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14. LATE SPRING 2013

So, she and Nancy met. Secretly, without me knowing. I found her note when I went back to the flat to return the manuscript. I had to read it several times before I trusted that I had understood it correctly. And when I did it winded me, a sharp blow to the stomach, twisting my gut and leaving me breathless. Discovering they’d met hurt, but not as much as the discovery that Nancy had told her I was dead. That phrase sucked the life out of me: “… when we met, you had recently lost your husband.” She had been “struck” by Nancy’s “dignity.” It had “stayed with her.” She could not believe that “you could possibly be the author of the book which has found its way into my home.” She even wondered whether Nancy was aware of its existence? Well, of course not. She’s dead, you stupid bitch.

What a self-satisfied, smug fool she is. But her tone is respectful, I’ll give her that. She described my wife as a woman of “integrity,” a woman with “great depth of understanding.” She was right about that. Nancy really did understand people. She said she thought she and Nancy “should meet up and talk” and she thoughtfully left her telephone number.

It’s my own fault I was taken by surprise. If I hadn’t dismissed Nancy’s notebooks as idle scribbling and taken them when I took her manuscript, I would have known about their meeting a while ago, because it’s all in there. The notebooks weren’t just ideas for a novel, they were much more than that. It was only after I’d read the note that I turned to the notebooks, and there it all was, the detail of their meeting: the date, the time, the place, even the weather. And Nancy’s delicious description of CR: “cold, as if things washed over her without leaving a mark — as if she has been Scotch-guarded. Nothing seems to stick to her. She’s wiped herself clean — not a trace of dirt on her….” Nancy saw right through her, and she hadn’t liked what she’d seen.

I took those notebooks home with me and read and reread them, finding much to comfort me. I am grateful she’d kept them. Like the photographs, they are pieces of a puzzle. I have sucked up every word in them; I have tasted the ink on their pages; I take them to bed with me and sleep with them under my pillow, dreaming the words swim off the page into my head and Nancy’s most private thoughts are absorbed into mine. I have eaten those pages and swallowed them down. She is in me now, my darling girl. Now we are one. She has given me strength: the outside world can’t touch me, but I can touch it whenever I choose.

It is surprisingly hot. April had been bitter but May is a scorcher. I don’t want to open the windows even though the air would cool the atmosphere. I prefer them closed and the curtains drawn. I have sealed myself in, bricked myself up. It is midday. My only concession to the heat is that I have removed my socks, my bare feet tucked under my desk, where I don’t have to look at them. They are not a pretty sight. I have been rather lax with my hygiene lately and my toenails have grown long. They are curling at the ends, confused about which direction they should be going in. Hard, like bone. I bite my fingernails to keep them short, spitting them out and leaving them where they stick, brittle and sharp around my desk. But I am not a bloody circus performer. I can’t do the same with my toenails, and besides, I suspect my teeth wouldn’t be up to the job.

A knock on the door. I am not expecting anyone. I get up from the desk and peer through the window. It is my printer friend, Geoff. I let the curtain fall back. Shall I let him in? The house is a mess. I take my time; if he leaves before I get there then so be it, but he is still there when I open the door.

“Wondered how you were you doing?” he says.

“I’m all right,” I reply.

He is holding up my book.

“I read it,” he says. “Not what I was expecting at all, to be honest.” I raise an eyebrow, but he smiles and so I risk it. I stand aside and let him in. He walks through and I watch him look round in surprise. I still haven’t cleaned up properly after my tantrum at finding the photographs.

“I had a break-in,” I say.

“Oh God, Stephen I’m so sorry.”

I shrug.

“They made a mess but they missed the valuables,” I say and nod towards my laptop, safe and sound on the desk. I offer him tea and he accepts, following me into the kitchen. I am aware of the scratch of my nails on the linoleum as I walk. Does he notice? My slippers are under the kitchen table and I stop on my way to the kettle and pop my feet into them.

“So how’s it been going?” he asks again.

He is a little nervous, his tone overly cheerful. I wait to finish filling the kettle before I answer.

“Well, I’m doing all right,” I say, and glance over my shoulder at him.

“And with the book? How are sales?”

“Ah, well, slow but steady,” I reply. I’m not interested in sales but he doesn’t know that. I wait for the kettle to boil then warm the pot. I wonder whether he knows I have shifted only two copies, but am sure that only I am privy to that information.

