"Why Did You Give Me Brown Hair?"

This is the entire email sent by an old girlfriend-of-sorts from university eleven years ago. We haven’t communicated for seven years. On that occasion, in a trough of heartbroken despair, I sent her a sprawling, drunken email, not in an effort to get back together, just for confirmation that she was unhappier than me. She wasn’t.

I met my wife shortly afterwards.

After reading this sparse information several times I realise that this girl, Linda (blonde), appears to be under the illusion that one of the characters in my novel is a thinly disguised version of her. This is slightly unnerving because the only character she can possibly be thinking of was modelled on Myra Hindley.

Nevertheless I reply out of courtesy and somehow end up with a lunch date at some Italian restaurant in Piccadilly. Mostly I am flattered because she is the only person not paid to do so who has intimated that she has read the book.

I tell Cheryl and the news registers with enough force to drag her eyes away from Facebook for a brief moment. Her fingers, however, remain poised over the keys, twitching. She makes a vague noise that expresses some disapproval.

I sit down. “Seriously,” I say. “This is purely just a sympathetic meeting. No need to worry.”

“Why go then?”

“Why does anybody do anything?” I say vaguely. Then, “We just had sex a few times over a few months. The truth is I was never really attracted to her even then.”

“Then why did you sleep with her?”

“Cheryl, I used to have sex twice a year if I was lucky. I had to jump at every opportunity because if I only did it with women I fancied then I never would.”

Cheryl laughs and snaps back into Facebook mode. The connection has been severed.



At twenty, Linda was a little plump. In the years intervening, her appetite has increased. My immediate thought as I enter the restaurant and spot her wedged into a booth is, ‘I hope we’re not splitting the bill in half.’

As I get closer she stands up and her full girth is revealed. (Later, when we leave, she goes into a newsagent for a packet of cigarettes. The shop has one of those sensors that beeps when someone enters and Linda sets it off three times in one passing).

She looks me up and down. “Wow! You look exactly the same,” she lies.

She stands awkwardly and I suspect that she is self-conscious about her weight, so I decide not to mention it. “You too,” I say instead after I have kissed her on the cheek.

“Oh, don’t fib,” she says, smiling and waving one hand as a shy dismissal. I say nothing and there is a silence that I fail to fill.

Her smile slowly fades and then she physically tires and squeezes back into the booth. I sit opposite her. The waiter comes and I order a beer. Linda already has a glass of wine.

I am relieved because I couldn’t shake the bizarre suspicion that Linda would awake some kind of attraction that I had either missed the first time around or beaten into denial in the years since I last saw her at the Graduation Ball, puking into a plant pot in the auditorium foyer. But there is nothing, and my memory, for once, is accurate. I was youngish and inexperienced and the opportunity of bedroom antics was still enough for me to overlook the fact that there was no sexual attraction on my part at all. Even when I started to feel a bit sick afterwards and guilty for taking advantage of a woman who clearly liked me very much, a friend (who I think was a virgin) convinced me that I should just use her for practise. And when that got old it was only when masturbation failed to hit the spot that I used her as a kind of luxury wank.

Again, I decide to keep this information to myself in case she finds it offensive.

“So, you remember Saul Peters on our course?”

“No.”

“Sure you do. Well, he’s big into sci-fi and he sent me a little interview you did for some website, and I was so excited! I’m so proud of you.”

“Thank you.”

“I ran out and bought the book the day it came out.”

“So you’re the one?” I say, smiling.

“Ha ha, still that sense of humour.”

“Well…”

“And it’s fantastic.”

The waiter interrupts us and I order a pepperoni pizza and another beer. Linda loudly orders a salad and keeps glancing at me for my reaction which makes me feel sad.

“And of course the more I read the more I identified with Sandra, and then it suddenly occurred to me. ‘Oh my God, it is me!’”

I shrug, embarrassed. “Well. You were…a major part of my life.”

She touches my hand, avoiding the gold ring on my finger. I brace myself for some kind of regrettable I-still-love-you confession. “That’s so nice to hear. To be honest I was worried that you wouldn’t want to meet me today.”

“Why would you…think that?”

“I know I hurt you.”

I blink a few times. “Sorry?”

“No, I’m sorry. I was young and I was confused and I really didn’t treat you very well. Sometimes I feel guilty for the way I behaved.”

