Listen hard enough and it’ll tell you the story of your life. Whether it’s comedy or tragedy depends only upon where you stop, at a good bit or a bad bit. But the heart doesn’t let you stop,’ said Annette on to the tape machine Dr McGregor gave her. ‘It just goes on and on, carrying its owner along with it, past the definite conclusion its owner longs to have. My resentment at this is nothing to do with suicidal inclinations: just the desire for proper endings and understandings, proper tyings-up, in real life as well as fiction. Not that you care about my mind, Dr McGregor; your area is my body. One of the rules of writing feature films, or so Ernie Gromback told me, is that if everything’s looking just fine three fifths of the way through, the next two fifths must be devoted to making everything go sour. If all is black and sad three fifths in, thereafter you move relentlessly towards your happy ending. If I could see losing the baby as three fifths of the way in, I could then look forward to happiness.
