The Girl on Paper

by Guillaume Musso

  ‘So, the real world’s where you, Carole and I live. It’s where we go about our real lives, surrounded by our fellow humans.’

  ‘OK, I’m with you so far.’

  ‘Then on the other side there’s the imaginary world, the realm of fiction and dreams. It’s a world that reflects the subjectivity of every reader. And it’s here that Billie was developing,’ I explained, making a few notes to illustrate my points as I went along.

  ‘Go on,’ urged Milo.

  ‘As you said yourself, Billie was able to cross the line between the two worlds because of a production error: the faulty printing of 100,000 copies of my book. That’s what you call the “doorway in”.’

  ‘OK,’ he nodded.

  ‘And now we wind up with Billie fading away in an environment that’s foreign to her.’

  ‘And the only way to save her is if we find the faulty book to stop her dying in real life—’

  ‘And send her back to the fictional world by writing the third volume of the book. That’s her “doorway out” of the real world.’

  Milo was following my diagram with interest, but I could tell something was bugging him.

  ‘You still don’t get how writing the third volume’s going to let her leave, do you?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘OK. You’ll see. So, who would you say creates this imaginary world?’

  ‘You! I mean, the writer.’

  ‘Right, but not only the writer. I only do half the work.’

  ‘So who does the other half?’

  ‘The reader.’

  He stared at me blankly, looking even more confused than before.

  ‘Look what Voltaire wrote in 1764,’ I said, showing him my notes.

  He leaned over and read aloud, ‘“The most useful books are those of which readers themselves compose half.”’

  I got up and confidently set out my argument.

  ‘What’s a book at its most basic? It’s just letters laid out in a certain order on sheets of paper. Writing a story isn’t enough to bring it to life. I’ve several early drafts of manuscripts in drawers, that have never been published, but they’re like dead stories to me because no one else has ever set eyes on them. A book only comes to life when it’s read. It’s the reader who pieces together the images that create the imaginary world in which the characters develop.’

  Our conversation was interrupted by the underworked librarian coming to offer Milo a mug of spiced hot chocolate. He took a sip before pointing out, ‘Every time one of your books goes into stores and becomes a living thing, you tell me it doesn’t really belong to you any more.’

  ‘That’s exactly it! It belongs to the reader. The reader picks up where I left off, making the characters his own and letting them come to life in his head. Sometimes he’ll even put his own spin on certain passages and give them a meaning I hadn’t envisaged. But that’s all part of the game!’

  Milo was listening intently while scrawling on my notepad.

  As far as I was concerned, this theory was watertight. I had always felt that a book only truly existed through its relationship with the reader. Ever since I first began to read, I had always tried to immerse myself as deeply as possible in the imaginary world of my favourite books. I’d try to guess what was going to happen, thinking of hundreds of possible outcomes, always trying to keep one step ahead of the author and even carrying on the story of the characters in my head, long after closing the book. The reader’s imagination took the text way beyond the words printed on the page and allowed the story to fully exist.

  ‘OK, so if I’ve got this right, you’re saying the writer and the reader work together to create the imaginary world?’

  ‘It’s not me who said it, Milo. It’s Umberto Eco! It’s Sartre!’ I replied, holding out a book open at the page where I had underlined the sentence: ‘Reading is a pact of generosity between author and reader; each puts his trust in the other, each counts on the other.’

  ‘But what does all this mean, practically speaking?’

  ‘It means I’m going to start writing my new novel, but it’ll only be once the first readers get hold of it that the imaginary world will take shape and Billie will leave the real world to go back to her fictional life.’

  ‘In that case, I’d better get moving,’ Milo said, sitting himself down in front of a computer screen. ‘I have to track down that faulty book, whatever it takes. It’s the only way we’ll keep Billie alive long enough for you to write your new book.’

  He logged on to the Mexicana Airlines website.

