by Steve Harris
She reached out and put her hand on James’ leg and he recoiled, yelping.
‘Christ!’ he said, clapping his hand to his heart and doing that dippy kind of half-giggle people always seem to do when you make them jump. I’d just got to the bit where she’s in his room looking at his writing on the computer. I thought that was him for a second! I thought he’d got me!’
‘Sorry,’ S’n’J said. She leaned over and kissed him long and deep.
‘What was that for?’ he asked when she finally broke away.
S’n’J could still feel her lips smouldering. She was going to have him again before she let him go home, whatever her Girl Guide might advise to the contrary. She didn’t bother explaining her relief that he’d read the same words as she had. That could come later. After he’d finished the chapters and they’d compared notes on them.
‘Just to say that I like you very much,’ she said.
‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘And so do I.’ He grinned and added, ‘But don’t worry, I like you too.’
S’n’J feigned a slap towards him. ‘Just read the book,’ she commanded. ‘I want your opinion.’
‘So what d’you think?’ she asked, peeling her sticky body away from his for the second time that evening. They were in the bedroom now; the room where she’d so often lain beneath Martin wishing he’d do some of the things to her that she’d asked him to do.
Twenty out of ten,’ James said. ‘And I hope you aren’t expecting any more. I’m exhausted.’
‘Just when I was getting warmed up, too,’ she complained. ‘But I didn’t mean that, I always rate twenty out of ten. I meant about the book.’
James smiled and pushed her hair back from her face for her. ‘What do you want me to say? Tell me and I’ll say it.’
‘Just tell me what you thought.’
‘Fishing for more compliments?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘I’m proud of you, Drezy. You’ve got talent.’
‘I didn’t write it, James.’
‘No need to be shy. I slept with a writer. I’ll tell all my friends. They won’t believe me, but I’ll tell ‘em anyway.’
‘I didn’t write it. Honestly. Why do you think I did?’
James frowned. ‘Because it’s you in the book. You’ve even got the same names, practically. Snowy and S’n’J are similar and the surname is identical. And her character seems like yours too.’
‘How?’
James took a deep breath and blew out his cheeks. ‘Well, she’s confident in a way. She’s full of beans. Playful I suppose you’d say. Funny. She thinks funny things. Sexy. Clever. Just the kind of girl you’d like to meet, I s’pose. Any good?’
S’n’J got her watch from the night stand and looked at it. It was half past ten. ‘Apart from my odd visit to the garage, you’ve known me for about two and half hours now. Is that long enough to know all those things, or is that just the way you’d like me to be?’
He thought about it. ‘Half and half, I’d say. I can see the potential in you for being that way. And yes, it’s how I’d like you to be. The psychology all seems tickety-boo.’
S’n’J frowned. ‘Psychology?’
James nodded.
‘What do you know about psychology?’
Tm a fitter, right? Too stupid to know about psychology.’ He smiled when he said it but she knew the tone of her question had been wrong. James was stung.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean…’
James shook his head. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘I just get peeved when people think mechanics and fitters are all thick. I told you some of us were edu-me-cated, didn’t I?’
‘I didn’t mean I thought you were stupid,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘Really.’
‘Well, you’re talking to James Green, practising tyre and exhaust fitter and graduate of psychology. University of East Anglia. I just don’t advertise it. For the same reasons, really. They won’t let you fit tyres if they think you’re too clever. Having said that, most of the guys I’ve worked with know a lot more about practical psychology than I learned in three years. But anyway, the psychology seems about right. She’s just like you. Therefore I assumed you wrote the book.’
‘I didn’t,’ S’n’J said.
‘It must have been someone who knows you pretty well then,’ he said. ‘What about that guy you used to live with?’
‘Yeah. But he wasn’t a writer, he was an editor. Still is. I did suspect him at first, but not now.’
‘So who did?’
‘That’s the problem,’ she said. ‘I don’t know.’
‘It isn’t coincidence, Drezy,’ James said. This character hasn’t been spontaneously developed. It’s based on you, fair and square.’
‘You don’t know me very well. Yet.’
James thought about it. ‘But I might be able to kind of sum up the essence of you. There’d be a lot of things which didn’t mesh properly. You’d be able to look at the writing and say, “That isn’t me, I’d never do that”. But I’ll bet they wouldn’t outnumber the things that matched. How much of this matches you, Drezy?’
S’n’J found a bitter smile and showed it to him. ‘You’re not going to like this,’ she said. ‘Remember that crazy woman who came into your garage this afternoon and picked you up? Well, after I tell you this, you’ll think I really am a crazy woman.’