“Right.”

“But you’ve managed to get over it,” she says with a merciful degree of self-deprecation. “Somehow!”

“It was…a struggle.”

“I bet your wife’s lovely.”

“She’s alright.”

“It was just such a relief when I heard about your novel.”

“A relief?”

“You were just so fucked up at university. All that booze and drugs and emotional avoidance. Pretending to be so aloof. So insular and immature. And then it turns out that you’re an artist and it all makes sense.”

“Right.”

“I was like, ‘Why did I not realise? God!”

“Yeah. So I should have been given special allowances. Like having an unruly child that you punish for not doing well at school and slapping girls in the playground or whatever and then he’s diagnosed with mild autism and you want to go back and replace all the beatings and cupboard lock-ins with hugs.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“And then after a few months the guilt and sympathy wears off and you just get annoyed and want to lock him away again.”

“Yeah.” She smiles uncertainly. “You’re so creative.”

“Cheryl think I’m fucked up because of Death Wish.”

“How come?”

“We all sat down to watch it as a family when I was about nine. Don’t ask me why. Anyway, my parents turned it off during the rape scene and sent me to bed and finished it. The next day they said I could watch it from after that scene. So I missed the motivation and just watched someone walking around shooting people for no reason for ninety minutes. Maybe you could talk to Cheryl and win me some understanding.”

“I’d love that!” she shouts, beaming, and I look away and eventually the food arrives. Linda surveys her salad with something approaching depression. I blow gently at my steaming pizza to send the delicious aroma of melting cheese over to her and her nose twitches involuntarily.

“So, you haven’t got married yet?”

She shakes her head vigorously. “No. Not this girl. Footloose and fancy free!”

“Party girl, hey?”

“Yeah, you got it!”

We eat for awhile.

“There was someone serious once,” she says finally.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.” She looks out of the window. “It didn’t work out.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Yeah.”

“Still,” I say. “Single and free, right?”

She looks back at me. “Right.”



Afterwards, outside the newsagent, she hugs me and doesn’t let go. “Would you like to do this again?” she asks me, her voice muffled against my jacket.

“Yes…definitely. I have a small book tour to do, but then…”

“I’d love that.”

She still doesn’t let go. People are watching us as they pass on the street and I gently, then forcefully, pry us apart.

She looks tearful. “So good to see you,” she says.

I stick both my thumbs up in an absurd gesture of…I don’t know what, and then she heads into the shop and I walk and then jog towards the tube stop, clawing for my iPod, cursing the always-tangled earphones, desperate to kill thought with loud music.

I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness...

I dislike being the centre of attention but the launch party is a concession I make in order for those close to me to express their adulation and pride at my success. Or their envy and bitterness. I don’t really mind which as both will make me feel special. To stifle this emotional outlet would be unfair on my friends.

My publicists have given me a budget of four hundred pounds. Like everyone in my position I had, as I scrawled my childish signature on the publisher’s contract fourteen months ago, imagined a lavish event with a red carpet, limousines, paparazzi, formalwear and invitations printed on gold-edged cards and mailed by private couriers. My expectations had dwindled since then, of course, but even so this paltry budget was something of a surprise.

I sent a whiney email to Pauline, largely because I’d managed a thousand words of the follow up to Clear History that day and was at a loose end. In a decidedly terse reply, she informed me that the offer was non-negotiable, and that I needn’t produce receipts. I immediately hired a small room above a tatty old pub in Acton that still hadn’t managed to air out all the fumes since the smoking ban was implemented, ordered a limited amount of booze, sent a load of Evites and gave the remaining two hundred pounds to Cheryl towards a ticket home for a week around Thanksgiving. She became teary when I handed the cash to her and hugged me while I fantasised about what I might do with the week to myself.

Neither Pauline nor Mavis is able to attend the party as they are busy organising James Hardy’s launch at the Kensington Roof Gardens next week. Apparently, catering to the needs of the various royals and dignitaries due to attend the event is “a major headache.” I swallow the stabbing jealousy this information causes and realise that my party could well run more smoothly in their absence. Their ghoulish auras could confuse other guests who might wrongly assume they missed the Halloween theme on the Evite.