  ‘There’s a flight to Los Angeles in two hours. If I leave now, I can be in MacArthur Park this evening.’

  ‘What’ll you do when you get there?’

  ‘If you’re planning on taking Billie to Paris, she’ll need a fake passport pretty damn quick. I still know a few people who could help us out.’

  ‘What about your car?’

  He opened his shoulder bag and took out several wads of banknotes, which he split in two.

  ‘One of Yochida Mitsuko’s guys came for it this morning. This is all I could get for it, but it’ll help us get by for a few weeks at least.’

  ‘And then we really will be broke.’

  ‘No denying it. Plus if you add what we owe to the IRS, we’re looking at twenty years in the red.’

  ‘Forgot to tell me that part, huh?’

  ‘I thought you’d have realised.’

  I tried to take the heat out of the situation.

  ‘We’re trying to save a life. There’s no nobler cause, is there?’

  ‘That’s for sure,’ he replied. ‘But is this Billie girl really worth the hassle?’

  ‘I think she’s one of us,’ I said, struggling to find the right words. ‘I think she could be part of our “family”, the family you, me and Carole made for ourselves. Because, deep down, I know she’s not so different from us. Underneath that hard shell, there’s a sweet, generous person inside. Behind that big mouth there’s a pure heart, and life hasn’t been easy on her so far.’

  We hugged, and he was heading out the door when he turned back to face me.

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be able to write this new book? I thought you couldn’t string two words together any more.’

  I looked out the window at the sky. Thick, grey clouds clogged the horizon, like an English landscape.

  ‘Do I really have a choice?’ I asked, closing my notebook.

  29

  When we’re together

  I was cold in the night, so I got up to put another blanket over her

  Romain Gary

  Charles de Gaulle airport

  Sunday 12 September

  The taxi driver grabbed Billie’s bag and stuffed it into the trunk, crushing my laptop bag in the process. Inside the Prius hybrid, the radio was blaring so loudly I had to repeat myself three times to tell the driver where we were going.

  No sooner had the car left the terminal than it was halted by the perpetual traffic jams of the Périphérique.

  ‘Welcome to France,’ I said, winking at Billie.

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘Nothing you say is going to put me off this place. I’ve always wanted to see Paris!’

  After several miles of hold-ups, we turned off at Porte Maillot to head down Avenue de la Grande Armée toward the Champs-Élysées roundabout. Billie looked out, open-mouthed like a little child, as she took in one by one the Arc de Triomphe, ‘the most beautiful avenue in the world’ and the dizzy heights of Place de la Concorde.

  Though I’d been to Paris several times before with Aurore, I couldn’t say I knew the city well. Always flitting between concerts, always with another plane to catch, Aurore was a nomad who had never taken the time to show me around her home town. In any case, my trips had never lasted more than a couple of days at a time, most of which were spent inside her handsome apartment on Rue Las Cases, near the Sainte-Clotilde basilica. This meant that of the entire capital I knew just a few ro
ads in the sixth and seventh arrondissements, as well as the handful of restaurants and trendy galleries she’d taken me to.

  The taxi crossed the Seine to the Left Bank, then turned down Quai d’Orsay. When the steeple and buttresses of the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés came into view, I realised we were getting close to the furnished apartment I had found online from Mexico for us to rent. Sure enough, a few turnings later, the driver dropped us at 5 Rue de Furstemberg, opposite one of the most charming little squares I’d ever seen, with old-fashioned shops round an island in the middle.

  On the island, four tall paulownias surrounded a lamppost with five lanterns. The sun bounced off the blue slate roofs. Lost amid narrow streets, far from the bustle of the boulevard, it was a timeless, romantic haven, straight out of a Peynet picture book.

  *

  As I write this, more than a year has gone by since that morning, but the memory of Billie getting out of the car and looking around, her eyes full of wonder, is still fresh in my mind. What I didn’t know back then was that the weeks that followed would be the most painful yet precious of our lives.