‘I already think you’re a crazy woman,’ James said, smiling. ‘Go ahead and tell me. It won’t make any difference.’
‘Everything in the book matches me.’
Still smiling, James shook his head. If it had been Martin lying there next to her, at this point his face would have taken on that condescending look of his. He might have been smiling but the message would have been coming over loud and clear: What do you expect? She’s only a woman after all. But there was none of this in James. All there seemed to be on his face was a gentle puzzlement.
He said, ‘Perhaps you just think everything matches you. You’ve identified strongly with the Snowy character and maybe you’re only recalling the parts where her character matches yours perfectly.
‘I wish,’ S’n’J said. ‘Guess where I went today.’
James shook his head. ‘I give up.’
‘I went to Black Rock. Do you know where that is?’
James’ face had become serious now and S’n’J knew that the thought had just occurred to him that she might be crazy after all. And that he might have landed himself with something a little more complicated than he had imagined. He covered it well.
‘Tintagel, according to the address at the bottom of the pages. I thought it was a kind of joke. It doesn’t really exist, does it?’
S’n’J nodded. ‘Listen James, tell me how you envisage it. Think about it and tell me the image you get from the book.’
James did as he was told. His description fitted perfectly with the facts and she told him so.
‘That’s weird,’ he said. ‘I’ve been to the Castle there before, but I don’t recall seeing an outcrop of rock with a big house on it.’
‘Would you, though?’
�
�Would I what?’
‘Remember a house across the bay. You wouldn’t. Not if you’d gone to see the Castle ruins. It’d just be another house.
And guess what else? The dog is there too. Diamond Ambrose Anstey.’
‘So the location is real. It doesn’t have any significance. Writers often base their books on real places.’
This is going to sound crazy, James, but bear with me,’ she said. ‘Remember what it said in the first chapter about how a different story might have been told if Snowy had turned her car round and looked at the house in the rear-view mirror. About how she would have seen it as it was rather than seeing what might be} Well, I did that. I turned the car round.’
‘And?’
‘I saw a blinding light coming from the room where Philip Winter is supposed to do his writing. Not just a bright light, but like the sun was inside.’
‘Could it have been a reflection?’
S’n’J shook her head. ‘It was cloudy. But listen to this: when I saw that, I’d only read the first chapter. I didn’t know it was the room where Philip’s magic computer lives! And I kind of looked away and when I looked back there was a man on the ground by the front door. He looked as if he’d fallen off the roof. I went to him and guess who it was? Mr Winter himself. It was him. Just as he’s described in the book. He was unconscious and bleeding and my mobile phone wouldn’t work, so I went round the back of the house to look for a way in so I could phone for help - but there was no back door. And hear this, James, I decided that I’d bust a window, and climb in. But you can’t break the windows. I tried! And when I went back round the side of the house I tripped and slid down the hill towards the sea and I couldn’t stop myself and I thought… oh God, I thought I was going to die…’
S’n’J was aware that tears were streaming down her face and that her voice bore a distinct note of hysteria, but she couldn’t make herself stop. She didn’t want to stop. Her mind was purging itself of the bad events the way an upset stomach will try to purge itself of bad food: spewing it back out again.
‘And the mobile was sticking out of my pocket and it caught in a bush and I dragged myself back up to the top, but I lost one of my shoes and that’s where I got all the cuts and bruises from and why I was barefoot this afternoon. And when I got back to the front of the house he… he…’
‘He’d gone?’ James asked.
‘He was still there!’ she said. ‘And I went out of the dead spot to call an ambulance, then went back. And then I saw the sea come up in a huge stationary wave… and the clouds were sucked down from the sky… and as it happened, Mr Winter folded himself up as if he was a sheet of paper. Again and again until he disappeared. I ran away. I got in the car to drive up to Tintagel and the dog appeared. It just appeared out of nowhere and it was too late for me to stop and I hit it and that’s where the pink stuff came from on the front of the car. Oh, James I think I’ve really gone mad!’
James pulled her to him and held her while she sobbed. And S’n’J sobbed for a long time.
When she had calmed a little, he asked, ‘OK now?’ and his tone was so much gentler, so much more understanding than anything she’d ever heard in Martin’s voice, that it set her off again.
‘I’m fine,’ she eventually said and looked up at his face.
He wiped away the tears from her cheek and smiled. ‘Ready to talk some more?’
She nodded.
‘None of what happened to you, happened in the book,’ he said. ‘Right?’
