Tipping
Point by Emily Benet
The
sun ... the ocean ... the farmhouse ... the scammer... the police...
the 3-legged dog?
George
and Ellen have retired to sunny Mallorca. Social butterfly Ellen is
itching to make yacht-owning friends while George's heart is set on a
secluded farmhouse in the country. In fact, now that they're no
longer living busy London lives, they're beginning to realise they
have very different ideas of happiness.
Private
investigator Salva specialises in cases of adultery. That's why it's
particularly embarrassing that he didn't realise his long-term
girlfriend has been cheating on him. He has no time to nurse a broken
heart, since his family are the victims of a property scam they
urgently need him to solve.
Robyn
Chase is giving talks on her self-help book, No More Toxic
Relationships - 7 Years, 7 Lessons. She's finding it awkward being a
relationship guru when her own boyfriend is avoiding her.
The
sun is shining in Mallorca and everything looks beautiful. But the
residents of one particular apartment block are about to discover it
all might be too good to be true.
Extract
from Tipping Point by Emily Benet
Is
Happiness a choice?
The
sun may be shining in Mallorca, but Salva is in a dark mood. He's a
private investigator specialising in adultery who failed to notice
his girlfriend was cheating on him. To make matters worse his family
has landed a fresh problem on his doorstep. The villa they booked
doesn't appear to exist. They want him to stop nursing his wounds and
track down the scammer. Salva is hiding down by the pool when he
bumps into speaker Robyn Chase, who gives him a taste of her
no-nonsense coaching style. Is happiness a choice? Robyn sounds so
confident he's taken in by her. Of course, he has no inkling that the
relationship guru is hiding her own set of relationship problems.
EXTRACT:
She
dropped her towel on the nearest sun lounger.
“How
are you feeling today?” she asked.
It
was a pointed question. She saw straight through him. He should tell
her he was fine and let her get on with enjoying her afternoon.
“You
don’t want to know,” he said, instead.
She
raised her eyebrows and let out the lightest of laughs. “I see.”
Her
amusement irritated him and he felt a need to clarify. “I’m
angry.”
“That’s
good.”
Had
she misheard? “How is that good?”
“Anger
is healthier than some other emotions, like self-pity, sadness…”
“Can’t
I feel more than one at a time?”
She
was facing the pool, her hands on her hips, but turned back to look
at him.
“You
can choose to feel as many as you like…”
He
did feel sad, didn’t he? And if he felt sorry for himself, he was
fully justified. Sonia had robbed him of everything. She had lied and
cheated and ruined everything he held dear.
“…but
why not choose to feel happy?”
She
lowered herself down on to the side of the pool nearby, her angular
shoulders hunched slightly as her palms pressed against the stone
tiles. She had a delicate butterfly tattoo on the base of her neck,
looking as though it had just come in to land. When she pushed her
hair back, he could no longer see it.
He
blinked, suddenly realising what she’d said.
“It’s
not that easy! You don’t know what happened.” He didn’t like
how petulant he sounded, but he couldn’t help it. It was enough
that Sonia thought him a fool, he didn’t need this so-called
relationship expert thinking he was making a fuss about nothing.
“True,”
she said, “but whatever happened, it doesn’t take away your power
to choose how to feel.”
“OK,
look…” He shook his head and leant forward. She just wasn’t
getting it. She was talking out of her arse because to her, it was
all theory. “I found out my girlfriend of six years, who I was
thinking of proposing to, was cheating on me.”
She
didn’t say anything.
“Like,
badly cheating on me. My neighbour saw her with two different guys
before he came over to tell me… I’ve wasted six years of my life
and you’re telling me I should choose to be happy?”
“You
feel wronged,” she said.
His
eyes widened at the understatement. The anger he felt towards Sonia
had now turned to frustration towards this annoyingly calm young
woman. He moved from the bench to sit beside her with his legs bent
in front of him. In the back of his mind, he realised that it wasn’t
normal to get into a conversation like this with someone he barely
knew and that it would be best if he left her alone. Yet he’d been
alone all day with his thoughts and he couldn’t keep a lid on them
anymore.
“I
don’t feel wronged,” he said, “I was wronged.”
She
nodded and he felt a tiny release in his chest to at least have that
truth accepted.
“OK.
You were wronged.”
“I
was wronged,” he echoed. “She stole six years of my life.”
It
sounded a little melodramatic, even to him, but it was kind of true.
“Six
years of your life,” she echoed. “Didn’t you have any good
times at all? Didn’t you have any valuable experiences or learn
anything new?”
“Yes,
of course, but I’m talking about our relationship. I invested
everything I had into it: a lot of love, a lot of money, a lot of
sweat and tears… we were supposed to be headed in the same
direction.”
Once
again, she didn’t say anything. He noticed her feet turning circles
in the water and thought about saying it didn’t matter, to forget
about it. It was his problem, not hers.
“How
much energy are you willing to give to this story?” she asked, her
eyes meeting his. Dark green, with flecks of amber. He stared back at
her. Story? Did she think he was making this up?
“This
isn’t a story.”
“Of
course it is. We turn everything into a story, giving it our own
little twist. You could have gone for the ‘Oh lucky me, I almost
got married to a cheat, but luckily I had this great neighbour who
had my back and was brave enough to tell me what he’d seen, and in
hindsight, I realise why it had taken me six years to get to the
point of asking her to marry me because I guess, deep down, I knew
she wasn’t quite right for me, and although it hurts, I’ve come
out of this stronger than before and even surer of what I want.’”
Emily
Benet is a journalist, award-winning blogger and author of
contemporary fiction. Her books include the blog-to-book Shop Girl
Diaries, Wattpad hit Spray Painted Bananas and social media romcom
#PleaseRetweet. She lives in Mallorca with her husband and daughter
and the sunny island is the setting for her latest novels The Hen
Party and Tipping Point. She writes regularly for the luxury
lifestyle magazine abcMallorca.
