May, 2005.
I read the text several times over, but there was no escaping what was in it.
The relationship was over, along with my plans to spend summer with him in Alaska, away from the searing Maltese heat.
My dad saw the look on my face and figured out what happened. The next words out of his mouth would change my life:
‘Remember: Every disappointment is an opportunity.’
I shrugged him off, making out like I wasn’t bothered, ran upstairs to my room, and flopped on the bed. But, as I stared at the ceiling, those words echoed in my head. An hour later, I had a summer job lined up.
Starting in two days.
In England.
That’s how I ended up living in a caravan in the Lake District, at the bottom of Mount Helvellyn, with no internet, no phone reception, surrounded by sheep and llamas. I had to take a bus to the nearest town, Keswick, in order to buy a phone card, just so I could let my parents know that I had arrived there safely. I left out the part where I had to sleep in a broom cupboard that night, but that’s a story for another day.
The plan was to stay there for the summer, then move up to Glasgow, Scotland, to do my Masters in Criminal Psychology, before returning to Malta. It was supposed to be a brief adventure, but I ended up living in the UK for 12 years. Unbeknownst to me, during that time, I had become accustomed to lush greenery, wide-open spaces, and forests.
Mount Helvellyn, Lake District, where I lived for 4 months in 2005.
Malta 2017-2020.
We moved to Malta in January 2017 after a particularly grey year in England. For the first 6 months of 2017, I walked everywhere with my head thrown back, as I marvelled at the blue, cloudless sky. But, after the honeymoon period was over, and work became more intense, I found myself longing for greenery. I needed woods to get lost in. Blue skies are wonderful to look at, but when they’re accompanied by blistering sun and heavy humidity, your workday tends to become a grind.
On a particularly hot day, I decided to shelter inside a cave. I found myself getting nostalgic for England. I wanted to walk in the woods and imagine elves and fairies living inside the tree trunks, having little cups of tea and reading tiny newspapers. A few feet away from me was a caper berry plant. As I stared at it, I visualised myself shrinking until I was about 1 inch in height. All of a sudden, that caper berry bush became a forest! I climbed up on the leaves and got lost in the foliage.
That’s it! I thought to myself. I’ll write a story about a girl who shrinks and gets to meet tiny woodland creatures.
In the heat and humidity, it didn’t occur to me that that story could be the sequel to ‘Ellie and the Cupcakes’. And, once again, just like with the story of ‘Sam the Sneezing Scarecrow’, I soon forgot about what I wrote.
One hot sunny day, I took shelter in a cave...
England, 2021.
I checked my manuscript one last time before sending it over to the editor. A lot of kids had been in touch to ask me to create a sequel for ‘Ellie and the Cupcakes’, so I decided to turn it into a series. However, as I read through the manuscript, something was niggling me. Although the story was fun, it wasn’t an Ellie story. Sure, it had cupcakes and a wishing well, but something was not quite right.
I thought of all the children who had asked me to create a story where Ellie becomes small, as opposed to being a giant in the first book. I was worried about being too predictable, so I wrote different storylines instead. But, at the 11th hour, I was having reservations. Maybe I should be predictable after all? A quick phone call to my friend, Sabrina, confirmed what I’d suspected, and I scrambled to write a story about a tiny Ellie by the end of the day.
As I typed away, I got a sense of deja vu. I’ve written a similar story before, I thought to myself.
Sure enough, a quick search yielded the story I had written in Malta, back in that cave. All I had to do was re-write it. As I racked my brains to figure out how to turn it into a proper Ellie story, I looked outside the window.
Something was happening in the garden. The plants were wobbling about in an unnatural way.
I ran outside and that’s when I saw it.
To be continued…
