The Glass Tower

by Gregg Dunnett

  On the plus side, a title had occurred to her:

  The Forest

  She thought it had a stark and dynamic simplicity. She thought it was very good. It was just that the story behind The Forest was taking a very long time to emerge.

  It was against this backdrop that she received an email from her agent. The prose of it wasn't important, but the gist was clear. People – by which he appeared to mean himself and her publisher – were becoming increasingly keen to hear more about her new book. Sales of The Glass Tower were down even further, and there was some talk of accepting that this might not be easy to reverse. Yet with so much publicity pumped into her as an author, there would always be interest to see what she came up with next. It was all a good thing – she had a ready-made market for The Forest. It would surely do well, if only it existed.

  What was worse, her now-regular habit of taking three times her prescribed dosage of Dramadol had resulted in a critical shortage of the soothing tablets. Her doctor had originally prescribed a two-month supply, and she had already been back once to negotiate an increased dosage, a second time for a repeat prescription, and a third time under the pretence that she’d left that second supply at the Dorset cottage. Now she had nearly run out again, which was a serious problem. The doctor had been quite clear too – he wouldn’t keep writing out more prescriptions, and he knew exactly how long her supplies should last. So she was forced again to devise a plan, and as it turned out, it became a welcome break from thinking about the book.

  She began by filling her least favourite handbag with a few carefully chosen items – some tissues, mascara, and dozens of empty blister packs of Dramadol recovered from around the penthouse – and throwing it behind a skip on a nearby side road. Then she took an outside table on a nearby street café and ordered a coffee. While she drank it she pretended to be utterly absorbed in a book, but actually she kept a careful eye on who was around her, and glanced around repeatedly to make sure there were no CCTV cameras covering where she was sitting. Only when she was sure about that point did she proceed.

  She then got to her feet, walked inside and reported that her bag had been snatched from the table.

  She wasn't quite sure what would happen next. Granted, she didn't expect a whole squad of Metropolitan Police officers to descend upon the café and declare it a major crime scene, but she did expect sympathy to extend beyond a shrug of the shoulders from the waitress (Polish, Julia suspected). In the end Julia had to visit the police station herself and queue for half an hour in order to report the crime. But once she did so she received her all-important crime number.

  Armed with the number (the police never even looked for, let alone found, her handbag) she was able to go back to her doctor and claim that during the robbery her entire supply of painkilling drugs had been stolen.

  "I have a crime number," Julia told the doctor – a young middle-eastern man who seemed distracted with his computer.

  "I don't need that,” he said, still looking at the screen instead of Julia.

  "It's so silly of me to put them all in my handbag, the pills I mean, but the police said it happens all the time. It was just snatched from my table. I was there having a coffee. Reading a book. Can you believe it? Would you like a copy of the official crime report?"

  "No. I don’t need it. But it does say here that you’ve already had a repeat prescription early on one occasion already? Miss Ottley, you do have to be careful with these tablets. Very careful. You do understand that?"

  Julia wasn't sure how to respond. She'd put in so much effort it would have been nice had the man at least shown an interest in her crime report. It was almost rude.

  “Yes, of course I understand that.”

  "There can be serious side effects for taking more than the prescribed dosage. Loss of appetite. Insomnia. Audible and visual hallucination. Sometimes paranoia. Sometimes very bad paranoia. You haven’t experienced anything like this?" He looked up and levelled a set of caramel brown eyes on her. Unsettled, she looked away.

  "Of course not. I wouldn’t take them if I had anything like that. I just need them for my back pain. Unfortunately I was involved in a rather serious accident. I’m not an..." Julia didn’t complete her sentence.

  "Okay.” The doctor took a very deep breath. He seemed to be considering what to do. Julia glanced around his office and saw, framed upon the wall, some calligraphic writing. She looked more closely and noticed it wasn’t in English but Arabic. She thought of what Kevin had told her.

  “Okay,” the doctor said again. He seemed to have come to a decision. “I can give you another three weeks supply, but after that you’ll have to come and see me again and we’ll start monitoring you a bit more carefully. And I’ll have to put a note onto your record that this is the second time you’ve come back for more tablets. Do you understand?”

  Julia was outraged. “But I explained. I have a crime number.” She waved the paper at the doctor. He stared impassively back.

  “Do you understand, Miss Ottley?”

  Julia said she did, and she got her tablets.

  While they helped with the pain, they didn't bring her any further forward with the story. The weeks rolled by.

  Thirty-Two

  It wouldn't be quite correct to say that Julia forgot about Becky's novel, but neither was she eagerly anticipating its arrival. She was caught up in her own work, and having started, but failed to finish, several novels of her own at a similar age, Julia assumed it was something of a fad for the girl.

