within him come undone, and he weeps uncontrollably.
When the crying subsides, his mind is rinsed clean and he is able to think calmly for the first time in months. He decides not to return home early. He checks out of the hotel in Thimphu, and takes a room in Paro, a small town surrounded by cloud-welted mountains where he takes long, solitary walks, not thinking about much, trying to centre himself, not forcing it, but letting it happen as naturally as possible. By the time hegets on the plane for the return journey home the anxiety he was gripped by has dwindled to almost nothing and his confidence is restored. The troubles that brought him to Bhutan have not gone away but he is now able to place them in the right context, the first and perhaps most important step when it comes to dealing with them. He has started to make his peace with his mother’s death; he will work things out with Julia and Mandy no matter how long it takes. Adopting a more relaxed attitude to the threat that looms on the job front is in some ways the most difficult thing; he has fought hard to get to where he is now, but as he reflects upon his career, he comes to the realization that nothing is ever guaranteed in publishing. He has always known that but had forgotten it as his mind had grown unquiet. No, publishing is not a profession for the faint-hearted or those who crave certainty and results that are commensurate with effort. That is why he has always found it thrilling, the knowledge that the unexpected is always just a minute or a month away, and that no matter how dire things seem, something will turn up, something always does.
2.
LONDON
S he had decided to leave Zach after she’d had nightmares for five days in a row, in which she died in gruesome ways – disembowelled, shot through the eye (the left), set on fire, drowned in a lake of turpentine, and smashed flat by a locomotive. She was no great believer in the interpretation of dreams, but these seemed to point to the fact that her marriage was killing her, a view her best friend, Anthea, agreed with, so she walked out and the dreams stopped. It wasn’t that her relationship was something she could write a misery memoir about, she wasn’t a battered, bruised, electrocuted victim. No, the truth was far more boring, it was simply that the man she had married because he was passionate and exciting and necessary to her own life had grown distant, dull, and wrapped up in his work. But if Julia Spence thought that leaving meant she was rid of Zachariah Thomas, she quickly found out otherwise. As he bounced from crisis to crisis, she found that they wereas present in each other’s lives as they had been when they were together, perhaps more so because it was difficult to take each other for granted anymore.
Julia did not want to lead a life that was less than fulfilling, and if it was possible she wanted to lead a life that was above average. She had known this from about the age of four when her mother, frustrated by her inability to make anything of her own life, took her older daughter’s life into her hands and attempted to make it into something extraordinary. Ballet classes, tennis lessons, hours and hours spent thumping away on the family piano, perched on a pile of cushions so she could reach the keys – she was pushed into everything she showed any sort of aptitude for, as well as a few activities that she was exceptionally bad at (public speaking came to mind). But in the end she didn’t become world-class in anything her mother thrust upon her. By the time she got to Balliol and chose English and Modern Languages for her undergraduate degree, her mother had given up on her. Importantly, Julia had not given up on herself and now that she was capable of thinking independently she understood that she could lead a life that was not ordinary
without
being able to serve a tennis ball at close to a hundred miles an hour or coaxing out of her stubbornly indifferent piano a
When the crying subsides, his mind is rinsed clean and he is able to think calmly for the first time in months. He decides not to return home early. He checks out of the hotel in Thimphu, and takes a room in Paro, a small town surrounded by cloud-welted mountains where he takes long, solitary walks, not thinking about much, trying to centre himself, not forcing it, but letting it happen as naturally as possible. By the time hegets on the plane for the return journey home the anxiety he was gripped by has dwindled to almost nothing and his confidence is restored. The troubles that brought him to Bhutan have not gone away but he is now able to place them in the right context, the first and perhaps most important step when it comes to dealing with them. He has started to make his peace with his mother’s death; he will work things out with Julia and Mandy no matter how long it takes. Adopting a more relaxed attitude to the threat that looms on the job front is in some ways the most difficult thing; he has fought hard to get to where he is now, but as he reflects upon his career, he comes to the realization that nothing is ever guaranteed in publishing. He has always known that but had forgotten it as his mind had grown unquiet. No, publishing is not a profession for the faint-hearted or those who crave certainty and results that are commensurate with effort. That is why he has always found it thrilling, the knowledge that the unexpected is always just a minute or a month away, and that no matter how dire things seem, something will turn up, something always does.
2.
LONDON
S he had decided to leave Zach after she’d had nightmares for five days in a row, in which she died in gruesome ways – disembowelled, shot through the eye (the left), set on fire, drowned in a lake of turpentine, and smashed flat by a locomotive. She was no great believer in the interpretation of dreams, but these seemed to point to the fact that her marriage was killing her, a view her best friend, Anthea, agreed with, so she walked out and the dreams stopped. It wasn’t that her relationship was something she could write a misery memoir about, she wasn’t a battered, bruised, electrocuted victim. No, the truth was far more boring, it was simply that the man she had married because he was passionate and exciting and necessary to her own life had grown distant, dull, and wrapped up in his work. But if Julia Spence thought that leaving meant she was rid of Zachariah Thomas, she quickly found out otherwise. As he bounced from crisis to crisis, she found that they wereas present in each other’s lives as they had been when they were together, perhaps more so because it was difficult to take each other for granted anymore.
Julia did not want to lead a life that was less than fulfilling, and if it was possible she wanted to lead a life that was above average. She had known this from about the age of four when her mother, frustrated by her inability to make anything of her own life, took her older daughter’s life into her hands and attempted to make it into something extraordinary. Ballet classes, tennis lessons, hours and hours spent thumping away on the family piano, perched on a pile of cushions so she could reach the keys – she was pushed into everything she showed any sort of aptitude for, as well as a few activities that she was exceptionally bad at (public speaking came to mind). But in the end she didn’t become world-class in anything her mother thrust upon her. By the time she got to Balliol and chose English and Modern Languages for her undergraduate degree, her mother had given up on her. Importantly, Julia had not given up on herself and now that she was capable of thinking independently she understood that she could lead a life that was not ordinary
without
being able to serve a tennis ball at close to a hundred miles an hour or coaxing out of her stubbornly indifferent piano a
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