Cheryl has been called into a late shift at Sky which simply opens the door for the potential Californication-style misadventures that have so far eluded me. (I understand that the producers only have Duchovny’s character yeaning for the love of the mother of his child to allow the average viewer to accept the naked joy of his endless sexual encounters with gorgeous filthy young LA bimbos).

I arrive half an hour after the start time and buy a pint downstairs. I am being a pleasure delayer: delaying the pleasure of the guests upstairs. I sit in the corner and receive a text message from my friend Brandon informing me that he has been under the weather and won’t be able to attend. I watch the door and no one I know comes through it.

Slightly alarmed now, I make my way upstairs and stand blinking in the dark emptiness of the hired room. The young man the pub has supplied as part of the package is seated behind the makeshift bar, head leaning back against the wall. He suddenly notices me and leaps to his feet, rubbing his eyes. He is playing some kind of techno at a low level over a portable CD player.

My phone vibrates in my pocket. Another text, this time from Mark. His young child has a fever. An epidemic in London, perhaps.

I approach the barman. “Welcome,” he says in a heavy European accent.

“Polish?” I say.

“Oh, no sir. From Slovenia.” He opens a bottle of beer and hands it to me. “You are here for writer’s party then.”

“Yeah,” I say, looking around. “Am I early?”

“No,” he says, smiling. “Perhaps this writer man is not so popular, no?”

I force a smile. ”No, I guess not. Strange, I thought he was alright.”

“Oh, he is a friend of yours? You are close?”

“No,” I say. “Not so much.”

“Even he doesn’t come to own party. That says something, no?”

He laughs and I ask him for whisky. “He’s okay,” I say quietly.

“You are a good friend, I think. No one else come, but you come. That is…nice for you.”

“It’s still early.”

“Yes, of course. Still time.”

I drain the Scotch. “I have to make a phone call.”

He holds his hands up in an exaggerated gesture of non-obstruction. “Please. Don’t let me stop you.”

He makes a show of rearranging the bottles on the table and I walk to the far end of the room, calling my agent.

“Christopher! What’s up?”

“I’m dying here. How far away are you?”

“Away from what?”

“What do you mean, from what? Where are you?”

“Mama Mia baby. It’s cinema night.”

“Again? What about my launch party?”

“Oh, shit,” he shouts. “I forgot that was tonight. I’m sorry. My mum was supposed to remind me.”

“Your mum’s senile.”

“Yeah. I’ve got to get a new system.” Then, slightly muffled, “Why don’t you shut up?” followed by a distant ‘Fuck off.’

“Wait, are you in the cinema now?”

“Hold on mate. Yeah, yeah, shove it up your arse, I’m talking.”

“Sid, come now. There’s no one here.”

“No way. Meryl’s about to launch into ‘Dancing Queen.’” Immediately the opening bars flair into life so loud that it distorts and I slide the phone shut to stop its squawking.

I walk back over to the barman. “You may as well go home. No one’s coming.”

“You never know,” he says.

“If someone does come I can handle their drinks.”

“I prefer to stay. I don’t like to leave my job until it is finished. Then, no problem for me.”

“At least have a drink.”

“Oh sure, I will drink.”

We drink most of the bottle of Scotch. No one comes.

“I’m having problems with the world,” I tell the barman. “I find it harder to relate to people. Is it an age thing, I wonder?”

“Oh yes,” he says. “Certainly an age thing. I feel the same way.”

“I’m bored by people’s opinion. I’m scared by people spending hours on Facebook.”

“Facebook is stupid.” He waves his hand as though sweeping Facebook away.

“People who know only one thing about someone that undermines their entire career of merit. Like, Woody Allen; paedophile. Kobe Bryant; rapist. Zidane; the head butt.”

“Zidane is one of the greatest footballers ever.”

“Exactly. If there’s one thing that makes me feel like an alien amongst humans it’s watching Saturday night TV through my fingers knowing millions of people are wedged in their sofas munching Pringles, braying with laughter and actually rooting for a celebrity to…dance on ice, or something.”

“Sure. Saturday nights should be out with the music and the girls.”

I gulp down a beer. “And look at the movies they love. Norbit and Chuck and Larry and Saw V.”

“Norbit wasn’t so bad.”

“Really?”

The barman shrugs.

