Third novel · In writing
Molly and Will
Molly wakes up furious, milkless and running on four hours of sleep, having fallen out with her best friend. Will is the one who interrupts her newspaper. What neither of them says over that first coffee: he crawled out of a burning house five years ago and his chosen brother didn't, and she has been counting sober days for longer than she has counted anything else. A love story about being known — and about what happens when the thing you were most afraid of happens anyway.
Teaser
A bad morning, and then him
It is a Saturday that has already gone wrong: no milk, no sleep, and a best friend she is not speaking to. Molly takes her coffee and her newspaper and wants the world to leave her alone. The world sends Will instead — curly hair, a book he actually reads, and the nerve to talk to her before she has finished the first page.
Three weeks in, he has told her everything — the fire, the funerals, the father he can barely speak to. She has told him almost nothing. Because Molly's past is not a story you hand over on a third date, and because some part of her is certain that the moment he knows all of it, he leaves. Happiness, in her experience, is just the pause before the fall.
Two people who have been broken once, working out whether they are brave enough to risk it a second time. How it ends, I don't know yet either — I'm still writing it.
A note for readers: this book deals openly with addiction and relapse, self-harm, suicide and grief.
Author's note
They interrupted another book
When I started this, my third book, I was in the middle of my second novel — and these characters simply interrupted the story. Like everything else I write, they decided; I only told it. And I don't really know them. I get to know them.
I thought I might not put songs to the chapters this time. Then I found myself hearing them anyway, associating every moment with lyrics that have always followed me. Some people have music as something nice in the background; for me it takes over the body like possession, on repeat, until I'm drowning in whatever it stirs up.
So the songs stayed. Read with them or without them — in my never-quiet brain they are part of what happens, and I can't stop it.
The writing
Funnier, filthier, still unguarded
The voice here is closer to thought than to prose: interior monologue at full volume, profanity and self-mockery included, cut with dialogue that reads the way people actually talk. It keeps the emotional honesty of the earlier books but lets the comedy in the door.
Every chapter opens on a song, and the soundtrack carries the mood before a single line of the scene is read — from a hungover London morning to the quietest, hardest chapters near the end.
- Cheer up LondonSoftplay
- Coffee & TVBlur
- FireYungblud
- Start the FireJamie Campbell Bower
- Skip to the Good BitRizzle Kicks
- Raise Your GlassP!nk
- ParasiteJutes
- BreakdownYungblud
- HealTom Odell
- OptionsCameron Whitcomb
The voices
Who they are
Molly
Sharp, funny and gloriously unfiltered — an office job she survives rather than likes, a boss called James she cannot stand, and a flat the size of a wardrobe that she saved for years to buy. Underneath the noise: a Catholic childhood she never talks about, tattoos on her arms and scars she chose not to cover, and years of sobriety she counts one day at a time.
Will
Curly-haired, easy company, re-reading his old favourites — travelling through known ground with Kerouac. Behind the calm: burn scars on his left arm and chest, and a recurring nightmare of the fire he crawled out of and his chosen brother Lucien did not. He has spent five years moving from country to country so that nobody could get close enough to be lost.
Emma
Molly's chosen sister and the loudest person in any bar. An A&E doctor who swears like a docker, tells the truth without softening it, and is the one constant Molly has had for years. She will drive you to a meeting whether you want to go or not.
The story so far
Where the book has reached
- 01
A bad morning
Molly wakes on the wrong side of everything: a stupid argument with Emma replaying on a loop, no milk, no food, and coffee drunk black out of spite. Half a cup later she does the brave, unglamorous thing and texts an apology — and gets one back at the same moment.
- 02
Coffee and the morning paper
At her favourite coffee place a voice interrupts the news. He has seen her here before, every morning, macchiato and messy bun. One coffee turns into three, and then into a table at Marco's Italian around the corner.
- 03
Two heads, one conversation
The chapters alternate. Molly counts everything she wishes she had checked in the mirror; Will notices how she takes her coffee, and how she goes quiet the moment a question gets near her past. Same encounter, two entirely different weather systems.
- 04
The house that burned
Will's nights are not his own. The fire comes back — the log, the smoke, the door he reached and Lucien didn't — and he wakes at three in the morning running his hand over the scars. Molly is the first person in years who makes him want to stay somewhere long enough to be known.
- 05
Three weeks, and a wall
Infatuation, intimate dinners, a father recovering from a stroke on a geriatric ward, and Emma finally meeting the man in question. Will has spilled everything. Molly has told him almost nothing — and every time he gets near the core of it, she changes the subject.
- 06
The slip
One loud night, one fight that neither of them entirely meant, and years of sobriety come apart in a week. What follows is not a rescue but a reckoning: a flat cleaned by two people who refuse to leave, a bucket held by an A&E doctor, and a man who says he isn't going anywhere and has to prove it. The story is still being written.
What is in the way
The hurdles
No villains here — just the ordinary obstacles that keep two people who like each other from admitting it. Told without giving the story away.
Old damage
Both of them arrive carrying a death and a childhood they'd rather not open. Trusting a new person is one thing; trusting your own judgement again is harder.
The wall
Will tells Molly everything. Molly tells him almost nothing — and the silence around her past becomes its own presence in the room.
Happiness is suspicious
Molly has survived chaos for so long that calm feels like a trick. Some part of her would rather break something good than wait for it to break her.
Walking on eggshells
Afraid of pushing her too far, Will stops asking the questions he most needs answered — and the caution puts distance between them instead of closing it.
Life in the way
A father in rehab after a stroke, a stepmother he calls the Wicked Witch, a boss who exists to be endured, money that runs out — the ordinary chaos never pauses for the love story.
Themes
What it is about
- Addiction, relapse and recovery
- Grief and survivor's guilt
- Chosen family
- Being loved at your worst
- Trust after abuse
- Humour as armour
- Two voices, one story
- Music as a second narrator
- London, small hours
Still writing
Molly and Will are not finished with each other yet
Chapters are still arriving, songs and all. Follow the other two novels in the meantime.
All books & playlists