AND FINALLY Don’t give up - dreams do come true
ONCE upon a time (as the fairy tales begin) my ex-husband and I were invited to lunch with a couple we had met through friends.
Hearing they had a daughter of ten or 11, I took along my recently published novel, The Stove Haunting, for her.
She and I talked and talked, and to be honest, I was more interested in the child than in the adults at the smart lunch! She told me she dreamed of being a writer . . .
So many people say that. So many hopes, expectations, disappointments. I sent little Christina a card with a kite on it, by way of encouragement, telling her to fly.
Years passed, her parents became friends and so it was that, after the end of my marriage, I was invited to her 2004 wedding to a handsome American. Off she went to live in the States.
And that might have been the end of the story, had she not made contact a decade later to say she’d been back, sorting out her old room at her parents, found the little card with the kite and was determined to become a children’s author.
She visited — and the crossgenerational friendship was resumed across the miles.
The lovely, gentle mother-oftwo experienced setback after setback, rejection after rejection, but her experience as a teacher made her determined one day to succeed and write the story she knew was inside her. She refused to give up.
So can you imagine how thrilled I was, last October, to received a book from the States with an inscription that made me cry.
The book was Wildoak by C. C. Harrington, published to massive acclaim in the States and just out here. When I finished reading it I shouted aloud: ‘You did it, my girl!’
I’m as proud of this wonderful, magical novel about a snow leopard, a girl with a stutter, a threat to a wild wood and the interconnectedness of all things — as if I’d written it myself. That little girl flew high.
÷ Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, london W8 5TT, or email bel.mooney@dailymail.co.uk. Names are changed to protect identities. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.