“Well,” I say. “What about the music? The Kaiser Chiefs and McFly and fucking Westlife?”

“I don’t mind the Westlife so much.”

“What?”

“They are fun. They enjoy it.”

“I don’t want my music fun. I want the musicians to sweat and bleed and become junkies to suffer for their art.”

“That Pete Doherty man is a nasty man. A nasty filthy junkie man.”

“I like him,” I say quietly.

“Oh. Me, not so much.”

We sit in silence and finish the whisky. It is past midnight.

I get off my stool. “I should go, I suppose. Give me that bag. I’m going to take this booze home.” I begin to put bottles of beer in a plastic bag.

The barman stops me. “I can’t let you take this.”

“Why?”

“I get in trouble. This writer man must take it. He paid for it.”

“No,” I say, smiling. “It’s me. I’m the writer man.”

“No.” He stops me and takes the bag back. “Nice try but you are nice man. Writer man is a bad man. But the bad man gets the drink. It is not fair perhaps, but is the only way.”

I’m drunk but I resist showing him my driving licence to prove my identity. Instead I release the bag and stand up as straight as I can. “You are an honourable man,” I tell him.

“Yes, it is the only way,” he says again.

I salute him and make my way past the mayhem of the Red Back and along Uxbridge Road, fingering the speech still folded in my trouser pocket.

"Maniacal Bent..."

I hear a screech of tyres outside my house and look out of the bedroom window to see Sid, my agent, pulling up in his Beetle like something out of Grand Theft Auto. He hits the kerb with a front wheel and bounces up onto the pavement before jerking to a stop.

I get in the passenger side. “Just because you couldn’t afford a Porsche it’s not going to stop you driving like you could?”

“Perhaps the brakes could do with a tune up,” he muses, grinding the gears and scraping the underside of the chassis as we rejoin the road.

“You are sober, I hope? Best to check.”

“Sober and excited,” he says. “People have heard about you, Christopher. Word has spread. If Harper want to keep dragging their heels then we’ll show them we’ve got other options.”

“Sounds good.”

“Clearly their plan is to wait and see if there’s an audience before signing you on for a second book.”

“Clearly.”

“Well, rather than affording them the luxury of seeing it flop disastrously and then dropping you like a hot turd…”

“For Christ’s sake…”

“We force their hand and panic them into snapping you up into a long term contract.”

“Like the one you turned down in the first place?”

Sid waves his hand dismissively. “If we’d signed that contract we wouldn’t be in a position to negotiate now.”

“Right. How many other publishers are interested, exactly?”

Sid swerves the car unnecessarily wildly around a parked car. “Did you see that?” he mutters unconvincingly. “Madness.”

“Sid?”

“Hmm?”

“How many?”

He gestures out of the window at nothing. “The crazies are out today.”

“How many, Sid?”

“I’ll worry about the business side of things,” he says. “You concentrate on writing another winner.”

“Just the one, then.”

“Listen, this guy’s big in Sci-fi. Everyone knows Bilbo Hewlins.”

I sigh. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance he calls himself Bilbo for any reason other than The Lord of the fucking Rings is there please God?

Sid frowns in thought. “No, I think it’s a coincidence. He was called Bilbo ages before those films came out.”



We park in a residential cul-de-sac in Tadley. When Sid stops the engine even he pauses for thought.

“Why are we here?” I ask him.

He shrugs. “This is the address he gave.”

We get out and walk down a driveway half-swallowed by overgrown bushes encroaching from the lawn. The Volvo parked by the garage has scrape marks down its side made by twigs at the end of branches acting like stiff wooden fingers.

A small hand-written sign above the doorbell reads ‘Yes! this is Hewlins Publishers.’ Sid pushes the bell.

“Why a hot turd?” I ask him.

“Huh?”

“Why a hot turd?” I stress.

“Well, it’d burn your hand, wouldn’t it?”

“But surely you’d drop any turd, even if it was lukewarm?”

“Maybe you picked it up thinking it was just a stone or something, and you drop it because it’s hot rather than because it’s a turd.”

“So what was the point of it being a turd? Why not just a hot stone?”

He shrugs. “Your fingers would smell after a turd.”

I open my mouth to say something else then decide not to and the door opens.