She nodded. ‘But there are direct parallels. Snowy tried to break the windows, I tried to break the windows.’
‘What else?’
‘I tried to ring my neighbour earlier - before the most recent chapter came through the door - and found I was speaking to an old woman who claimed her number was Maida Vale Two Seven Five. Then I read about Snowy using Black Rock’s phone and getting the same number. It’s as if someone is making this stuff happen to me as kind of bad joke.’
‘And you don’t think it’s Martin, your ex, doing this?’
S’n’J shook her head. And so he could make up his own mind as to whether Martin was responsible or not, she told him all about their break-up, then how she’d discovered the first Black Rock chapter under her bed, and all her subsequent contact - and non-contact - with Martin.
‘OK,’ James said, when she’d finished, ‘We can forget the simple answer and look for another. First, we need to establish who the guilty party is. Who do you know who doesn’t like you?’
‘Martin,’ she replied instantly.
‘He could just be holding a candle for you.’
‘Martin, isn’t holding a candle for me, he’s holding a blowtorch. And I think he’d like to use it on me.’
‘Who else?‘he asked.
S’n’J shrugged. Barring a couple of bookshop managers she called on, she couldn’t think of anyone else. She told him the names of the managers. Both were in Bristol and neither had any reason for a vendetta.
‘Which only leaves Martin,’ James said. ‘Any other crossed lovers?’
S’n’J was embarrassed to say. She’d had only five relationships and with the exception of Martin, the longest had been six months. The shortest had been two days.
‘Not for years. Most of them probably wouldn’t even remember me if you showed them a photo.’
‘I’m sure they would,’ James said. ‘I’ve remembered you since the first time you came into the garage and I didn’t think I’d ever have a chance with you.’
‘You’re being kind.’
‘I’m telling the truth. You aren’t the sort of woman who leaves no impression. You’re very… striking.’
‘Ugly, you mean,’ she said.
James shook his head and smiled. ‘I was going to use a fitter’s expression. The guys at Cars Inc. think you’re dead horny. I was going to say horny too, but I thought you might be offended. Sexy, gorgeous, shaggable, tasty, mouth-watering, stiff-city. How’s that?’
‘I like horny,’ S’n’J said.
‘OK. So we’re down to someone you don’t really know…’
‘It could be you.’
‘But it isn’t,’ he replied. ‘Now, if it’s someone you don’t know, it has to be someone nearby. Someone who knows a bit about you. Who else lives in these flats?’
‘Downstairs there are twin sisters aged eighty, Mr Campbell who’s in a wheelchair and an eighteen-year-old girl called Candy or Sandy or something. She lives on her own. She’s very religious and posh. Twinset and pearls type. The first three couldn’t have got up the stairs to deliver the envelope and I can’t believe Candy or Sandy has even heard of ghost stories, let alone written any to me to terrorize me.’
‘Who’s on this floor then?’
‘Mister and Mrs Stravinsky, who are pensioners. They’re rather sweet. And the end flat was bought by a couple called Verglas. Jack and Sophie, I think. They’re sort of wealthy and sun-tanned and well-spoken. He’s in television apparently. But it can’t be them because they went to Gre
ece on a research trip in June and they haven’t come back yet.’
‘So we’re left with Mr Mystery,’ James said. ‘And his messenger, of course.’
‘Which leaves us with…’
S’n’J had reached this conclusion well in advance of James’ spoken deduction. If she had wanted to she could have told him the identity of the author of Black Rock all along. But she’d wanted to hear him go down the same mental path as she had trodden earlier on today. And now here he was - he had walked that path and caught her up. Which meant that the path didn’t exist only in her own mind and that it wasn’t that of a woman who had been struck mad. They had both reached the same point by a logical process. The author of the book was written in the footer of each page for all the world to see.
‘Peter Perfect, Black Rock, Tintagel,’ she said.
James frowned at her.
‘Always supposing there is a house called Black Rock in Tintagel. And that there is a man sitting inside it writing a book called Black Rock, then why is that man sending his chapters to you?’
‘Maybe it’s because he’s a good researcher. He found out who the right guy was to send his story to, and the right guy turned out to be Martin. And he thinks that Martin still lives here.’
‘But Snowy Dresden is based on you. Even if what you say is right, it doesn’t explain why you and Snowy are so closely related.’
S’n’J offered hopefully, ‘Blind chance? Synchronicity? Call it what you like.’
James shrugged. ‘But the odds against it happening are about fourteen trillion to one. And even if those odds came up, it still doesn’t explain why you’ve been experiencing things that run parallel to the book.’