Helen was a writer.  She wrote all her life.  At primary school, when other children struggled to write a page on “What I did last weekend”, Helen provided weekly excerpts from the alternative Mallory Towers that was going round and round in her head.

Helen was a writer.  As a teenager, she wrote soft-focus love stories on the back of her rough book during chemistry.  She always intended to copy them out “in neat” and submit them to “Jackie”, but never quite got round to it.  When she needed a new rough book, she left the old one at the bottom of her schoolbag, to be crushed by muddy hockey boots and old lunchboxes, and, eventually, to be thrown out by Mum at the end of term.

Helen was a writer.  In the sixth form, she was writing The Novel.  She would write on a “broad canvas” like Dickens, a thousand pages too short, Helen Wilkinson’s definitive comment on The Meaning of Life.  Helen Wilkinson, “Young, Emerging Author”, would be referred to as “The Twentieth Century Dickens”.  She wrote upstairs in her room, her family supposing her to be doing A level homework, and she hid her pencil-written pages in a box file containing last year’s geography notes.  Unfortunately, when Mum saw Helen’s A Level mock results and insisted that Helen now work downstairs, The Novel had to stop abruptly, like Coleridge’s Cristobel, at a quite exciting part really, the two main characters, Dave and Beverley, getting round to meeting each other at last, and firing off clever, witty comments in the manner of Oscar Wilde.  Mum, incorrectly, blamed Radio 1.

There had been no time to write at university - parties, boyfriends, even work sometimes.  After university, Helen and Steve got married and, for the next few years, Helen was teaching at primary school, until her own children arrived - and they certainly kept her busy.

One morning, Helen had nothing to do: Sophie was at school and Jamie now doing five mornings at playgroup.  She hoovered the cornflakes from the kitchen carpet, took the fish fingers out the freezer for tea and tidied up the toys in the living room.  And still it was only ten o'clock.

For a while, she read the paper in the kitchen, illuminated by a rare January sun, then she rang her friend, Jan, for a chat.  Surely, there was something she OUGHT to do, she thought as she put the phone down.  She would read her book, although, she wasn’t enjoying her library book particularly.  It was very dry, with story lines which didn’t work and characters which didn’t have any … well … character.  She could have done better herself. 

That’s what she would do this morning.  She would write.

Helen found an A4 pad at the bottom of a drawer, a pencil in the children’s play box, and a Thomas the Tank Engine rubber in Jamie’s Early Learning Centre desk.  She wrote “Chapter” at the top of the page, then stopped abruptly.  She hadn’t watered the plants for ages and, there, now the washing machine had finished and she really ought to put another load in the tumble drier. 

Twenty minutes later, back in her seat and staring at the blank piece of A4, Helen stared into the bright winter sunshine.  Beverley and … Dave, was it?  Helen’s brother-in-law was called Dave, a real yuppy, who drove a sports car and dated thin women draped in pashminas.  And what sort of girl was Beverley?  What did Beverley actually do in The Novel?  Just fall in love with Dave.  It sounded really ordinary now, although it had seemed so exciting and grown-up when she had been writing it in the sixth-form.  Now Beverley was probably doing the school run, hoovering and emptying the washing machine.

Helen looked at the clock again: she could go to the gym and do her usual workout before Jamie finished at nursery.  She roughly rubbed out the word “Chapter” and put the A4 pad aside.  Maybe, she had writer’s block. 

When Helen reached the leisure centre, she found that Emma was the fitness consultant on duty, a pretty girl, dark hair scraped loosely into a ponytail, her face bronzed by the leisure centre sun-bed, her slim body toned by exercise.  In the dance studio, Sebastian was leading a keep-fit class for middle-aged ladies, explaining, in his namby-pamby voice, some exercise which involved clenching the buttocks.  Then he switched on his music and exclaimed, with an accompanying limp-wristed gesture, “Ooh! Boy George!  My favourite!”  Sebastian might act camp, but, as Helen knew, he flirted compulsively with every female who chanced across his path.

Helen got on the steppers, by the window which faced down on to the swimming pool, and watched a class of primary school children splashing about, their voices resonating across the pool, the bright January sun from the glass roof flickering on the water.  Suddenly, Helen was overwhelmed with the urge to capture all this in words.  The sun was shining on the water … No, that just sounded dull … glinting? … twinkling?  … No, not twinkling …………  She must be able to think of something better.  She was supposed to be a writer!

