"So tell me, Ms. Tallis, what's it like being an author?" The interviewer said. He was young, and Briony liked him; he was unafraid to ask personal questions.
"It's like having a thousand voices inside of you, all begging to get out, begging to be heard." Though Briony was eight-something years old, she did not stutter, did not take time to think about her answer.
She'd been thinking about his answer for almost sixty years.
She had lied, of course, said what it probably felt like to most authors, but for Briony Tallis, there were only two voices inside her: Robbie Turner and Cecelia Tallis.
Every single character she had written of held both Robbie and Cecelia in them.
Robbie had played everything from a villain holding a grudge against a rich king for keeping him from his lover, to a war hero returning to find the love of his life had lost her memory. Either way, he always got the girl, got his happily ever after.
Cecelia always looked the same in every book, short dark hair and the body of a model, if her father would ever let her be one. She'd been a model once, in one of Briony's books, that had been adapted into a film, and the part had been played by a too thin, too tan actress who had won several awards. Cecelia too, always got what she was looking for.
In her latest novel, she'd used their real names, their real characteristics. She'd not disguised a thing, except for the ending, of course.
Robbie Turner and Cecelia Tallis did not get their 'happily ever after,' their ride into the sunset; and Briony knew she would forever be paying for taking that away from them.
So in the book, she changed it, hoping it would give them time. Time together, time spent with children they could have had and people they could have met and things they could have done.
She gave them back the one thing she'd had taken away from them and, in returned, hoped for the one thing only they could give back: atonement.