I went back to the beginning.
Not metaphorically.
Writers do enough things metaphorically.
I went to London.
By then, the first book had been behind me for some time.
Other cities had arrived.
Other rooms.
Other questions.
The story had travelled far enough that returning to where it began felt strangely like visiting a place from memory.
This was inconvenient.
I had never remembered London.
I had written it.
The distinction became less clear somewhere over Europe.
There is a particular anxiety in visiting a city you have spent months describing.
You begin expecting correction.
A street will be narrower than you imagined.
A building will face the wrong direction.
A café will have closed permanently three weeks before your characters ordered coffee there.
Cities are inconsiderate that way.
They continue without consulting manuscripts.
I walked.
That seemed safer than making immediate conclusions.
Piccadilly.
Side streets.
Doorways.
A library.
Places I recognised and places I did not.
The strange thing was that London felt familiar.
Not accurate.
Familiar.
There is a difference.
The city I had written and the city in front of me were not the same place.
I was relieved.
The London in the book had been filtered through two people.
They noticed certain things.
Ignored others.
Moved at their own speed.
The city had become shaped by their attention.
Standing there, I understood something I should probably have understood earlier.
A fictional city is not a copy.
It is a relationship.
The writer looks at the city.
The characters look at the city.
The reader looks through both.
Something is lost each time.
Something else appears.
I spent part of the afternoon in a café.
I chose a table with the wall behind me and a clear view of the door.
This was not intentional.
I noticed anyway.
Apparently, research leaves habits.
I thought about the first pages.
Then the fifth book.
The distance between them seemed much larger than the number of pages suggested.
Characters had changed.
Questions had changed.
I had changed my mind more times than I could count.
The first book did not know what the fifth book knew.
Good.
Beginnings should be allowed some innocence.
I used to think continuity meant making sure the ending matched the beginning.
Now I think it may be the opposite.
The ending should understand the beginning differently.
Otherwise, what exactly was the journey for?
London continued outside the window.
People arrived.
People left.
Nobody appeared particularly concerned about my five books.
This was probably healthy.
I finished my coffee.
Then I went walking again.
There were still a few doors I wanted to look at.
— D. Vaen