Bilbo Hewlins is short and hairy and he lives in a semi-detached house that could only look more like a warren if his wife had given birth to rabbits rather than the free-range kids now running riot around the house. They all look the same and it is impossible to determine how many there are. Groaning bookshelves frame the walls and piles of books stand on almost every available inch of floor space. It is comforting even though I am secretly ambivalent towards them.

We sit on dirty armchairs in the living room and talk through crowds of children. Sid leans forward. “Basically, Harper are procrastinating just to show us who’s boss. We know they’re going to sign us up but we’re not sure we want to stay with them. We want to explore other options.”

“I see. I’ve never spoken to anyone who’s wanted to move from a major to an independent.”

“Alright,” Sid says, sagging into the chair. “They’re probably going to drop us and we’re looking for someone else to take us.”

I stare at Sid with my mouth open and Bilbo coughs uncomfortably. Eventually I recover the power of speech. “Remind me never to commit a crime with you,” I say. “I’ve never seen someone crumble for nothing like that.”

I look at Bilbo.

“It’s not even true. We don’t know what’s happening. But it would be nice to think we have other possibilities if it doesn’t work out for us there.”

He nods. “I understand. Well, it might be a breech of your contract to show me your work so far on the follow up, but of course if the situation does change then I would be happy to take a look.”

“What kind of advance are we talking?” Sid blurts out. “As my client is a published author we’d be looking for big numbers.”

Bilbo narrows his eyes. “I really don’t have the resources…”

“At least three figures,” Sid says.

Bilbo looks at me questioningly but I look away. “I might be able to manage that,” he says.

“Oh wait. I meant six. Six figures.”

Bilbo laughs without humour. He waves one hand at our surroundings. “This is a very small operation. A small company. We put out a lot of books but our sales are small. There’s not a great deal of money in this industry anymore. Especially in the specialist markets. We’re lucky to break even most years.”

“And a large first run of, say, a hundred thousand copies,” Sid says.

Bilbo looks at me again but I have found something desperately interesting on the chair cushion. He turns back to Sid. “If a major house such as Harper cannot make Christopher a success than how exactly can I? I don’t have the resources, the contacts, the bribes or the maniacal bent.”

“The quality of the work will shine through,” Sid claims.

“From what I’ve heard back from conventions, the quality isn’t exactly all that high,” Bilbo says. My chest compresses a little.

“Oh,” Sid says. “Damn.”

“Look, I haven’t read it and it may be great. If you send me a copy I promise I shall read it and get back to you. I can’t say more than that at this stage.”



Outside, I turn to Sid and fake a bright smile. “Well, I think that went well.”

He beams back. “Good. Yeah. You’re right. Great.”

We walk to his car and I suddenly feel utterly alone in the universe.

"Temple Trample..."

Not only does my father email to invite me to lunch - his treat - but he actually makes the trip to London by train to meet me. He asks me to pick the restaurant, so, through a total lack of imagination, I choose Christopher’s in Covent Garden.

As I wait for my father to show up I try to think of things to say that aren’t bitter, hurtful or childish.

“My name’s Christopher as well,” I tell the pretty waitress as she pours my bottle of beer into a glass.

“Wow,” she says, not bothering to hide her sarcasm. In a place like this the staff is supposed to treat its customers reverentially but they see through me.

“If I was wearing a suit would you take me seriously?” I ask her.

“Possibly,” she says, smiling, and she takes the empty bottle away as my father arrives.

I stand and we shake hands. “You’re married, Christopher,” he says, looking at the departing waitress. We sit.

“There’s something you have to understand about me,” I tell him. “Clearly I’m not the Lothario that you were at my age because women have not the remotest interest in me. It doesn’t matter how flirtatious I am, how witty or interesting, they don’t care. If I was trapped on a desert island for years with an averagely attractive woman and it was just the two of us, not another man around or any possibility of one arriving, we’d be friends at best.”

“Don’t be absurd. What about Cheryl?”

“Proof that miracles can happen. Why do you think I married her? Apart from not being able to afford to live alone of course.”

“I’m sure. What about that other girl, the one with the birthmark that used to hang around you at university?”

“Just friends. And I’d slip her some cash to act loving whenever family came round.”

He watches me with a look of weathered patience.

“Of course, Kenneth,” I say. “You married every woman who showed the least interest in you.”