  *

  Women’s hall

  Berkeley campus

  University of California

  ‘There’s a package for you!’ yelled Yu Chan as she walked into the room she had been sharing with Bonnie Del Amico since the start of term.

  Bonnie was sitting absorbed at her computer, but raised her head and thanked her roommate before getting back to her chess game.

  Bonnie was a young woman with short brown hair and a friendly face still fleshed out with a little puppy fat. But you could tell from the intense, serious look in her eyes that she had gone through more than her tender years would suggest.

  The autumn sun pouring through the window illuminated the walls of the little room, which were plastered with posters of the two girls’ current favourites: Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Albert Einstein, Obama and the Dalai Lama.

  ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ asked Yu Chan after a few minutes.

  ‘Mmm,’ murmured Bonnie, her mind clearly elsewhere. ‘Just give me a second to outwit this machine.’

  She took a gamble, moving her knight onto D4 in an attempt to take her opponent’s bishop.

  ‘It could be a present from Timothy,’ guessed Yu Chan, studying the package. ‘The guy’s nuts about you.’

  ‘Mmm,’ repeated Bonnie. ‘I really don’t give a shit about Timothy.’

  The computer countered her move by bringing out its queen.

  ‘OK, I’ll open it then!’ Yu Chan announced.

  Without waiting for the go-ahead from her roommate, she ripped open the envelope to find a large, leather-bound book bearing the words: Tom Boyd – The Angel Trilogy – Volume 2.

  ‘It’s the book you bought second-hand online,’ she said, a note of disappointment in her voice.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ replied Bonnie.

  Now she needed to protect her knight, but without making a total retreat. She clicked on the mouse to move one of her pawns forward, but in her excitement, let the piece go a bit too quickly.

  Too late…

  The word CHECKMATE flashed up on screen. She’d been beaten again by that lousy heap of junk!

  Not looking good for the tournament, she thought to herself, closing down the program.

  The following week she was due to represent her college at the world under-18s championships in Rome. The thought of it both excited and terrified her.

  She glanced at the sun-shaped clock and quickly gathered her things together. She picked up the book and stuffed it into her rucksack. She’d pack her bag for Rome later.

  ‘Addio, amica mia!’ she called as she walked out the door.

  She took the stairs three at a time and hurried to the station to catch the BART, the commuter train that connected Berkeley to San Francisco 130 feet below the water level. She read the first three chapters of her book on the train before getting off at Embarcadero to catch a cable car on California Street. Loaded with tourists, it trundled along Nob Hill, passing Grace Cathedral.

  Bonnie stepped down from the wooden carriage after a further two blocks to go to the cancer ward at Lenox Hospital, where she volunteered twice a week for a charity offering activities to help take patients’ minds off their illness. She’d become all too aware of the need for this during the two years she’d watched her mother, Mallory, succumbing to the disease.

  Although she was already at university, she was only sixteen, and would normally have been considered too young to take on such a task. But Elliott Cooper, the director of the hospital, was a friend of Garrett Goodrich, the doctor who had cared for her mother at the end, and he turned a blind eye to her presence.

  ‘Hi there, Mrs Kaufman!’ she sang cheerfully as she entered the third-floor room.

  Ethel Kaufman’s face lit up on seeing Bonnie. Until recently she had refused to take part in the art workshops or board games organised by the charity, still less the clown and puppet shows, which she found childish and silly. All she asked was to be left to die in peace. But Bonnie was different. The kid had character, and a combination of frankness and intelligence that Ethel had warmed to. The two women had taken a few weeks to suss each other out, but they had each come to treasure their twice-weekly meetings. As usual, they began with a few minutes of chit-chat, Ethel asking Bonnie about her classes at university and the approaching chess tournament. Then Bonnie took the book out of her bag.

  ‘Surprise!’ she said, holding up the attractive volume.

