with a very happy teenager taking a big bite out of a lump of cheddar. Ben had written, “Congratulations, love Ben” on it. I keep it under my pillow. Pathetic, I know. I just …’ Her eyes fill with tears. She loves him so much. Proper, grown-up love.
‘Oh Renée, it will get easier.’
‘It might, it might not. It’s all material, right?’
‘Yeah, it’s all material for the brilliant books you’ll write. But it’s also OK if it isn’t. You’re allowed to find this really hard and you don’t have to apply any kind of reasoning or meaning to it. It’s heartbreak, no one ever said it was easy.’
‘Love is like a disease. It will go away over time, and I’ll be healthy again, but until then, I just have to suffer. It’s so shit.’
‘Ooh, that was good. You should put that in your book,’ I say, genuinely impressed by her way with words.
‘I’ve written three thousand words, you know. It’s a book about a girl who falls in love with her boss and has to choose between him and her career. I’ve called it Work/Love Balance. It’s just a working title. But it’s good, I think, the story. And I’m good at it too. I enjoy it. So I’ll plug away at it while helping people find the right soil for their gardens, and helping Aunty Jo with the bees, and I’ll be fine. Possibly even happy, imagine that?’
‘See, Guernsey suits you. It’s weird, all these years I imagined you anywhere but here, but you weren’t born to be lost among the millions, Renée. You’re a …’
‘Queen bee?’
‘I mean no, that isn’t what I was going to say. I meant you’re supposed to be the big fish in a little pond but sure, Queen Bee, why not? So, is there a cool best friend in this book of yours? A darker, sultry type who returns from the big smoke and saves the day? Eye eye, wink wink.’
‘No, but I’ve called my main character Flo, obviously.’
‘Obviously,’ I say, shuffling up to her. ‘I’m honoured, thank you.’
‘She smells of poo and never shaves her armpits.’
‘Oi, watch it,’ I say, picking up one of her chips and chucking it onto the sand below. A seagull swoops in and gobbles it up, then makes a horrible noise to let all his friends know that there are two humans sitting on the bunker throwing chips onto the beach. Soon we’re surrounded. Renée throws a chip into the air and a seagull catches it mid-flight. This turns into an aggressive game of catch with the birds until all our chips are gone and the seagulls get bored and fly away.
‘Promise you’ll come back a lot?’ she says, rolling her paper up into a ball.
‘Promise.’
‘This is your hive. You leave, but you can always come back. Guernsey is nice when you think about it that way.’
There’s a peacefulness about her; it’s different from the way she has always been. Until now she’s been consumed with a restlessness, a frustration. A feeling that she is running out of time, that nothing will ever be enough. Chasing something that isn’t there, just to keep moving forward. But now she has found her purpose, she knows the role she wants to play in her own life. She is a creator, and she will build her own world here. It all makes perfect sense.
As for me, I am not my story’s leading lady and I’m perfectly OK with that. I want to work for other people, sit on the sidelines and cheer other women on. I don’t need limelight, I don’t need power, I just want to feel peaceful. To keep that rat away. I feel that this time, with everything I’ve learned, London will do that for me. I’ll commit to the grind and go to work. I’ll hide in the anonymity of it all. I’ll find people and things I love to cling on to, but I’ll never need more than that. It’s a very unimpressive thing to say out loud, but a very comforting thing to feel inside: that all you really want is to have enough to get by, enough to be happy, and enough to be healthy. Nothing more. Just … enough.
‘I think you should have all of Lillian’s suits for work,’ Renée says, like a nana who is giving away her precious jewellery before she dies. ‘I’ll never get any use out of them here, and you’d look brilliant in them. I love all the casual stuff, and I’ll keep the gowns, of course. And Lillian made me the most brilliant pair of dungarees covered in bees to wear at the garden centre. But take the suits. You’d have to promise me to wear them and ditch the black though. OK?’
‘Wow, I’d love them. And yes, weirdly black hasn’t been feeling right lately. Bright red trouser suits it is! Aren’t we lucky?’
‘We are. Let’s swim,’ she says, jumping up to her feet.
‘No way, I’m wearing terrible knickers.’
‘Well, I’m going in,’ she says, running down the wall and onto the sand, tearing off her clothes and throwing them onto a rock. I sit back on the bench and take this spectacle in.
‘One, two, three!’ she shouts, running down the beach. I watch her bottom as it merges into the water, then bounces up as she dives and disappears. Like the true island girl that she is.
We’re the same, but different.
Friends forever x
Author Note
Although there are similarities to my life in the Renée and Flo novels, all characters are entirely fictional. Guernsey is a real place, and many of the locations in the book are also real. But I made up lots of things about those too, so don’t stress yourself with comparing it to the real thing. This is fiction. I hope you enjoy the contents of my head.