Emma was now walking beside the swimming pool, carrying a cup of coffee, watched eagerly, from the high life-guard’s chair, by Tim, the newest fitness consultant, an amiable country lad, well-liked by Helen and the other gym-users.  Emma stopped at the bottom of Tim’s life-guard’s chair and chatted for several minutes, Helen noticed.  Jan was of the opinion that there was definitely something going on there. 

Helen stopped exercising at 11.45.  Ten minutes in the shower, five minutes in the car and she would be there to meet Jamie from playgroup.  At four minutes to twelve, she was rushing out the gym, hurrying past the middle-aged ladies who had just finished Sebastian’s exercise class, when she spotted Sebastian himself, standing rather close to Emma, as they looked at something on the computer, his hand hovering around her waist.

During the afternoon, Jamie wanted to draw and Helen gave him the piece of paper with the word “Chapter” rubbed out but still almost visible.  At 3.30, they met Sophie from big school, then it was children’s television and ballet.  As she cleared away tea, Helen thought again about Beverley and Dave.  They really were incredibly boring.  The Novel just wouldn’t work.

Helen and Jan normally attended Legs, Bums and Tums with Sebastian on Thursday mornings.  Jacky, assistant manager of the leisure centre and Sebastian’s girlfriend, snatched their entrance money off them without speaking, and slammed it noisily into the till.  Sebastian himself was hovering round the desk, but Jacky was pointedly turning her back on him, hunching her shoulders seemingly to keep him away. 

“Got a pen?” he asked, nervously.

“No!” snapped Jacky.  “Get your own!”

Jan grinned at Helen.  “You could write a book about this lot!”

Helen stared at her, open-mouthed for a full minute.  Of course!

She worked on the idea in her head for several weeks, thought it all through as she worked out at the gym daily.  She changed all the names, of course, and expanded on the characters.  Emma (now Emily) was a philosophy student at the university and very clever, and the career of Sebastian (now Dominic) as a ballet dancer had been cut short through injury.

At half-term, Helen persuaded her husband, Steve, to buy a computer (“Educational, for the children,” she told him) and, after Sophie and Jamie returned to school and playgroup and suddenly the house was blissfully silent again, Helen wrote (or typed) profusely and frenetically, so fast that her fingers hurt.  Such a compelling story!  All human life was here.  Surely, everybody would rush to buy her book.  Helen Melton would be the literary discovery of the year, the literary lion from Essex.  There weren’t many writers emanating from East Anglia - except Dorothy Sayers, Margery Allingham, Ruth Rendle, P D James …

After a short break for Easter, she was writing again, totally absorbed in Tom and Emily, Dominic and Caroline (actually Jacky), a real grown-up novel this time, funny yet profound, a novel to make you laugh, make you cry, make you angry.  This is what it would say on the dust jacket.  Helen Melton’s sensational first novel! “I couldn’t put it down!” (The Times)  “Real characters leap off the page!” (Daily Telegraph).  Every morning, Helen rushed back to her computer, feeling again that wonderful surge of adrenaline as she logged on and inserted her memory stick into the USB port, although progress was slow: mid-June and only half way through.

“Did you know that Joan Stamp is retiring from Little Tukeley Primary?” said Steve one evening.

“Is she?” Helen replied, distractedly working through another twist of the plot in her mind.  She could use someone like Joan Stamp.  Of course!  Joan Stamp used to teach Tom years ago.

“Her post is going to be advertised in the local paper,” said Steve.  “Why don’t you apply?”

“What about Jamie?”

“He’ll be at big school next year.  You’d get school holidays and half terms, and, quite frankly, love, we need the money.”

Helen really didn’t want to work.  She had a novel to finish.  She was a writer, but, well, she would apply, to please Steve.  She wouldn’t get the job, of course.

She got called for interview.  A whole morning, this interview took up - her writing time!  Next morning, she switched on her computer as usual.  She was just reading through the last few paragraphs as she always did, ironing out inconsistencies and clumsy phrasing, when the telephone rang.  It was Councillor Harris, chairman of the Little Tukeley School Governors.  He was offering her the job.

She had to take it, of course.  Helen and Steve really did need the money.  She did try to continue write more during the last few weeks of the summer term, but her mind was now full of reading schemes and Key Stages. 

Now Sophie and Jamie use the computer to play games and a memory stick gathers dust at the back of a drawer.