I kind of floated into my bedroom and sat down in the front of the computer. I didn’t have a megaphone and a rooftop, but I had email. I wanted to let everyone know so I composed a message, announcing my good news, and sent it to everyone in my address book, which isn’t a huge number of people, to be honest. The people on the list included my old colleagues (who would no doubt be extremely pissed off to discover that they were soon going to be selling a book with my name on the cover) and even that idiot Brian, who once foisted his email address on me at the writing class, though I’d never had cause to contact him before. The only person I removed from the list before I sent the email was Siobhan.

Then I went out for a walk. The city looked so beautiful, so alive, and I could feel its history – its resonant literary past – seeping through the cracks in the pavement which actually seemed to contain a trace of gold. I stopped off at Waterstones and found the space where my book would go, between Jefferson Parker and Adele Parks. I walked as far as the river and looked down at the grey water, the shadows of the buildings opposite reflected on its surface, and although I couldn’t see my own reflection I felt like Narcissus, absorbed by myself, feeling the coat of self-doubt and loathing I’ve worn for so long dissolving, melting away.

Later

Of course, that feeling didn’t last for long.

Emily and I had celebratory sex as soon as she got here, then we got ready for our meal with Simon and Natalie, both of whom were genuinely happy for me. We dressed in our best clothes and the flat smelled of the girls’ perfume. It was dark outside, the air crisp, streetlights shining against a deep black sky, as black as the cab that would carry us to our destination.

We were waiting for the taxi when the phone rang again. I grabbed it, thinking it might be someone responding to my email, calling to congratulate me. But, for the second time that day, in a kind of sick, twisted symmetry, someone said, ‘May I speak to Alex Parkinson?’

‘Speaking,’ I said.

She paused. ‘My name is Elaine Meadows. I was a friend of Kathy Noonan’s and I believe you went to the same writing class as her. I’ve been calling all...’

She might as well have walked into the room and delivered a karate chop to my windpipe. At the same time she was speaking I heard – as if from a great distance – Simon say, ‘The taxi’s here,’ and I must have gestured that I would be one moment, because the three of them headed out to the cab.

‘I heard that you went to Kathy’s funeral. I wondered…‘

‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘who did you want to speak to?’

‘Alex Parkinson. You said…‘

I interrupted again. ‘No, sorry – my name’s Alex Parker. I must have misheard you. You must have got the wrong number.’

I dropped the receiver. I was sweating. Why the fuck did I lie to her like that? It looked so suspicious, so obvious. I hurried towards the front door, the taxi driver sounding his horn impatiently. As I shut the door behind me, the phone began to ring again.

The meal tasted of cardboard; the wine like dirty washing-up water. I felt sick, unable to concentrate on anything. Emily joked about it, saying I must be in some kind of shock, dreaming about success. Simon raised a toast – ‘To bestsellerdom’ – and I held up my glass weakly. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t felt so happy during the afternoon; it was like coming down from E, landing so hard that it knocked all the wind out of me. Kathy’s friend had found me. It was all the fault of that arsehole Brian. If I saw him again, I’d throttle him; I’d stuff his socks full of rocks and chuck him in the Thames. It was so unfair. What the hell was I going to say if that woman called again – especially as I’d lied to her now? Goddamn, Alex – it was such a stupid thing to do.

I needed time to think. Some space, away from here, away from the flat, from London and Elaine Meadows and Siobhan and dead rats and ghosts.

‘Let’s go away,’ I said to Emily.

‘What?’

‘Let’s go for a break somewhere, to celebrate.’

Later, Emily told me that she had also been thinking about how nice it would be to go away, to help her recover from the shock of receiving the magazines and the rat. ‘Where shall we go?’

Across the other side of the restaurant was a man wearing an orange football shirt – the uniform of the Dutch football team.

‘Let’s go to Amsterdam,’ I said.

When we got home, I went online to book our flights to the Netherlands, and also found a hotel for us. Emily was almost bouncing on the bed in anticipation. ‘It’s going to be great,’ she said. I nodded.

While I was online I checked my emails. There was one from Brian:

Congratulations! That’s really great news, Alex. I’d like to meet you for a drink so you can tell me all about it. How about tomorrow?

Again, congrats

Brian

Well, I thought, he might be an idiot, but he’s the only person who’s bothered replying to my email. I felt an unexpected warmth towards him. He wasn’t to know that he was dropping me in the shit when he spoke to Elaine Meadows, was he? I quickly replied, saying we could meet up for a drink sometime, but not tomorrow as I was going to Amsterdam with my girlfriend to celebrate.

Then I joined Emily in bed. The drink had knocked her out and she was snoring. Without warning, I found myself wildly irritated, close to anger. Here she was, sleeping peacefully – well, it was peaceful for her; she couldn’t hear her own room-rattling snores – whilst I was in the middle of a crisis. I took a few deep breaths until the irritation went away. I couldn’t sleep though – there was far too much going on in my head, faces spinning like numbers on a roulette wheel. Women’s faces. Siobhan, Kathy, Emily, an invented face for Elaine Meadows – she had carroty hair in my imagination and a witch’s wart on her chin. And I thought about my mother, replaying many of the cruel things she said to me when I was a child. All that stuff about me being unwanted, ugly, stupid, evil. Maybe the follow up to my book of short stories will be a misory memoir, dedicated to my mum.

Or a fucking prison memoir.

Chapter 29

Siobhan

Haven’t written for a few days. Been too busy. But thought could bring diary – something to do to wile- whyl -whil away the hours, sitting in coffee shops. Doing what you do in coffee shops in Amster...dam. Ha! Damn.

Bit out of it actaully. Keep making spelling mistakes and cant be assed to correct them. Tired. Head spinning. Pen too heavy think better go back to hotel to better thnik. Write more later

Later

OK so now I know that pot makes me lose the use of my personal pronouns (see above!), not to mention the ability to spell. I feel better now, but it took me a good few hours. Thank goodness I’m not meeting the people from the publishers’ until tomorrow. I think I got a bit carried away, with my first solo foray into a coffee shop.

I managed to buy the gear, and even roll one for myself. Admittedly it looked like a rolled-up copy of the Financial Times, but then a nice Dutch bloke helped me tighten it up a bit. I didn’t mind him butting in. I’d done the hard part – walking up to the counter and asking to see the menu, so they know you’re after some gear, and not just a coffee. The Dutch guy was called Evan. I might go and meet him later – he said he’d be there after eight. I think he was hitting on me – stop press, MAN FANCIES SIOBHAN, shock horror; though he was stoned too so he was probably seeing me through dope goggles. I can’t say that he really set my knickers alight but he seemed nice enough, if a little shifty. At least he spoke great English.

It was strong gear, too – Evan said it was called ‘Afghan Gold’. He talked about it like it was some kind of fine wine. When I was writing that stuff above, after my new friend had gone, my pen felt so heavy that I could hardly lift it. It was like my brain had slowed down, and I didn’t even really care that I was spelling things wrongly, or what I was writing. Very liberating, actually, to not care what you put down on the page.