  Instead, she finally selected one of her potential characters as her protagonist. He was a blond-haired Norwegian man, who looked and acted rather like a Viking. He was, Julia thought, rather attractive, and she hoped her readers would think so too. She installed him in her woods, living alone in a cabin fashioned from an old railway carriage. She had no idea how the carriage came to be there – there were no railway tracks nearby in her imaginings, and she thought this rather mysterious. He was rather mysterious too – she decided upon concealing from the reader, and by extension herself, his purpose for being there, but she hinted at it in oblique ways. For example, behind the cabin she placed a well, and although she had no idea why, she was very clear that the well reached right down to the very centre of the earth.

  Thus she completed chapter one. It was only two thousand words long, and she wasn't sure how it fed into chapter two. But she was very sure it was a strong two thousand words. Her second novel, the difficult second album, was finally gathering momentum.

  The very next day Becky's manuscript arrived in the post.

  The writing on the outside of the package was horribly childish. Like a schoolgirl's. It reminded Julia of girls from her own school – horrible girls who never spoke to her, and who huddled together in the common room whispering their secrets and shrieking their laughter. Girls who attended parties that Julia never even learnt about until after they happened. And girls who, at those parties, joined forces with boys and turned into powerful couples, with prestige and status that they flaunted and used to mock girls like her. Julia pushed the sudden flow of thought away and cut through the string that bound the package.

  Becky had clearly spent some time wrapping and presenting her manuscript. It was sent in a box, and when Julia opened it, on the top page was a handwritten note. More girlish writing.

  Dear Julia, thank you soooo much for agreeing to read my novel. I've not dared to show it to anyone else, and I can't tell you how nervous I am to hear what you think. As I said, it's not quite finished, and that's one of the reasons I'm asking you to help – I'm hoping you might have some ideas about how it could end. Anyway, thank you again and I'll wait to hear what you think!!!

  Becky

  XX

  Julia frowned and turned the page. The title page bore the words:

  One Shattering Secret

  Julia's frown deepened, and she turned the page over again.

  She read the first paragraph, and then stopped and read it again.
She scanned it for errors, or words that were out of place, but she found none. The voice was fresh and engaging. There were words and phrases that set it aside from the mundane. Julia knew at once the girl could write.

  "Hmmmmm," Julia said out loud.

  Julia had no intention of going on to read the whole thing there and then. She wanted to get back to her own work. But something about Becky's voice kept her sitting at the table, turning one page after another. Soon she gave up thinking about her book. Instead she absently poured herself a cup of coffee, then carried it and the manuscript into the living room, where she had placed a reading chair looking out over the rooftops. But she didn’t drink the coffee, letting it go cold in the cup. She read on.

  Becky's story began with a couple – young lovers who needed money for their studies. Becky had used few words to describe them, and yet Julia could still picture them in her mind, and she felt emotionally connected as well. The writing was crisp and precise. The choice of words, unexpected but somehow satisfying. It felt accomplished, and there were – frequently – phrases which caused Julia to go back and read them a second time, just because they were so exquisitely good. How could the girl produce such flawless prose? It flowed like silk. Sentences shone like silver studded with brilliant diamonds. Her own notebook, which she had grabbed for her feedback, for jotting down the errors, was still unmarked. Julia scratched her head and read on. But this time, it wasn't just wonder she experienced as she read, it was something else. A growing sense of alarm.

  In order to earn some money, the young couple in the story take a job helping with the catering at the launch party for a new literary book, also titled One Shattering Secret. At this launch the young couple meet the author of the book. She was depicted as a woman in her early fifties, who dressed in an eccentric fashion and had laughably poor social skills. At the end of the event, the woman – who had lied to everyone at the party as to where she lived – has to drive home, and offers to give the young couple a lift. During this journey home, the book took a sudden change in tone.

  While driving along a quiet country road, the author runs down an elderly woman on her bicycle. Upon stopping, the threesome discover the woman is dead, and – at the tearful and undignified begging of the author – the three conspire to cover up the death.

  Julia read on. The text was still beautifully crafted – it still shone, but this was now immaterial. All that Julia saw was the story unfolding in her mind. She knew every next step, and yet was surprised and horrified at its arrival.

  A few weeks after the terrible accident the couple – who are wracked with guilt, and on the verge of going to the authorities – are contacted by the author, who begs them again not to reveal her dreadful secret. Then she offers them money, in the form of an academic scholarship. Begrudgingly the couple take the money. But their sense of guilt doesn't end and their relationship suffers. Meanwhile, the author herself moves to London to begin her new life as a literary sensation.

  There were differences between Becky's story and what really happened, as if the girl had consciously or unconsciously tried to disguise that they were the same events. But they were small, inconsequential changes – for example in Becky's version of events the three of them conspired to dispose of the car by faking its theft, driving it to an out-of-the-way area and setting fire to it. But even such minor variations felt stolen from reality. In Becky's text the car was described as a classic VW Beetle, and the car Julia had now bought to replace her crashed Morris was exactly that – albeit the modern model.

