Try Not to Breathe (40 page)

Sunday Times Magazine,
3 April 2011

The last time I wrote a column for this newspaper was in 2007. At the time, I was married and expecting a baby. I was also a barely functioning alcoholic who drank bourbon from one of those ceramic novelty mugs that look like a Starbucks takeaway cup.

I wish I could say that losing my baby was my rock bottom. I’m an overachiever. I managed to find several other rock bottoms.

When my husband finally walked out on me and my pickled womb, I tried to write my way out of the hole. Instead, I wrote my way out of a job and into a pub. Have you heard the one about the national newspaper columnist who bangs a busboy in a bar crowded with contemporaries? Don’t worry,
Private Eye
did.

After being thrown out of my own publisher’s building, I also managed the spectacular feat of being thrown out of a publisher’s office where I did not work. It was only fair. I’d turned up, booze steaming from my skin like a geyser, demanding a job I’d turned down months before. A job that had long been filled.

I lost days, I lost weeks. I lost everything.

I woke up with strangers, unconscious in the bed I’d once shared with my husband. I hallucinated, counting glass spiders on my ceiling and willing them to cut me to pieces. I lost every single friend. Irretrievably. Imagine just how badly you’d need to behave to lose every single friend.
Irretrievably.

Eventually, I managed to pull my head above water. Just. For eighteen months I kicked wildly until my legs were so tired I was ready to be carried out to sea.

“If you don’t stop drinking,” my family doctor told me, “you’ll be dead in a year.” I drank that night.

And now I sit with bourbon-free coffee in my mug, liver damage controlled with pills, nursing the blinding clarity that comes with sobriety. That vicious clarity that alcoholics like me try our damnedest to avoid. To my surprise I realize that, rather than grinding toward the inevitable ending of my own story, I’m still in the middle.

So what changed? I found a friend.

Amy Stevenson isn’t an ordinary friend. She’s a girl who everyone has heard of, but she’s likely unaware of her fame. She’s a girl who is also stuck in a deep rut.

The difference between Amy and me is that she hadn’t dug the rut herself, and she refused to lie down and die in it. When she could have given in and given up, she kicked and screamed and used every drop of strength she had. I saw in Amy someone with no second chance, fighting like fury to create one. And when you see that fight take place in front of you, you recognize your own second chance.

So it’s time for me to take mine. To be grateful for it. To earn it and to own it. I have no idea where my second chance leads. All I know is that I need to put one foot in front of the other, every day, forever. And to dedicate each step to Amy.

For my matinée idol

I
used a lot of artistic license in dealing with Amy’s condition, but the Royal Hospital for Neuro-Disability in London is a brilliant organization doing groundbreaking work, so check them out if you’re interested in learning facts rather than my fictionalized account.

So many people helped bring this book to life, and I’m sorry to anyone I’ve overlooked, but first I have to thank Nicola Barr, my awesome agent. Her patience, insight, cheerleading, un-Scooby-Dooing, and brunches can never be repaid. Everyone at Greene & Heaton is wonderful, actually, but I’d also like to thank the brilliant Kate Rizzo. Huge thanks also to Jenny Bent, U.S. agent extraordinaire.

My editors and publishers on both sides of the Atlantic have helped shape this book into something of which I’m so proud, I can’t even articulate it (not great form for a writer). Linda Marrow and Elana Seplow-Jolley from Ballantine/Penguin Random House, Sara O’Keeffe and Maddie West from Corvus/Atlantic, thank you so very much.

To Ilana, for showing me how it’s done, you frickin’ trailblazer. To Sarah, a brilliant writer and a very patient and encouraging reader. Thank you.

My best friend, Carole, who is nothing like Amy’s friends, although we did used to drink Archers and lemonade together. The Midlanders, whose enduring friendship is a source of huge pride as well as belly-hurting laughter. Our playlists helped. I love you guys. To my pals from News International and Associated, thanks for the memories. And thank you to Romi, for the cuppas and hugs.

I was very lucky to have a mum and dad who never did things the boring way and never said I should just get a sensible job. Cristy and Vik, who are my friends as well as my sisters. And Rich, who I dearly wish had been around to see this, and whose strength, wisdom, and
Futurama
quotes I thought about a lot while writing this. He was all right.

And of course, infinite thank-yous to the love of my life, James, and our swarm of funny, loving, rude-song-singing, adventurous, and ridiculous kids: Pops, Bear, Little Legs, and Fu.

H
OLLY
S
EDDON
was born and raised in England, and now lives in Amsterdam with her husband and four children. Throughout her career, Holly has been privileged to work in some of the UK’s most exciting newsrooms. As a freelance writer, she has been published on national newspaper websites, leading consumer websites, and in magazines.

Seddon has been writing short stories since childhood and
Try Not to Breathe
is her first novel.

hollyseddon.com

Facebook.com/hollyseddonauthor

@hollyseddon