Everything Happens for a Reason by Katie Allen

Today is my stop on the blog tour for Everything Happens for a Reason by Katie Allen and I'm delighted to share an extract with you. A big thank you to Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for inviting me and to the author and publisher for providing the extract. 

The Blurb

Mum-to-be Rachel did everything right, but it all went wrong. Her son, Luke, was stillborn and she finds herself on maternity leave without a baby, trying to make sense of her loss. When a misguided well-wisher tells her that ‘everything happens for a reason’, she becomes obsessed with finding that reason, driven by grief and convinced that she is somehow to blame. She remembers that on the day she discovered her pregnancy, she’d stopped a man from jumping in front of a train, and she’s now certain that saving his life cost her the life of her son.

Desperate to find him, she enlists an unlikely ally in Lola, an Underground worker, and Lola’s seven-year-old daughter, and eventually tracks him down, with completely unexpected results…

Both a heart-wrenching portrait of grief and a gloriously uplifting and disarmingly funny story of a young woman’s determination, Everything Happens for a Reason is a bittersweet, life-affirming and, quite simply, unforgettable read.

Everything Happens for a Reason was published by Orenda as as an eBook on 10th April 2021 and in audio and paperback on 10th June 2021.

Extract

Your chart says your hearing is fully developed now. I wish you could hear Lola’s voice. It’s in my head. ‘You did a good thing. You did a good thing…’ It’s a cross between an airline pilot and a nurse, authority and comfort. She gets it. All those singing Christians, Bristol Liz and the time-will-healers have been belittling you, and don’t even start me on the ‘I had a miscarriage too’ walrus at the hairdressers. But Lola’s different.


I left her to her paddle waving and radioing, and waited by the barriers for her next break. After one of her colleagues asked if I was lost, I moved to the bus stop outside, glad of my new habit of wearing two jumpers under my coat (padding). I went back inside a few minutes before twelve.


Lola smiled, she looked relieved that I hadn’t fled.


‘I thought I could buy you lunch,’ I said. She had thirty minutes but knew somewhere quick, she said. It was a kebab shop where she gets a discount. She ordered wraps with chips for both of us and I paid.


She’s different above ground. Her voice is louder and she laughs her words rather than speaking them. Her tight black curls bounce around when she talks.


It turns out she also has phrasal retentiveness.


‘You said everything happens for a reason,’ she says, as we find a table at the back.


‘I thought you weren’t listening,’ I say.


She gives me a teacher look.


‘He took Luke’s place. I need to know why,’ I say.


‘What would it change?’ ‘I thought you got it. He’s out there living. What’s he doing with it?’


She checks her watch, tries to catch the kebab man’s eye. ‘What would make you feel better?’ she asks me.


It’s a stupid question, hurtful. My answer’s out before I can stop it. ‘I want my baby back.’


A plate clunks down in front of me, chips fall onto the tabletop. He’s slow to retreat.


‘I mean, say you find him, what would make you feel better?’ asks Lola. She pulls her phone from her pocket, checks the time on that and calls across to the waiter, ‘Put it in a takeaway box.’

‘I haven’t had a chance to think it through,’ I say. ‘But say it’s something like this.’ I find a pen and an old envelope in my bag. ‘Say he was a brain surgeon and since last June, he’s saved two people a week. That’s, roughly, seventy-eight lives. And what if half of those people he saved were social workers, police officers or fire fighters, and each of them has so far saved three more people. Now we’re up to one hundred and ninety-five lives. Or if you go back to the start, count him as well, you’re looking at one hundred and ninety-six lives saved. All because I was on that platform. All because of Luke and because everything happens for a reason.’

Her face concentrates hard as she adds it up with me. I finish out of breath, like the underdog in a courtroom drama. It’s unclear whether it’s my delivery or the sheer numbers, but she says she’ll help, she’ll get me the records for that day. She’s going to log in when the office is empty. We’re meeting at six. I said I’d buy her dinner.

I'm sure you'll agree it sounds great. I'm really looking forward to reading it. 

The Author

Everything Happens for a Reason is Katie’s first novel. She used to be a journalist and columnist at the Guardian and Observer, and started her career as a Reuters correspondent in Berlin and London. The events in Everything Happens for a Reason are fiction, but the premise is loosely autobiographical. Katie’s son, Finn, was stillborn in 2010, and her character’s experience of grief and being on maternity leave without a baby is based on her own. And yes, someone did say to her ‘Everything happens for a reason’.

Katie grew up in Warwickshire and now lives in South London with her husband, children, dog, cat and stick insects. When she’s not writing or walking children and dogs, Katie loves baking, playing the piano, reading news and wishing she had written other people’s brilliant novels.