Publication date: April 4th, 2019
Publisher: Abacus
Pages: 320
Synopsis:
"Incredibly insightful, funny and poignant." Helen Sedgwick
I get up. I go to work. I spend the whole day waiting for the words on my screen to make sense. In the commuter broth of the carriage home, tears run in hot lines to my jaw and for a minute or so, I let them.
Nothing has turned out quite how Rhona Beech thought: she's been swapping one so-so job for another on an annual basis... and now her nine-year relationship has ended abruptly. When her lukewarm efforts to adjust to the changes in her life are thrown entirely up in the air by some unwelcome news, Rhona has to think again.
Her sardonic, funny, poignant attempts to find an answer to the questions she's facing are helped by a cast of friends, strangers and trained professionals. Funny and tender, Keep Walking, Rhona Beech is a beautifully written and brilliantly observant satire on relationships, friendship and life.
Previously published as Head for the Edge, Keep Walking by Cargo Publishing.
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Excerpt
I don't even take off my coat. I beeline for the walk-in cupboard in the living room. Moving a portable heater to one side, I can access a large cardboard box to reach inside. Both blind hands are required to lift out a smaller box placed there in July, when I swore I'd never do this.
Cross-legged on the rug, my coat seams cut into my armpits as I hold him.
My lungs remember air.
I slip-stop through the glossy stack: him alone, me and him, headshots, full-length, family groupings. Set against: landmarks and landscapes and sun loungers and celebrations.
Today has been a subway train rumbling towards this--I have to hear his voice. Just for a moment. The sound of it. I need to. I must.
I can't.
I don't have his new number.
I know I don't. But maybe I do. I reach for my bag and rummage to retrieve the phone. As soon as it's in my hand I feel a little better. Like I've fulfilled at least part of the craving that clawed at me all afternoon, from below the place where I know who I am or what drives me. I click the contacts icon: M... Mark. There he is. With his old number. The one he no longer uses because it's a UK mobile.
I hold the phone to my ear. I imagine it ringing and him answering. I feel sick and stupid for calling him. I haven't actually called him. I imagine we are talking, telling each other what happened today. Laughing before punchlines are delivered because we can second-guess what they will be. The phone is him, in my hand.
I may never hear him again.
The phone drops on the rug and tears trail hot, again, to my jaw.
If I can't hear his voice I will drink. I'll sit here, forget dinner and drink until bedtime.
I can't. I know what that would lead to.
Opening the wine would end in me phoning his mum to ask for his new number and she would a) not give it, and b) phone him and tell him I asked for it.
My number is the same as it always was. My number used to be his number. And he hasn't phoned it since he left.
Kate Tough worked for the Scottish Parliament for six years before returning to her home city, gaining a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow. She writes poetry and fiction rooted in realism, humour and sometimes difficult truths.
She creates astute observational detail in fiction, and explores painful moments, that readers could recognize as themselves or their friends.
Her novel, Keep Walking, Rhona Beech, is the revised 2nd edition of Head for the Edge, Keep Walking. Her short fiction and poetry appear in journals such as, The Brooklyn Review, The Texas Review, and The Found Poetry Review. Kate's poetry pamphlet, tilt-shift, was Runner Up in the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award, 2017.
Kate's been a literacy volunteer and creative writing tutor in many community settings.
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