Today I have with me
uber-talented Queen of Promo and published author of Sophie’s Turn, the lovely
Nicky Wells! Nicky is sharing her ‘Taking the Plunge’ moment, and it is such a
brave leap into the unknown, the girl leaves me in absolute awe!
~ Take it away, Nicky! ~
Taking the
plunge? Who, me? Nah, I’m just emigrating. No big shakes.
“So what do you want to do with your life?” he says to
me, switching into his native English and issuing a challenge: will I speak English, or my native
German? He looks at me expectantly. I
resist the urge to bite my fingernails and stare fixedly out of the window, at
his desk, the floor, anywhere but his probing eyes.
How to answer this
impossible question? If I knew, I
wouldn’t be in this office, I wouldn’t be in the mental mess I am in. What I do know is that I can’t,
don’t want to, continue living my life like this, in a teenage relationship
gone so far beyond stale that it is practically putrefied; living at home with
my parents; studying something that bores the hell out of me and fundamentally
doesn’t interest me. Heck, I’m only
nineteen! There’s got to be more to life
than this!
What I also know
with inescapable certainty is that this linguistics lecturer, who has just
disabused me of any notion of ever getting any funding for my selected course
of study, or earning any money anytime soon, he is waiting for an answer. Six months of abortive study, relationship
despair, and an urgent desire to leave home have converged, bizarrely, on this
one moment in time. The pressure is
on. I must speak, or I’ll look
completely stupid. I open my mouth and—
“I want to move to
England,” I say. And before I can stop
myself, more words tumble out. “I want
to enrol in a university and study something useful, and something
interesting. I don’t want to study
English, I want to speak it, live it. I
know I can do it. I…”
I peter out, feeling
foolish. Surprisingly, my lecturer, who
had previously slouched in his swivel chair with an expression of bored
detachment, is sitting upright and regarding me with new interest.
“Then why don’t
you?” he asks, simply.
He took me
seriously, even if my family didn’t. I
knew they wouldn’t, I knew they would put all manner of obstacles in my way,
the obvious one being money. So I didn’t
tell them. I quietly and with an
unfamiliar sense of purpose, destiny and absolute certainty, went about
obtaining application forms for various universities, taking a crash-course in
the English admissions system (then still run by UCCA) and in filling in wholly
unfamiliar forms in a non-native language.
Amazingly (and thankfully!) the institutions at the other end took me
seriously, too, and before I knew it, offers started rolling in. The third letter was the one I had been
waiting for, an unconditional offer from Royal Holloway and Bedford New
College, University of London, in Egham.
I completed and returned the acceptance slip, and then I told my Mum.
Mum, bless her, was
completely bowled over. Presented with a
fait accompli, she hugged me with a proud fierceness that took me by
surprise. There was a glint of something
in her eyes that I have since discovered was admiration, and envy. Apparently, and without knowing, I was
fulfilling one of her lifelong ambitions:
to leave the country, to start over, to do something fresh. And scary!
The next four months
were a whirlwind of planning and organisation, preparation, packing and
goodbyes. I don’t think I ever once
stopped to consider the enormity of the task I was undertaking. It was just what I was meant to do.
So when I arrived in
Egham on an extremely rainy and dull late September day in 1993, I knew that I
had come home. That was slightly odd,
bearing in mind I’d never even been to Egham before. In fact, the longest time I had ever spent in
England before that day was a five-day trip to London with my boyfriend (yes,
he of the stale relationship) just after A-levels. And still, I belonged. I don’t quite understand how, or why, but I
slipped into a life, my life, over here in the UK as though I belonged. I had never belonged anywhere before, not like this. I spoke the language, I learned the customs, I
made friends, and I never looked back.
Clearly, I never
went back, either, even though my family expected me to return home within
three weeks. OK, then, three
months. Well, certainly after three
years at the end of the degree course, right?
Wrong. I found a life and a sense of being here, a
confidence and an outgoing personality that I didn’t know I had (and still
don’t have when speaking German!). At
the end of the degree course, I moved on to another course, then found a job,
eventually met my husband, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Looking back now, I
shudder to think at my utter naivety. I
certainly couldn’t emigrate, up stick and leave, just like that, ever
again. I might have made it all sound
very easy, but it wasn’t, in retrospect.
For starters, within three hours of arriving, I hit my first
bureaucratic obstacle when the local bank refused to open an account for me as
they classed me as ‘overseas, with no source of income.’ It took the signature of a guarantor to open
an account, and then it was on strictly limited terms. Hey ho, never fear! Obstacles were there to be overcome, and I
was an unstoppable force. I committed
many a cultural mishap along the way but was fortunate enough to find friends
to show me the light (or the right way to hold your fork in these parts). So no, it didn’t feel like taking the plunge,
but it does, now.
I simply hope that I
will afford my children the same level of freedom and trust when they get ready
to do something seemingly utterly insane, irrational or crazy. I also hope that that endeavour doesn’t take
them to the other side of the world!
~ Told you it was a
biggie, didn’t I? Nicky, my parachute jump pales into insignificance by
comparison. At least I was landing in
familiar territory – I hoped. I take my
hat off to you! And, oh boy, I – along with your reader fans and the many other friends you’ve helped make
feel at home at loveahappyending.com – am sooo glad you stayed. ~
About Nicky Wells: Romance
that Rocks Your World!
Rock On! Nicky Wells writes
fun and glamorous contemporary romance featuring a rock star and the girl next
door. She recently signed her work with
U.S. publisher, Sapphire Star
Publishing. Nicky loves rock music, dancing, and eating
lobsters. When she’s not writing, Nicky
is a wife, mother, and occasional teaching assistant.
Originally born in
Germany, Nicky moved to the United Kingdom in 1993, and currently lives in Lincoln
with her husband and their two boys. In
a previous professional life, Nicky worked as a researcher and project manager
for an international Human Resources research firm based in London and
Washington, D.C.
About Sophie’s Turn
Slapper. Slut.
Adulteress. These are hardly
words that Sophie Penhalligan would normally use to describe herself. Yet this is exactly how she is behaving, all
things considered, even if she isn’t quite married to Tim yet. And it’s all happening because her past is
coming to tempt her! Nine years ago, she
met her teenage idol and rock star extraordinaire, Dan, up close and
personal. Well, almost. Now Dan has
crash-landed back in her life. How could
Tim ever stand a chance against the charming, handsome singer? How could she?
Sophie, now
twenty-eight and a budding newspaper journalist, is happily embroiled in a
relationship with Tim, her boyfriend of two years. Until recently, she was confident that Tim
would eventually propose—probably as soon as he could get his act together. But just as Tim’s persistent inaction is
beginning to cast a cloud over their relationship, Dan’s sudden reappearance
turns Sophie’s world upside down. Thus
unfolds a roller-coaster of events including an ill-fated trip to Paris with
Tim, a night of unfulfilled romance with Dan, Sophie and Tim’s engagement party
gate-crashed by Dan, and Sophie’s professional secondment to accompany Dan’s
band on their revival tour—at Dan’s special request and very much against her
will.
And then, one fine
day in Paris, Sophie suddenly finds herself engaged to Dan while her erstwhile
fiancé Tim is... well, doing whatever it
is Tim does back in London. What is she
to do now? Who wouldn’t give anything to meet their favorite
star, let alone marry him?
Find out how Sophie
gets into this impossible situation, and how she turns it around, in Sophie’s Turn, the honest, funny and
sometimes bittersweet story of one woman’s entanglement with a rock star.