Dawn
x
Acknowledgements
This book has been in the making for many years. It’s down to Emily Kent who emailed me one day, out of the blue, when my career was in the pan and I was on my knees. At the time, the only job I could get was doing a YouTube campaign for British potatoes. I had to eat potatoes every day for a month and make videos about it. At any other moment in my life, this might have been my dream job, but at the time it was extremely depressing. Emily emailed me to say she loved my weekly column in Stylist magazine (I’d just lost my column, thus being on my knees gorging on potatoes) and wondered if I’d ever considered writing fiction. I had but was way too scared to try. Emily gave me a two-book deal with Hot Key Books, and that was how Renée and Flo’s story began. I’m honestly not sure what I would have done if I’d never got that call, it literally changed my life. A note to you all, if you’re on your knees and feel like a total waste of space, eat some spuds and keep your head up. You never know what’s around the corner. Maybe, just maybe, there is someone out there who thinks you’re ace and the right opportunity is about to come knocking. Thanks, Emily, I’m so grateful for the opportunity you gave me. I owe you some potatoes.
Thanks endlessly to my agent of all agents, Adrian Sington, who I accidentally called my ‘Adrient’ on a call the other day. I think we can all agree that’s how we should refer to him from now on. Over twenty years of working with each other and it just gets lovelier and lovelier. I adore you; you’re brilliant and clever and kind and always make me feel so smart and funny, which is excellent Adrienting.
My team at HarperCollins, thank you so much, as always. Charlotte Brabbin, you are a brilliant editor. It’s always such a thrill to get your notes back and work on these books with you. Liz in PR, thanks again for all the planning and bubbles. To everyone in Marketing and Design for the cover. Charlie for the support and absolutely everyone else who I don’t work with often, but know you work so hard on my behalf. You’re a brilliant team. Huge thanks, too, to Helen Gould for the sensitivity read and her insightful notes.
I must thank my school friend Sophie Riley who, back in 2018, spent hours on the phone with me answering many questions as I created the character of Flo. Your openness helped me draw Flo’s experience and make what she was going through feel very real. Your honesty was so inspiring, and I’m sure many young women reading the book will find some comfort knowing they are not alone. The notes we sent each other at school gave me the original idea for Paper Aeroplanes. I keep them safe, a snapshot of who we were during a wild time in our lives, and which we would have forgotten had it not been for those epic notes we wrote. Thanks again, I owe you a lovely cup of tea.
My Aunty Jane and Uncle Tony, for all the animals you put into my life, including the bees and the countless moments of pride when I would give someone the gift of ‘Aunty Jane’s honey’. Thanks for making Guernsey more than just an island and making sure that Jane and I explored it. And for making home somewhere I still love to come.
I’d like to thank absolutely everyone who came to Honeybee because you’d read Paper Aeroplanes and Goose. This book really is for you. Since those books came out, we’ve shared so many beautiful moments at signings and events. You’ve told me your stories of friendship and loss, and I’ve taken them all in. I only get to do this because of you, so really, you’re top of my list for thank yous. I’ve been so excited to give you this new instalment of Renée and Flo, I really hope you enjoy it.
My Patreon crew, you know I love you!
To Choose Love and Flackstock. I love being a part of both of you. Even though I wish there was no need for any of it, and that the world was a more gentle and kinder place, that is not reality. It is an honour to do what we do. I love you!
Eleanor Bergstein, my dear friend and oracle on love. Thank you for creating the greatest love story of all time (Dirty Dancing) which inspires so much of my writing. I love you, and I’ll come back to NYC for burgers and red wine really soon.
Thank you to Virginia Woolf for the words, ‘A woman is to have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.’ This year, I got the room. My studio is one of my favourite places to be. A room all of my own, to write my books and to hide all of my clothes from my husband.
Chris, Art, Valentine, Myrtle, Boo, Meatloaf, Puffin and Sandwich, I love you all. How lucky I am to go to my office then come home to you all.
I could go on … thanks for reading my book, I hope you enjoyed it. x
Keep Reading …
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Look out for more fresh, frank and very funny fiction from Sunday Times bestseller, Dawn O’Porter
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About the Author
DAWN O’PORTER is a Sunday Times and Irish Times bestselling author, whose books have sold over a million copies worldwide. A full-time writer, Dawn is also well known for her TV work, journalism, podcasting, designs for Joanie Clothing, and as the co-founder of Choose Love.
After years living in LA, Dawn recently resettled in the UK with her husband Chris, her two boys Art and Valentine, and a whole menagerie of animals. Back on home soil, and feeling the pull for Guernsey where she was raised, Dawn was inspired to write a new chapter in the lives of island girls Renée and Flo – characters from her YA ‘Paper Aeroplanes’ series. A homecoming in more ways than one, her novel Honeybee came to life.
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Also by Dawn O’Porter
FICTION
The Cows
So Lucky
Cat Lady
PAPER AEROPLANES SERIES
Paper Aeroplanes
Goose
NON-FICTION
Life in Pieces
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