  Ethel’s eyes tired easily and Bonnie enjoyed reading to her. Over the last few weeks, both of them had become hooked on the Angel Trilogy.

  ‘I couldn’t resist reading the first few chapters,’ confessed Bonnie. ‘I’ll give you a quick rundown and carry on from where I left off, OK?’

  *

  The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf

  A little café in Santa Monica

  10 a.m.

  ‘I think I’ve found something!’ hollered Carole. Hunched over her laptop, the young cop had connected to the café’s Wi-Fi.

  Holding a mug of caramel latte, Milo peered at the screen.

  After putting all kinds of keywords into search engines, Carole had eventually found the one remaining copy for sale on eBay.

  ‘Man, that’s unbelievable!’ Milo exclaimed, pouring half his drink down his front.

  ‘Do you think it’s really the one we’re looking for?’

  ‘It has to be,’ he said, looking at the photo. ‘There was only one book left with that leather cover after the rest were pulped.’

  ‘We’re out of luck. It’s already been sold,’ replied Carole, frustrated.

  The book had been put up for sale on eBay a few days earlier and had been snapped up straight away for the derisory sum of $14.

  ‘We could try to get in touch with the vendor to ask who bought it.’

  Putting Milo’s words into action, Carole clicked on the member’s profile: annaboro73, a member for six months, with positive feedback from buyers.

  Carole sent a message explaining she wished to contact the person who had bought the item. They waited a good five minutes, hoping for a response they knew wouldn’t come, until Milo lost patience and sent off his own straight-to-the-point message, offering a $1,000 reward.

  ‘I have to get back to work,’ said Carole, looking at her watch.

  ‘Where’s your partner?’

  ‘Sick,’ she replied, walking out of the café.

  Milo went after her and got into the passenger seat of the police car.

  ‘You can’t be in here! I’m on duty and this is a patrol car.’

  He pretended not to hear her and carried on the conversation.

  ‘What was her screen name again?’

  ‘annaboro73,’ replied Carole, starting up the engine.

  ‘OK, so her first name’s Anna, agreed?’

  ‘That would make sense.’

  ‘And Boro’s her surname. Boro… coul
d it be a shortening of a German name?’

  ‘More like Polish, wouldn’t you say? Like Borowski or something.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And what about the number? Do you think that’s the year she was born?’

  ‘Could be,’ replied Milo.

  He had already brought up a directory website on his phone, but there were more than a dozen Anna Borowskis in the LA area alone.

  ‘Pass me the radio,’ ordered Carole as she rounded a corner. Milo picked up the microphone and couldn’t resist messing around on it.

  ‘Calling Planet Earth, this is Captain Kirk on board the Starship Enterprise, requesting authorisation to land at base.’

  Carole looked at him in disbelief.

  ‘What? It’s funny.’

  ‘Might have been funny when you were eight years old, Milo.’

  She took hold of the radio and spoke into it with authority.

  ‘Message to base, this is Sergeant Alvarez, police number 364B1231. Can you get me the address of an Anna Borowski, born 1973?’

  ‘OK, Sergeant, consider it done.’

  *

  Paris

  Saint-Germain-des-Prés

  Our furnished one-bed apartment was on the top floor of a little white building, with a view over the shady square. We felt at home there from the moment we arrived.

  ‘Fancy a walk?’ suggested Billie.

  The Paris air already seemed to be doing her good. True, her hair was still white, her skin still pale, but she had something of her old energy back.

  ‘May I remind you I have 500 pages to write?’

  ‘Pah, that’s nothing!’ she teased, holding her face up to the sun streaming through the window.

  ‘OK, OK. Just a quick walk round the block.’

  I put on my jacket while she powdered her nose, then off we went.

  We strolled along the narrow streets of Saint-Germain like the pair of tourists we were, pausing to look through the windows of every bookshop and antique dealer, reading the menus outside every café and rummaging through crates of second-hand books at the bouquinistes along the Seine.