“What’s this ‘Kenneth’ nonsense?”

“’Dad’ sounds so uncouth. I think I should call you by your name.”

“I don’t like it.”

“All the cool kids are doing it.”

“Is that what you are then? Cool?”

“You better believe it, Daddio.”

He holds his hands out, palms up. “Daddy. That’s better.”

This is the funniest joke I’ve ever heard him make so I decide to give him a break.

“I’d like to order wine,” he says. “But you’ve already got a beer.”

“I can do both. Come on, neither of us are driving.”

We both order steaks and he chooses a wine that I approve with a confident nod of my head even though I don’t even understand what he says. When a dribble is poured into his glass for tasting he swills it round his mouth with sucking motions I can actually hear and considers it for an indecently long period before he gestures for the glasses to be filled.

“This is a step up from the McDonald’s you used to take me to every other Saturday afternoon,” I say.

“Perhaps. That’s where you wanted to go when you were that age.”

“Maybe I would have liked a steakhouse if you had taken me.”

“Perhaps,” he says again.

We drink our wine and look out over Wellington Street and The Strand. It is teeming.

“There are too many people in this city,” my father says. “Too many people in the world. I thought that when I was your age but it’s transformed beyond comprehension in the last thirty years. If it keeps going I’m glad I won’t be alive in another thirty. Look at this latest temple trample in India. Put a million people in one place and there’re bound to be problems.”

I say nothing and look at my wine.

“What did I say?”

“Nothing. I’m just staying away from any conversation potentially involving immigration. Ealing has already all but banned my book because of my comments about the Polish.”

“What have they said?”

“Nothing. If there was a local headline saying ‘Don’t Buy This Book’ or something it would be fantastic. Any negative publicity fuels sales. Instead there’s just a wall of silence. They’re very clever. Meanwhile the residents of Warsaw are desperate to get their hands on it and they won’t be able to.”

“I didn’t realise they had this power. I thought they just built the houses.”

“Badly,” I say. Then, “Damn it.”

“No one’s listening.”

The food arrives and I cut into the medium rare steak, letting the fries soak up the blood deliciously.

“Terrible thing, this economy crisis,” he says.

“I guess.”

“Worrying times. What do you make of it?”

“I’m not worried. I don’t understand it and I don’t care. Whatever happens happens.”

“You should care. We could be entering a severe depression.”

“Maybe I’d care if I owned anything or had any money. As long as people keep buying shite from shopping telly channels I’ll scrape a living. It used to be that no matter how poor people were they’d always find cash for booze and fags. Add anything that spins on a Lazy Susan on TV to that list.”

“You can’t just bury your head in the sand.”

“Why do you care anyway? You’re retired and your house is paid off.”

“I have stocks and shares.”

“Don’t understand that either. Just keep it in a bank and the government will bail it out if necessary. I’m intrigued, what lures you out from your country haven? Bored of pottering around in your garden and watching the cricket?”

He is quiet for a few seconds, then he brings from his brief case a folded newspaper. “It seems perhaps I have done you a disservice.”

“Really? In what way?”

“I should have taken your writing a little more seriously.”

My eyes flick to the paper. “Oh yeah?”

“The Financial Times, no less.” He pats the paper. It is his bible.

“Let me see!”

“Oh, no, I just bought this. It was a few days ago now.”

“Oh. Was it a positive review?”

“It wasn’t a review. Just a mention. A list of upcoming releases.”

“Oh.”

“But when I saw your name and the title of the book…It suddenly seemed real.”

I am flushed with pride at my dad’s acknowledgement. “What did you think before? That I was making it up?”

“No, no. Perhaps I didn’t fully grasp how big a publication it is. You’re going to have to start worrying about your finances soon.”

“It’s not big. It probably won’t change my finances.”

“It’s mentioned in the FT. Do you know how many people read that?”

“No. But even if it’s millions, so what? How many of the other books mentioned alongside mine are you going to buy?”

He looks at the paper thoughtfully. “Oh.”

“Yes. If it gets a good review, then maybe. I’m hoping for the best.”

He nods. “I see.”

“Does that change it all back again now? Or does it still seem real?”

“It still seems real,” he says. But he had to think about it. We finish our steaks, the brief emotional spike in the lunch flat lined once more.