Grandad's literary masterpiece

I was delighted when Shelly phoned up, asking if she could move in for a few months.

Shelly is my granddaughter, just 23. She'd managed to get a step-on-the-ladder job for a PR firm in New York, really crap pay but great for her career. "I won't be no trouble," she promised, "and I'll have plenty of time to get to know my pops."

She didn't say, 'get to know my pops before he dies', but I'm sure that's what she was thinking. Hell, I'm 82, have seen a lot of people die that were younger than me, fitter than me. I know exactly how the disciples must have felt, hanging round with someone who promised the way to eternal life and then pegged it in his 30s.

She travelled light, one bag, seemingly filled with nothing but knickers. "Oh clothes," she said, as if they were an irrelevance and could just show up for work naked, "I'm in New York, I'll buy clothes here."

"What on your salary?" I asked, but over the coming weeks she answered me in the affirmative, bags and bags of clothes, some of which were never opened and emptied of their contents. And me, I stayed in the same pair of pants the whole time.

I didn't see much of her, except when I made her breakfast every morning. That first day she was surprised to see me at my typewriter, hard at work already.

"What you doing up pops?"

"I'm working."

She laughed. "Working. Pops you're 82, haven't you retired?"

"Writers never retire, writing's what we live for. Anyway, you should eat before you go, I made pancakes."

Shelly didn't take my writing seriously. I heard her talking about me on her mobile later that day, 'grandad's literary masterpiece she called it' with laughter in her voice. Yet it was the money from my writing that had bought my New York apartment, set up her father's business, had paid for everything the family had, so I don't know why she was so dismissive.

Most mornings she just ate her pancakes and drank her coffee, talked about her day, the contacts she'd made, the restaurants, clubs and pubs she'd been to. The nights in front of the TV I'd hoped for, catching up on family gossip, never happened, there was always an event, a gig, a party. Funny I never had these invites, surely I knew more people in New York than she did.

One morning she finally worked up the interest to ask what I was writing.

"It's my latest novel. It's called a 'young man's tale'."

"A young man's tale? Pops, they hadn't invented young when you were 18."

"I wasn't always old I said," but knew that in a sense she was right. Youth hadn't really been invented 'til the 60s, by which time I was already married with my first wife, first kid on the way. I never have the same kind of freedom Shelly had.

"Why are you writing now?" she asked, "you've not written anything for twenty years."

"Once a writer always a writer," I said, I didn't dare tell her I'd been working on the book for fifteen years.

"But pops, a typewriter! No publisher's every going to trawl through typewritten pages, you have to get a computer."

"I won the Pulitzer Prize," I reminded her, "I'll easily find a publisher."

"Yeah, but pops, that was 50 years ago and you've written nothing since."

"It was only 39 years ago, 1971, and I've published three novels since then." Admittedly none of them were as successful as Face of Death, but that was 'a generation-defining novel that will never be forgotten', even the New York Times said so.

When she left I felt myself fall into a slump of depression, one of those dark moments when you can't feel your arms, your legs, your body, there's just this heavy weight bearing down on you mind, or what's left of your mind.

Why was I still writing? Who was I trying to kid? I'm not a writer, I'm an ex-writer, every time I'm mentioned now, which isn't very often, it's in the past tense. The New York Times has published my obituary on three separate occasions, my letters informing them I'm still are alive, are the only things I've had in print in all that time.

My agent died last year and I've not had a publisher for 17 years, not since Mutant came out, they dumped me as soon as they could after the first sales figures and reviews came in.

I saw Shelly less and less. I guessed she was seeing a man, as some nights she didn't come home at all. I was fine with that, after all I'd been 23 once and that's exactly how I'd have lived my life, if I'd had the chance. I found out the affair had ended when I came home from the grocery store one day to find her collapsed in tears on my sofa.

"Tell me about him I said," as I put my arm around her.

She looked up, surprised that I'd guessed such a universal truth, men are bastards. "Oh pops, he lied to me, I found a message on his mobile from his wife. All this time he was married. I was just his New York floozy."

We talked for hours. I told Shelly all about my three marriages, all the gruesome details. I was surprised how little she knew, where did she think her dad came from? I guess it's true that every generation really does think it invented sex.

The next night we went out for a meal together. Nothing special, just a local diner, but she said she hadn't properly thanked me for putting her up. It was here she asked me for the first time what the book was about and I ran through the plot. Given our conversation the previous day I couldn't hide the fact that it was mostly autobiographical, mostly about her grandma and the people we were unfaithful with.

There were another two weeks before Shelly left. Most of the remaining evenings we stayed in front of the TV, talking family gossip, about her plans after New York, about her other boyfriends, she had all their photos stored on her phone. We even talked about my plans, a grand word for an 82 year olds' future, "Try and make this pair of pants last 'til I die," I joked, but we both knew what my real plans are.

I helped Shelly take her stuff to the station. I had to lend her a suitcase, to cary everything she'd bought while she was here, but that was okay, I'm hardly going to need it, where would I want to go at my age. I got a phone call that night to let me know she'd arrived safely and a letter a week later. Who knew young people still wrote?

I decided to dedicate the book to Shelly, and to finish it by October, so that I can give her the first draft as a birthday present. Then I'll find an agent, find a publisher and win my second Pulitzer. After all, as Shelly said, it is a literary masterpiece.