About Three Authors Read online

  Some see a weed, I see a wish.

  Patti Roberts

  Paradox Publishing.

  http://bit.ly/paradoxcovers

  Dedicated to my facebook family – far too many of you too mention - This book was inspired by you all.

  Special thanks to chief Beta reader Annme Spiby – you rock!

  Heartfelt gratitude to Ella Medler and Tabitha Ormiston-Smith, my wonderful editors, for their knowledge and expertise.

  Smashwords Edition License Notes.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work. This book is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents depicted herein either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Book Layout ©2014 http://bit.ly/paradoxcovers

  Edited By Ella Medler & Tabitha Ormiston-Smith.

  Chief Beta Readers - Annme Spiby & Debora Bassett.

  Robert Frost. (n.d.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved August 31, 2014, from BrainyQuote.com Web site: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/r/robert_frost.html

  Copyright © 2014 Patti Roberts.

  About Three Authors/ Patti Roberts. — 1st Edition.

  About The Book.

  “WHOEVER SAID LOVE WAS EASY?” Not Becky Jensen!

  BECKY JENSEN’S FACEBOOK STATUS UPDATE: I hate cancer! I hate my cheating boyfriend! I hate my best friend! I Hate Christmas!

  When Becky’s mother died on Christmas Eve a year ago, Becky stopped believing in Christmas.

  When Becky’s father remarried four weeks ago, Becky stopped believing in family.

  An hour ago, when Becky caught her boyfriend kissing her best friend, Becky stopped believing in love.

  Heartbroken, Becky makes a wish that changes her life forever… The very next day, she is boarding a plane at Heathrow airport and flying halfway across the world to interview three authors. The Authors, all friends since their twenties, are now in their fifties.

  Not only does Becky learn about the lives of these three incredible women, she also learns a lot about herself.

  Becky also discovers that all families have their secrets, and hers is no exception.

  Prologue.

  BECKY JENSEN’S FACEBOOK STATUS: This past year, against all the ups and downs imaginable, I received the greatest gift of all — the gift of unconditional love. And with love, came the gift of forgiveness. Somewhere around the 1700s, a fellow called Alexander Pope wrote, ‘to err is human; to forgive, divine’. It is my humble opinion, however, that my mum wrote it best in a letter she wrote before she died.

  Chapter 1

  All I Want For Christmas.

  Becky’s earliest Christmas memory was from when she was about four years old. She remembered a gift from under the tree which had been wrapped in shiny red and green striped paper covered in tiny Santas.

  “This is for you, Becky.”

  Inside the wrapping paper was a beautiful doll with wavy, long, auburn hair. It was the most beautiful doll Becky had ever seen.

  “What’s her name?” she had asked, her eyes unable to leave the doll’s beautiful face.

  Twenty-four years later.

  BECKY JENSEN’S FACEBOOK STATUS: In life, it is said that everything happens for a reason. So I ask you this, Cancer, what is your reason?

  Fresh tears blurred Becky Jensen’s vision as she gripped the steering wheel of her Mazda and stared straight ahead through the streaky windscreen. The wind and snow swirled outside, misting the oncoming traffic. The roads were busy; people had left work early for their last-minute Christmas shopping. Shopping, however, was the last thing on Becky’s mind this Christmas Eve. At twenty-eight, apart from her mother’s death, Becky had lived a pretty uneventful, run-of-the-mill kind of life.

  On the radio, Mariah Carey was singing “All I Want For Christmas”. Becky sang along to the words of the song, right up until the hiccups made it impossible for her to continue. The song had been one of her mother’s favourite Christmas carols. Two years ago, before her mother, Victoria, fell ill, they had learned the words off by heart. Once all the dirty dishes from lunch were washed and put away, everyone would huddle together in front of the fireplace in the lounge room. Becky and Victoria both dressed up in Santa costumes and performed the song in front of their family and friends. It was a Jensen family tradition. Everyone had to sing a song, read a passage out of one of their favourite books, or read a poem which reflected the Christmas Spirit. Costumes were optional, but were usually worn by everyone.

  The Christmas holidays had always been such a happy time in the Jensen household. Although Becky had moved out of the family home a few years earlier, she had never thought for a single moment that the Jensen family’s Christmases would ever change. She remembered her unbridled excitement as a little girl. She would run down the stairs on Christmas morning, her fingers brushing over the ivy- and tinsel-encrusted banister that Victoria decorated every year, along with the rest of the household, inside and out. Victoria would stand outside in the snow in her rubber boots, look up at the brightly coloured house covered in a million and one twinkling Christmas lights, and say, “Eat your heart out, Clark Griswold.”

  Inside the house, the scent of cinnamon and nutmeg wafted from the kitchen, and the merry sound of Christmas carols filled every nook and cranny of the house. Every morning, Becky would find her father, William, waiting by the beautifully decorated tree. He would be dressed up as a jolly, fat Santa, his long white whiskers askew on his chin and a pair of fragile-looking spectacles perched precariously on the tip of his nose. Victoria would be sitting on the old sofa. Grandma Jensen’s Christmas doilies with festive motives would be hanging over the back of the cushions and on the armrests. Victoria would be smiling and patting the cushion beside her, inviting Becky to come and join her. Once seated beside her mother, William would begin singing along to the carols on the stereo and, one by one, he would hand out the brightly wrapped presents from under the tree. At lunchtime, Grandma and Uncle Steve would arrive, their arms piled high with more gifts.