“Thing is, if you’re going to sell online you’ve really got to get a profile — start a blog or something, you know… and I wasn’t sure you’d be up for all that. I could help you, you know, if—”

“So what did you think of it?” I interrupt. I keep my back to him, nervous as a schoolboy. “You said you read it. What did you think?”

“I really enjoyed it,” he says and I turn, hungry for more.

“To be honest, it’s not the sort of book I’d usually go for but it hooked me. You know, I think you could get a real publisher if you wanted.”

“That’s very kind but surely my little book wouldn’t interest a professional.” I empty the teapot and pop in three tea bags, pour in boiling water, put on a cosy, and bring the pot to the table.

“Well, I think it could — it’s as good as a lot of the stuff out there that gets published.”

I search the cupboard for two clean cups and am careful to give them a wipe with a cloth, just to make sure, and then I settle down opposite him.

“Milk and sugar?”

“Milk, two sugars,” he says. I like Geoff. He doesn’t tell me much about himself, and he doesn’t ask about me. We talk about books and music and there’s something in his careless appearance which I find comforting. His nose hairs are not trimmed, they shiver like spiders’ legs when he blows on his tea. He is ungroomed, a sign of sound mind in my opinion. But he is respectful, not deliberately scruffy. He has shaved, but I can see his razor has lost its edge; he wears a shirt not a T-shirt, but it’s too tight round his tummy, the buttons straining round his middle and more hair sprouting through the gap; and his top button is missing, not undone. I feel a fondness towards him, and I think he does me too. Perhaps he lost his father or perhaps he fears he will end up like me; whatever it is, he has been kind without condescension. And he likes my book, he genuinely likes it.

“Stephen, I know you want to manage it all yourself, but I hope you don’t mind, once I read your book I thought, well, it deserved a bit of help, so I’ve taken a few copies round to the local bookshop and they said they’d put them out. See how it goes. They’re keen to promote local authors, and when I told them about you they were really interested.”

I was stunned.

“It’s in a bookshop? The one on the high street?”

“Yes. Have I done the wrong thing?”

Do I look unhappy? I am surprised, that’s all. “No, no, not at all. I would never have thought of doing that… thank you.” I am touched.

“I don’t think you realise how good it is.”

Oh but I do, I really do.

“Well, you know. No one likes to blow their own trumpet.” My mind races. Is she ever likely to travel up to these parts and wander into my local bookshop? And for a moment I run away with thoughts of a book signing and her queuing up and having me sign her copy. He is smiling at me and I realise I am smiling too, smiling with this little fantasy.

“I was quite surprised by some of it.” And he raises an eyebrow. “Pretty explicit.”

My smile has gone. He is worried that he has stepped over a line. I lift my chin, but then resume my smile. I feel his relief.

“Life in the old dog…,” I say and look at him over my mug as I sip my tea.

I want to tell him it’s true. I want to tell him it should be on the nonfiction shelf but that might scare him. And the end is still wishful thinking; as yet it doesn’t qualify as nonfiction. But it will, and he mustn’t know about that.

“What did you think of her?” I ask instead. “Do you think she got what she deserved?”

He mulls this over.

“Well, I don’t know. It’s a hard one that. I mean she was a manipulative cow but I guess she seized the chance to get away with it, didn’t she.”

I feel my heart clench. How easy for him to say. He is not sitting here suffering the consequences of what she did and didn’t do.

“You didn’t answer the question,” I manage. “Did she deserve it?”

“Well, I wasn’t sorry when it happened,” he says, “so I guess I think she did. Great description.”

That’s better. I nod, sip my tea, and begin to enjoy the opportunity that has landed in my lap. I feel a busy afternoon ahead of me, surfing for bookshops in her neighbourhood. Why not? Get it out there, nothing to lose. I’d have to spruce myself up, but then perhaps Geoff would be a more presentable ambassador. Dear Geoff, my innocent accomplice.

“Do you think there’s hope then? Do you think other bookshops might be interested?”

“Well, yes, they could be. See how it goes at Hillside Books first and then take it from there.”

“So, if it goes well, would you be willing to help me spread the word?”

“Happy to, Stephen, happy to.”

I think there might be tears in my eyes.

“I can’t tell you how much it means to me to have your support. It’s a lonely road, Geoff, and to know that there’s someone else who believes in me, well…” I falter.

And he smiles. You know, I think I’ve made his day.