by John Purcell
‘I’d love to. Yours will be the only signed copy. I never sign books.’
They returned to the living room and Malcolm was handed the book and a pen. Marty watched Malcolm sign in silence. And then, as they moved to the door, said, ‘It’s a shame the blue plaque scheme doesn’t honour the living. This building needs something on the front letting people know that you and Helen wrote so many of your books here.’
‘Would you mind if I dropped by from time to time?’ Malcolm asked, ignoring Marty’s comment.
‘Just email me before you do. I don’t want you coming all this way to find us out,’ he said, handing Malcolm his business card. Malcolm noticed it said Direct Design, before he put it in his pocket.
‘Thanks again,’ said Malcolm, and then led Amy down the stairs. When they reached the courtyard there was no sign of Helen. They walked across the yard and through the opposite building into another courtyard and then across a patchy lawn towards a road.
‘This is where Daniel and his friends used to play football,’ he said, stopping and looking back across the lawn towards the estate. He looked Amy up and down. ‘I can’t see this place as you see it. You’re the epitome of privilege. My father drove a truck. This place was a step up for me. This place took me in. I know everything about it. There are no secrets here.’
‘It looks like a hundred other estates to me. One entirely indistinguishable from the other.’
Malcolm looked around, trying to see it with her eyes. And then across the road up at the dark building looming in wait there.
‘He said they should put a plaque on the wall to say we’d written our books there. Who for? Everyone here knows that. Just as they know that when he was a kid Les Lowden, the footballer, lived up there in that flat, the one with the Union Jack in the window. And that Paul Clive, who lived opposite us, died fighting for ISIS in Syria. Granted, these are exceptional bits of news. They stand out. But we all knew a million smaller bits of news, too. Life is lived in the open here. It’s all the same shit other communities experience, but it’s impossible to hide here. A kid fell ill, we knew it. We knew which family was doing well, and which was falling apart. We could tell the kids who’d end up getting into trouble from those who’d managed to get out in time. We had kids stay with us when they just couldn’t go home.’
He returned the wave of a woman who was pushing a buggy. The child in it was fast asleep.
‘She’s a great-grandmother, if you can believe it. She doesn’t look much older than fifty. But I suppose she’s as old as I am. Her first daughter, Macy, had her first kid at fifteen. But she turned out all right. She was working as a teacher last I heard.’
Amy looked at him in silence. She wondered why he was telling her all this.
Sensing her confusion, he said, ‘We are the writers we are because of this place.’
Chapter 47
Liam Messages Amy
Liam: I hate you.
Amy: I hate you, too.
Liam: Be at my apartment at five.
Amy: Fuck off.
Liam: Be there.
Amy: Why?
Liam: You know why.
Amy: No fucking way.
Liam: You’ll be there.
Amy: Fuck off.
*
Liam: Are you on your way?
Liam: Amy?
Chapter 48
A Bridge Too Far
‘I read the manuscript. I know it’s Helen’s, so there’s no need to keep up the charade.’
‘What do you think?’
‘It’s extraordinary. She’s never written anything like it.’
‘How did you know it was hers then?’
‘I was her editor for twenty years.’
I was having afternoon tea with Clarissa Munten at Galvin Demoiselle at Harrods. Her choice. I had never been there before. I can’t remember the last time I joined anyone for afternoon tea. I asked for a glass of champagne. The place suited Clarissa, though. She looked like many of the other ladies enjoying their tea that day.
‘I’m sorry I lied to you. I wanted you to read it and thought you mightn’t if you knew it was Helen’s work.’
‘How did you get hold of it?’
‘I’ve been working with Helen.’
Clarissa’s expression revealed the thought she was too polite to voice. She took a sip of tea.
‘On the other book?’ she said, at last.
‘Yes, and they still haven’t decided on a title.’
‘And you work for M&R?’
