In response to JS's suggestion on the Joey-bashing thread!
The author sat at her typewriter, a look of steely determination on her face. This time, THIS TIME, her character would do as she wanted and not go shooting off on some track of her own. She had taken her inspiration from a newly released film that someone had heard about, but she was tired, and old, and the character now had a virtual life of her own. Forcing things the way she wanted them to go was hard, almost too hard, but she was determined, and this time she prevailed. Singing 'The self preservation society' softly to herself, as much to distract herself as anything else, she typed quickly.
“Jo Maynard came out of the front door of Freudesheim into the bright winter sunshine, as relieved to escape the house after days of snow as she had been as a child in Austria. She walked round the side of the house to the garage and carefully reversed the car out onto the drive. She was used to driving in this weather, and she was only going up to the San. She pulled out of the drive and set off up the road, singing at the top of her voice. She waved as she passed the file of Chalet School girls heading out to the slopes where they would enjoy skiing and sledging. Miss Wilmot who was with them smiled as she recognised the familiar notes of the “Red Sarafan” floating through the car windows.
Round the corner the road ran along the edge of the drop to the valley below, and that’s when the disaster struck. Despite the chains the car skidded on the ice, the back swung around and ended up hanging over the chasm below. Jo screamed, and tried to scramble out of the car, but the movement finished what the skid had begun, and the car toppled slowly but surely over the edge.”
‘It didn’t land on a ledge, or catch in a convenient tree’, muttered the author to herself. ‘And there won’t be enough left for her to be ‘still, grey, and to all appearance dead’, either. Nor to be brought back to life, not even if Robin was there to sing to her. Strawberry jam is what she’ll be when she reaches the bottom, and then I’ll never have to write her into another book ever again.’
Sadly this last was true, for even as she sat back from the typewriter, the shock of finally managing to dispose of Jo Maynard caught up with her, and she followed her most beloved creation into the sleep that she had once described as ‘going to sleep with God, to awake in His presence.’