  That seemed so very long ago now, Becky thought, checking her rear view mirror and changing lanes. A horn blared out behind her, but she just gritted her teeth and ignored the temptation of holding up her middle finger. Victoria’s death a year ago had changed Christmas forever. No, that was not the truth. Cancer had changed Christmas forever, as it spread stealthily throughout Victoria’s body, killing her one cell at a time, transforming Victoria into a lifeless shell of a woman, whom she had barely recognized at the end.

  Becky pulled on the steering wheel, fitting the car into a parking space outside the cemetery, and then turned off the ignition. She sat there for a long moment, just staring at the rows upon rows of bone-coloured gravestones. Rows of concrete markers, she thought, with the sole purpose of navigating mourners to the final resting places of the departed. After a time, she reached down to the floor of the passenger seat, picked up her bag, and slipped the strap over her shoulder. She dropped the car keys in a side pocket and zipped it up, then gathered up a bunch of roses and lilies from the passenger seat beside her. Taking a long breath, preparing herself for the freezing temperatures, she pushed open the car door and swung her legs out. Immediately, the icy fingers of winter ran up her legs like the hands of an overeager schoolboy on a missi
on to reach third base.

  Awkwardly, Becky pulled her long coat firmly around her with one hand, then walked carefully along the well-worn path, gravel and slush crunching perilously beneath her boots. It wasn’t quite six o’clock, but the sky was already turning dark, preparing for nightfall. She looked at her watch. She still had over an hour before she was scheduled to meet up with Roger, her boyfriend, and Mandy, her best friend since school, for drinks at the Red Lion Pub. Afterwards, they would head off for something to eat.

  Roger had mentioned in the morning that he was in the mood for a curry, so curry it would be, most likely at the Mint Leaf restaurant, which was a short stroll from the pub. She didn’t mind one way or the other, and had said so as he pecked her on the cheek and ran out the door on his way to work at the bank, a piece of toast in one hand and a black leather briefcase in the other. She smiled a sad smile, remembering how her mother had given him the leather briefcase on his birthday, shortly after they had started dating. God. That feels like a million years ago, she thought, rubbing her temples with her fingertips as she watched him leave.

  “Red Lion at seven, okay?” he called, the door slamming shut behind him before she’d had time to answer.

  Becky had sat back down at the breakfast table, picked up a crust off Roger’s plate and popped it in her mouth. Eat your crusts, Becky Jensen, her mother would tell her as a child, using her full name whenever she really wanted Becky to pay attention. They’ll make your hair curly. Her mother had been wrong about that; Becky’s hair was long and straight, just the odd kink here and there, but curly it was not. She let out a long sigh, unable to comprehend why Roger had made no mention that he remembered it was exactly a year ago that her mother had died. Didn’t he think that she might need a special hug before he slipped out of the door half an hour before necessary to catch the tube into work, which was something she had noticed him doing more frequently over the last few months?

  And what was that horrible new cologne he had taken to wearing? When exactly had he stopped wearing Calvin Klein, and started wearing this new, heavier scent that brought on an instant headache the moment it wafted out of the bathroom in the mornings? She made a mental note to tell him that whatever it was, it gave her a headache that took half the day to shake off.

  Becky’s shoulders drooped as she walked along between rows of neatly kept gravestones. Finally, she came to an abrupt halt.

  “Merry Christmas, Mum,” she said, brushing a thin layer of snow off the words ‘Victoria Jensen. Beloved wife of William Jensen and mother to Rebecca Jensen’. She leaned down, placing the bunch of red roses and white lilies at the base of the headstone. “I miss you, Mum. I miss Christmas with you. I miss everything with you…” She wiped away a tear, dug out a handkerchief from the front pocket of her heavy woollen coat, and blew her nose in the red paisley linen. Her mother didn’t like tissues. Disgusting things, she’d say, handing Becky a nicely ironed handkerchief from the pocket of her apron. It was always a pretty handkerchief, too, trimmed with a white crochet border, with her mother’s initials embroidered in one corner.

  Her mother had loved nothing more than to sit in her armchair beside the wood-burning fireplace on winter nights, crocheting, knitting, and embroidering while she watched her favourite game shows on the television. Sometimes she would make Becky her own handkerchiefs, pretty floral and paisley ones, with the initials B. J. in the corner, and didn’t Becky cop a world of ridicule for that at school.

  “Becky blowjob, Becky blowjob,” Betsy Cramer and her brown-noser friends would chant as she passed them in the hall in middle school. The worst part was, Betsy would never have ever seen the initials on the corner of her handkerchief if Becky hadn’t offered it to Betsy in the girls’ toilets the day another girl had punched Betsy in the nose and made it bleed. From there on in, the nickname had stuck, even though Becky had secretly taken to using tissues. It wasn’t until two years later, when Betsy Cramer’s family moved abroad to live in Australia, that the nickname was eventually forgotten. Becky never did take her handkerchiefs to school after that, but she never told her mother, who, up until the final weeks leading up to her death, had still taken much pride in making the pretty handkerchiefs for her.