‘Yes and no. I worked with Liam Smith on the Jack Cade thrillers. Editor slash ghostwriter slash co-writer. I don’t really need to work for anyone anymore. But I love editing. I like turning books around.’
‘And is that what you’re doing for Helen? Turning her book around?’
‘I thought I was. But I realised I was in way over my head with Helen and Malcolm. M&R are going to publish the original manuscript, the one Helen originally sent you. Probably in March 2017 ahead of Mother’s Day.’
Clarissa cut a minute morsel from her éclair and lifted her fork to her mouth. I watched as she took her time chewing and swallowing. Then she took a delicate sip of her tea, before asking, ‘Why has it taken so long?’
‘Helen lost faith in the book. Largely due to you and Malcolm.’
‘I did nothing to dissuade her from going ahead with the book.’
‘But you refused to work on it.’
‘I just didn’t think it was worthy of her.’
‘And you said as much?’
‘Of course, as her editor.’
‘Do you think of her as a sellout?’
‘The advance they offered was substantial; she would have been a fool to refuse it.’
‘But?’
‘I thought she was above such things, if I’m honest. And I think Malcolm did, too.’
‘Well, she’s been made desperately unhappy by her decision. By way of penance, I think, she’s gone on to write another two brilliant novels. The manuscript you’ve just read is the second of those, which is the more accomplished of the two.’
‘What does Malcolm think of the new work?’
‘He won’t read them. Their relationship has broken down. They don’t talk.’
‘That’s awful. I was always jealous of Helen’s relationship with Malcolm. They seemed the perfect literary match.’
‘He’s miserable too.’
‘And just when he’s been rewarded for all his hard work. The Man Booker shortlisting was long overdue. He’s a brilliant writer.’
‘Not as brilliant as Helen, though.’
‘That’s always been my opinion. And his, come to think of it.’
‘I’ve been living with them for the last few months and I’ve fallen in love with them both. It’s desperately sad to see what’s happening to them. I’m caught in the middle a bit and don’t know how to help. Helen confessed to me that she had tried on a number of occasions to get in contact with you.’
‘I feel terrible about ignoring her. But I just couldn’t face her. I was too disappointed in her. She shook my faith in . . . I don’t know what.’
‘Literature?’
‘No. My faith in her, I suppose. We’d worked together so long – I was a priestess in the church of Helen Owen. Working with her was a privilege and the highlight of my career. I believed in what she was trying to achieve with all my heart. The fact that I couldn’t articulate what that was made it all the more important. She was striving for some intangible other. Something higher than us. My only talent was I could feel when she was close.’
‘And this new book?’
‘Is the reason I’m still talking to you,’ she said, reaching into her bag and pulling out the manuscript, which she placed on the table. She rested her hand on the pages. ‘This is the real Helen Owen. This is the book I’ve been waiting for.’
‘Would you be willing to meet with her?’
‘Ah, that’s a bridge too far, I’m afraid. I’m re
tired. My husband and I are just about to spend a month at our villa in the south of France. It’s my sixty-fifth birthday next week and we’re expecting the girls and their families to join us for a week. The weather is still lovely down there.’
‘Can you send her an email?’
‘Look, Amy, it was nice to meet you but I have to go.’
She reached into her bag to get her wallet and I waved her away, saying, ‘I’ll get the bill.’
Clarissa stood and then sat back down. ‘Helen broke my heart. Do you know what that feels like?’
I nodded.
‘Then you know how hard it is for me to even talk about her.’
I said nothing. Clarissa stood again.
‘Thank you for sending me the manuscript and tricking me into reading it. It hasn’t healed the wounds but it has dulled the pain a little.’
She moved away but stopped after taking only a few steps. I stood up. She turned. I could see that she was upset, on the verge of tears. I walked to her and touched her arm.
Clarissa looked me in the eye, and said, ‘Don’t let them publish that book. Promise me you’ll try to stop them.’
‘There’s nothing I can do.’