  There were other embellishments to the story that added a sense of darkness and literary beauty, but did nothing to change the structure of the story. For example, in Becky's version the woman on the bicycle had been wearing a diamond necklace, which had broken and spilled its jewels on the surface of the road, the stones glinting in the moonlight. Though the idea went nowhere – was inconsequential to the story – Julia realised Becky had used it in place of her own unfortunate moment with the vomit. Admittedly it was more elegant, but it changed nothing. The core of Becky's story, the building blocks from which it sprang, was virtually identical to what had really happened.

  From which it sprang, and to which it must return. The thought formed in Julia’s mind, but instantly its significance flew away.

  Julia read on now with a cool dread, waiting to see how the story unfolded, but here – at last – the manuscript became confused. On the following pages, the fictional author's book – One Shattering Secret – grew and grew in popularity, and the author released a second book that was even better. But she was tortured by what she had done. And in parallel, the young couple were also unable to put the incident behind them. There, the manuscript stopped. Unfinished. Becky had scrawled a handwritten note on the final page:

  This is where I need a bit of help!!!

  When she had finished, Julia sat in her chair for a very long time. As the world outside her penthouse flat darkened and a million London lights switched on beneath her, she still didn’t move. Then, finally, she very carefully set the manuscript on the floor in front of her, climbed out of her chair and found her telephone. She scrolled through the few contacts slowly, until she had Becky's number on the screen. Then she pressed the button so hard the skin on her thumb turned white.

  Thirty-Three

  "Hello? Julia?" Becky's voice was breathless. As if she had been running. Grimly, Julia supposed she had been anticipating the call, anxious for her feedback.

  "I received your manuscript..." Julia began, taking care to keep her voice dignified.

  "Hang on a min," Becky interrupted her. "I'm just with Rob."

  Her voice went away from the phone before Julia could reply, and she was left to listen to their voices in the background. It wasn't quite loud enough to understand, but Rob sounded annoyed, as if he had been doing something but was now interrupted.

  "Sorry about that!" Becky's eager voice came through loud and clear again. "We were just... well, never mind – have you got it?"

  "Yes."

  "Well? Have you read it? I mean probably not all of it, but have you started it?"

  "Yes, Becky." Suddenly even the foolish young girl's name seemed inappropriate. Why hadn't Julia taken to calling her Rebecca? "Yes, I have read it. All of it."

  "Gosh! Wow."

  There was a pause.

  "And? What do you think? I tried really hard to keep the language as clear and sparse as I could. Like you do in The Glass Tower. Obviously it's nowhere near as good as that, but that's what I was going for..." She stopped, waiting.

  "I think it's horrific."

  "I'm sorry?"

  "Horrific. Terrible. Unforgivable. Becky what on earth were you thinking?"

  "What do you mean?" Becky replied, her voice tiny.

  "What do I mean? What do you mean what do I mean? Becky, you've written the exact story of what happened to us. The exact same story. How could you?"

  Becky gave a nervous laugh. "Oh that. I wondered if you'd notice."

  "You wondered if I'd notice?"

  "Yeah. I did base some elements on what happened between us."

  "Some elements? It's the exact same story!"

  "No it isn't. One Shattering Secret might take a little from what happened. But it’s totally different really. It's a story about redemption and personal growth. At least that's what I want it to be. But I can't quite work out how it happens. That's why I wanted your help..."

  "Takes a little? Becky, it's the same bloody story! Surely you can see that? Surely you can see you can't try and publish this as a novel."

  For a moment a note of defiance sounded within Becky's voice. "Why not? It's good." But then it vanished again. "Isn't it?"

  Julia put a hand to her back. She had been so distracted with reading the manuscript she had missed her dose of Dramadol. Now the pain was reminding her it was still here.

  "It's not about whether it's any good or not. It's about the story. We can't talk about what happened. E
ver. I thought you understood that?"

  "Of course I do. I'm not an idiot, Julia," Becky said. Her voice had gone cold now. It unsettled Julia.

  "Well... How do you expect to write it all down in a novel, and then not tell anyone?" A bizarre thought occurred to Julia. Perhaps she had misunderstood. Perhaps this was only ever intended for Julia – a way of Becky practising her prose. Finding her voice.

  "Do you not intend to try and get it published?" A chink of light shone through Julia's darkness.

  "Of course I want to get it published! That's my dream come true. I mean that's one of the reasons I sent it to you. You know, to help finish it, and in case you know someone you could pass it onto."

  The light went out. Julia tried to back up.

  "But you can't! You can't possibly publish it. I don't understand how you don't see this, Becky."

  "It's not real Julia. It's fiction. I mean, I'm flattered in some ways if you recognised something of yourself in Joanna, but she's not you. She's an entirely made-up fictional character."

  Julia blinked at the wall. She didn't know what to say.

  "I mean, look at her,” Becky went on. “She's awful. She'll do anything to cover up what she's done. She refuses to take responsibility for her actions. At least at the beginning. I want her to learn to do so. That's where it needs to end. With her owning her mistake..." Becky seemed to realise she had strayed from the point. "But you're not like that. You're not her."

  Julia was silent.