  Even after that doctor’s appointment, the one when Victoria was diagnosed with cancer, which, unknown to them all, had been secretly gathering up its troops, preparing for its hostile and deadly takeover just months after her previous doctor’s appointment, her mother was still quite content crocheting, sewing, embroidering, or knitting away until her father pushed open the front door in the evenings. Becky had fallen apart at hearing the news, but her mother and father had continued to soldier on as though nothing had changed, until everything did.

  Whenever Becky had tried to talk about her mother’s illness, ask if there was anything she could do, her mother would just shake her head, and act as though she’d just been diagnosed with the flu, and insisted that it was nothing that a bowl of homemade chicken soup and a nice warm bath wouldn’t fix. It was one thing to have a positive outlook, Becky thought, but surely total denial was not the solution to her mother’s recovery? She had gone home that same day and typed ‘pancreatic cancer’ into the google search bar. She clicked on a site called ‘My Health News’ and started reading.

  ‘“As a group, pancreatic cancers come with a very low survival rate — seventy-five percent of patients die less than a year after diagnosis, and ninety-four percent die within five years. Pancreatic cancers have a poor prognosis because they are often not detected until the late stages of the disease, and are usually resistant to chemotherapy. One reason is that the cancer is quite often not found until its late stages,” Mitchell Duffy, director of research and scientific affairs, told My Health News in an interview last year. “By the time most patients are diagnosed, the disease has already spread,” Duffy said. “The cancer often escapes early detection because patients display few warning signs that anything is wrong. When patients do experience symptoms, they are often vague aches and pains, such as indigestion or back pain, which can be attributed to many other, less serious ailments.”’

  Becky slammed the lid of the laptop closed, curled up on the sofa fully dressed, and cried herself to sleep.

  At home, everything remained eerily the same.

  “Hello,” William would call out as soon as he came through the door, just as he always had. “What’s for dinner, my love?” he’d ask. Under his arm he would be carrying a shopping bag holding a bottle of wine. On Thursdays, he would bring home roses and lilies, her mother’s favourites.

  Victoria would instantly put down whatever she had been working on. On this particular night, she had been busily knitting a jumper for William. She quickly bundled it up, put it in her knitting bag and hid it under the timber coffee table. It would be the last Christmas present Victoria would give her husband.

  Victoria had held a finger to her lips, and winked at Becky, who was curled up on the sofa reading a book. She ruffled the top of Becky’s head as she passed, just as she’d done when Becky had been a little girl. She flicked through the television channels until she found the evening news. Moments later, she was slipping her hands into oven gloves, taking a shepherd’s pie out of the oven and putting it in the centre of the kitchen table, filling the small kitchen with the delicious smells of lamb, onions and melted cheese on mashed potatoes. The evening routine was as regular as clockwork.

  “Becky, put your book down now and go and wash your hands for dinner,” Victoria would say, busily setting the table. “Are you sure Roger can’t make it for dinner? I’ve cooked enough for all of us.”

  “No, Mum. Roger is working late again tonight.”

  Victoria nodded. “He’s doing an awful lot of overtime these days. Is he still thinking about putting a deposit on that nice house down the street? He’ll certainly be able to afford it in no time with all the extra money he must be making.”

  “I think he’s gone cold on the idea,” Becky replied,
walking down the hall to the bathroom to wash her hands for dinner. “He’s got his mind set on buying something a little smaller and closer to work.”

  The truth was, ever since Victoria had been diagnosed with cancer, Roger couldn’t stand to be anywhere near her. It was as though he were afraid that cancer might be contagious, so working late had become his alibi for missing Thursday night dinners at the Jensens’ household, and just about every other family gathering where Victoria would be present. He was quite relieved when, only a year later, Victoria passed away, taking the cancerous germs with her to the grave.

  Becky knew without a doubt that her father’s new wife, Felicity, who was almost young enough to be her sister, could never replace her mother. Apart from Felicity’s long red hair - which both Mandy and Becky hated to admit was movie star-worthy - D-cup bra and long legs, Becky had no idea what her father had ever seen in the woman. Perhaps that was all he was interested in seeing, big boobs and long legs. Felicity would never have William’s dinner ready for him when he got home from work. Felicity did not like cooking or baking treats for her father, as her mother had done. Felicity preferred eating out or, if the weather was bad, ordering in.

  The first time Becky had met Felicity was at an evening dinner, just eight months after Victoria’s death.

  Hiding behind a napkin, her Uncle Steve had leaned over and whispered in her ear, “My brother is having a midlife crisis,” the day William had introduced Felicity to them at the family dinner. Becky had squeezed her paper napkin so tightly in her fist just listening to the sound of Felicity’s chirpy little voice that her knuckles had turned bone-white. A few moments later, she’d sprung up from her chair, cutting Felicity off mid-sentence as she talked incessantly about office stationery, and working for William in the office at his business, Will’s Wheels.