‘I don’t believe that for a second.’
Chapter 49
Amy Messages Max
Amy: I need to see you.
Max: Why?
Amy: I don’t know.
Max: Please, Amy, don’t do this.
Amy: Just dinner.
Max: No.
Chapter 50
How Are the Boys?
The phone had been ringing for a while now. Helen lifted her head from the pillow. She had assumed Malcolm would pick up. It stopped. She lay her head back down and closed her eyes. The pill she had taken was trying its best to do what it was made to do. She fell back to sleep. How long she had slept before she was woken by the sound of the phone ringing again, she couldn’t tell. Her head felt heavy and she was finding it difficult to keep the sound of the phone from being absorbed by her dreams.
She roused herself and sat up unsteadily. The clock by the bed said it was almost 5 pm. She had been sleeping for a few hours. The phone stopped ringing. She regretted taking the sleeping tablet. Her night would be sleepless, but there was no other way to get through the day. She preferred sleep to everything now.
Malcolm had withdrawn completely from her. He was so unlike himself as to be a stranger to her. Since the Brixton episode he had taken to sleeping in his office, on the sofa bed Daniel had used.
Helen raised herself slowly from the bed and stood on the carpet in her bare feet. Her head felt like a bowling ball. Her neck struggled to hold it steady. She went through to the bathroom and started running a bath.
The evening stretched out before her. It was unbearable. The BBC news. Then something to eat. Then she might read. If she could focus her attention. Lately, as Amy was keeping much to herself downstairs, she had joined Malcolm watching endless inane reality TV shows, sitting in silence drinking their gin and tonics, then red wine. Night would announce itself when he took himself off to bed, and then the empty hours would loiter about Helen with their maddening silence. Last night she had grown so impatient for dawn she had risen and in her dressing gown had gone out into their tiny back garden then, growing ever colder, had waited for the sky in the east to lighten.
Now she opened the bathroom cabinet and looked at the little bottles of pills she had collected. As a child of the austerity years, she never thew out what might be re-used or repurposed. She remembered being prescribed Valium years before. She had never taken them. Not after the first time, when she felt her mind soften around the edges. But now she hunted them for exactly that purpose. The gin did not silence the mind. Valium would.
Helen undressed and clutching the bottle, climbed into the bath. The water was very hot. Her body reacted as it always did, like it was undergoing a trial by fire. Soon the worst was over and she grew used to the heat. She read the label on the bottle and took a full tablet then dropped the bottle on the floor. She made herself comfortable and closed her eyes.
Her mind was caught in a terrible loop. Like a large animal in a small cage pacing round and round. Each of the four walls repeatedly examined for a missed route to freedom. Each wall disappointing her in turn. Malcolm. Clarissa. Daniel. Amy. Malcolm. Clarissa. Daniel. Amy.
How narrow her life had become. Where had her friends gone? Where had her family? Her colleagues?
Malcolm. Clarissa. Daniel. Amy.
She had always preferred being alone. She was a reader, a thinker, a writer. Being alone was her default setting. It had always driven people away. Except Malcolm. He had intruded on her isolation. But being with him was no burden. He was alone with her. He had defended her space from intrusion. He had managed her needs. Forced her to be social for her own good on occasion, but let her retreat just as readily.
Now he was a burden. His presence was an intrusion. His absence was an intrusion, an irritating background noise. Now she was never alone. Never happily alone. Malcolm. Clarissa. Daniel. Amy. Every path to true solitude blocked.
The telephone rang again. She let it. It rang out twice. Malcolm wasn’t home, obviously.
Malcolm wasn’t an irritating background noise like the telephone. He was a cardboard cut-out of himself pointing to his own absence. Reminding her incessantly – what was, is no more. Love gone. Friendship gone. Affection gone. Respect gone. In their place, an abyss.
She began to wash herself and then emptied some of the water out before refilling it with more hot water.
