​

The gallery hummed with voices and clinking glasses, the kind of brittle sophistication Sarah had only read about in magazines. She stood near the back, fingers grazing the spine of her debut novel stacked neatly on a table draped in white linen. Whispers in the Margins—her name printed in black across the cover—looked unreal, as if it belonged to someone else.

​

“Sarah Kingston,” a critic boomed as he pressed her hand. His breath smelled of wine and cigars. “You’ve managed what most spend a lifetime chasing. A novel with soul. Remember this night—it’ll never come again.”

​

She smiled, cheeks hot, though she wasn’t sure if he meant it as compliment or warning. Everywhere she turned, hands reached for hers, voices praising her “sharp eye for detail,” her “promise.” For a moment she felt lifted, as if she’d stepped into a story she’d written for herself.

A younger editor—sharp suit, sharp smile—leaned in. “Enjoy this. The industry is fickle, but tonight you’re its darling.”

​

Sarah laughed nervously, clutching her glass tighter. “I only hope the next one lives up to it.”

He raised a brow. “The trick isn’t living up to it. It’s selling it.”

​

The words unsettled her, though the champagne fizz softened the sting. She glanced again at her name on the cover, bold and unblinking. For years she had scribbled stories in notebooks, chasing the pulse of a sentence, the way words revealed truth when handled carefully. Now those private pages were bound and public. She should have felt triumphant. Instead, a thread of doubt tugged at her chest.

​

Later, slipping outside for air, she leaned against the cold stone wall of the building. The laughter and chatter inside drifted through the glass like another world. She pulled a notebook from her bag—habit she couldn’t shake—and scribbled a line: To write is to believe you can catch truth before it vanishes.

​

She paused, staring at the words. They felt fragile against the night.

​

“Still working?” a voice asked. She turned to find a senior editor from one of the big houses, grey at the temples, confidence oozing from every gesture.

​

“Always,” Sarah said, embarrassed, snapping the notebook closed.

​

He studied her with amusement. “Good. But remember—talent is never enough in this business. You’ll learn.”

​

Then he was gone, back into the warmth of the party, leaving Sarah shivering with the odd sense she had just been given both a promise and a threat.

 

Sarah's flat smelled of coffee and ambition. Manuscripts spread across every surface—her second novel in neat stacks, each copy marked with a different agent's name. The morning light caught the dust motes dancing above the pages, and for a moment she felt suspended in possibility.

​

She had been writing since dawn, lost in the rhythm of revision. This book was different from Whispers in the Margins—deeper, more honest. Where her debut had been careful, this one bled.

 

She had written about desire that destroyed, about women who chose ruin over safety, about the violence of loving someone who would never love you back.

​

The phone rang. Margaret, her agent.

​

"Sarah? I've heard back from Hartwell & Sons."

​

Sarah set down her pen, heart quickening. Hartwell had kept the manuscript for six weeks—longer than usual. That had to mean something.

​

"They passed," Margaret said, her voice flat.

​

The words hit like cold water. "Did they say why?"

​

"Too introspective. Too niche. They felt it lacked the commercial appeal of your first."

​

Sarah stared at the pages scattered before her—months of late nights, of mining her own pain for something true. "What about Finch & Morton?"

​

A pause. "Also passed. Sarah, I think we need to talk about positioning. Perhaps something lighter for the next—"

​

"No." The word came out sharper than she intended. "This is the book I wanted to write."

​

"Wanting and selling are different things."

​

After Margaret rang off, Sarah sat in the silence of her flat. She picked up a page—a passage she had laboured over, about a woman watching her lover leave for the last time. The words had felt vital when she wrote them, like capturing lightning. Now they seemed small, irrelevant.

​

She walked to the kitchen and poured wine, though it wasn't yet noon. Through the window, London churned on—buses and tourists and people with purpose. She had thought her second book would establish her as serious, as someone with something to say. Instead, it had revealed her as naive.

​

The wine tasted bitter. She thought of the launch party, of the critic who had called her promising. Perhaps promise was all she would ever have—the echo of potential, forever unrealised.

​

Her phone buzzed. A text from an editor at Prince Publishing: "Heard about Hartwell. Interested in discussing your next project. Lunch tomorrow?"

​

Sarah stared at the message. Prince Publishing was smaller than Hartwell, less prestigious. But they were offering a conversation when others offered silence.

​

She typed back: "Yes."

​

Later, as evening settled over the city, Sarah sat at her desk with a fresh notebook. She tried to write, to push past the sting of rejection, but the words felt hollow. The critic's voice echoed: You’ll learn.

​

She closed the notebook and poured another glass of wine. Tomorrow she would have lunch with Prince Publishing. Tomorrow she would smile and discuss market appeal and commercial viability. Tomorrow she would begin the slow work of learning that wanting to tell the truth and being allowed to tell it were entirely different things.

​

The manuscripts still covered her table, neat stacks of unwanted honesty. She gathered them into a box, her movements sharp with disappointment. The book wasn't dead—not yet. But something in her had shifted, some faith in the purity of the work had cracked.

​

She would learn to write what sold. She would learn to want what others wanted her to want. She didn't yet know this was the first step towards becoming someone else entirely.

​