The pill she had taken hadn’t done anything. Her thoughts were with her still.
She reached down and found she couldn’t get to the bottle. She stretched out her arm, lifting her bottom from the base of the bath and tapped the bottle closer to her with the tips of her fingers.
What would two or three do? She had researched it for a novel years ago. But couldn’t remember what she had discovered. She vaguely recalled that it wasn’t as dangerous as she’d hoped.
She took three more.
The bathwater cooled quickly. She turned the hot on with her toe and watched the water rise and rise. She watched it run over the edge of the bath.
She turned the tap off with her toe. And, raising her knees, lowered her head under the water. As a child she would try to hold her breath forever and, her eyes opened wide, would imagine her mother finding her dead in the bath.
Helen found it surprisingly easy to hold her breath. There was no pressure to breathe. She lay there staring up at the moving ceiling. She wondered if she had always been able to breathe underwater. She heard a strange sound. Very slowly, she raised herself out of the water. The telephone was ringing again.
The strange thing was she was dressed and standing in the hall. She looked at the floor and the front door and the photo of Daniel on the hall table. She raised her hand to her head and found her hair dry. She looked at herself in the hall mirror. Everything was as it should be.
Someone said, ‘Malcolm.’ Someone said it again. She looked back down the hall towards the kitchen. He wasn’t anywhere.
Helen was in the front room. There were two gin and tonics on the coffee table. One was empty. Now she was sitting and now she was standing. The television was on. The news was on. She couldn’t hear what they were saying. Both glasses were empty. The telephone was ringing.
‘Hello?’
‘Helen! Where have you been?’
‘Hello?’
‘Helen? Is that you?’
‘Yes, it’s me. I’m Helen. Who is this?’
‘Geraldine.’
‘How are the boys?’
‘The boys are fine, Helen. I’ve been trying all day to reach you.’
‘I’ve been here.’
‘Is Malcolm there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can I speak to him?’
Helen covered the phone with her hand and shouted, ‘Malcolm? Malcolm?’
‘No. He isn’t here. I thought he was.’
‘Are you all right, Helen?’
‘I’m fine. I had a nap. And a bath.’
‘When do you think Malcolm will be back?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Is anyone else there?’
‘Amy might be downstairs.’
‘Who’s Amy?’
‘My editor.’
‘Can you get her, please?’
Helen put the phone down and walked slowly out to the kitchen. She opened the door to the flat and shouted down, ‘Amy!’
*
‘Hello, I’m Amy.’
‘Is Helen all right?’
‘She seems a little confused. Who is this?’
‘Geraldine. Daniel’s wife. I have some terrible news and I wanted to make sure Helen had someone to look after her. Do you know where Malcolm is?’
‘No. What’s happened?’
‘Daniel. Can I speak to Helen again? She should hear this from me.’
*
‘Hello, this is Helen.’
‘Helen, it’s Geraldine.’
‘How are the boys?’
‘They’re fine, Helen. I have some terrible news.’
‘Why are you crying?’
‘I’ve been trying to reach you all day. The police came this morning. They found Daniel’s car. Helen?’
‘Yes?’
‘They found Daniel, too. Oh, Helen. Daniel is dead. Daniel is dead. I’m so sorry. So sorry.’
‘Daniel isn’t dead; he was just here the other day. He stayed with us.’
‘He’s dead, Helen. The police came this morning. I’ve been in to identify him. He’s dead, Helen.’
Helen handed the phone to Amy, then went into the front room and sat on the sofa.
Amy heard the TV turn on. The BBC news.
‘Hello?’
‘Is she all right? She didn’t seem to understand. Her son Daniel is dead. He killed himself in the back of his car.’
Amy couldn’t speak. In one ear she could hear Geraldine sniffling, in the other a voice from the TV telling Helen the weather forecast.
‘Hello?’
‘Sorry. No, I don’t think she understood. She’s behaving strangely. Like she’s on something.’