Holden Caulfield Needs a Slap...

I’m walking along Berwick Street again, ostensibly in search of good bargain records and pretending to myself that I’m not looking for James Hardy. Since tricking one of the Harper publicity crones into giving me his number, I have left a humiliatingly large number of messages on his mobile’s answer phone, but he hasn’t returned my calls.

I have kept alive the slim possibility that my messages have cut out each time at the exact moment that I am reciting my own phone number, leaving him unable to contact me, frustrated and desperate to go out again and perhaps let me ride on his coattails of success for a time.

My phone vibrates in my pocket. It is Linda, the ex-girlfriend who I met for lunch a few weeks ago, calling me for the twentieth time. I reject it, as I have done each time. Despite this, she refuses to take the hint and keeps calling. It is embarrassing for us both.

As I get to Oxford Street I see a poster for my novel on an alley wall. It has somehow survived being torn down, graffitied or plastered-over with another advert and it looks great. I try to imagine how the poster would make me feel if I had never heard of Clear History. I imagine noticing it, moving closer to take it in, then running to the nearest bookshop to make a purchase. It seems like the natural reaction.

None of the passers-by even glance at it. Eventually I pick out a man my age. “Excuse me.”

He stops and frowns.

“Have you seen this poster?” I say, pointing at it.

“No.”

“What do you think of it?”

He shrugs and frowns again. “I don’t know.” He walks away.

“Don’t you want to buy it?” I shout after him.

He doesn’t look back. Unperturbed, I slip back into the role of the newly-smitten consumer and make my way to Borders.

It is a quiet weekday afternoon. I take the escalator to the third floor and bravely stride into the sci-fi/fantasy section as though it is a normal thing to do.

My book isn’t there. I check several times but it is nowhere to be seen. The possibility that it has sold out suddenly excites me and this gives me the courage to approach the man at the nearest till.

“Excuse me. Have you got Clear History by Christopher Hardy?”

“Let me check.” He taps a few times on his computer keyboard. “Clear...?”

“History.”

He taps again and makes a strange clucking sound with his tongue. “Should have a few in stock.”

“Couldn’t see any.”

“Oh, hang on. We had a couple on the shelf but they sold out on the first day, actually. Looks like the rest of them are still in storage.”

“Where’s…storage?”

“Downstairs. In the basement.”

“So…since the day it was released there haven’t been any copies on the shelf? For the past six weeks?”

“Looks that way.”

He can see my anger coming to a boil and seizes an opportunity to palm me off onto someone else. “Greg,” he shouts across the shop.

A surly-looking teenager who was passing with a trolley full of books stops in his tracks and lumbers towards us, rolling his eyes.

“Greg might be able to dig one out for you,” the till man says, turning away.

Greg stops in front of me. “What?”

“Apparently you’ve got a load of copies of Clear History just sitting downstairs.”

He doesn’t reply.

“Have you?”

“I’ve no idea, mate.”

“Well, do you think you might be able to have a look for me?”

He rolls his eyes again and sighs. “I’m really busy, mate.”

“Apparently they’ve been down there for six weeks, so maybe you could make time?”

“What was it again?”

I give him the title and author and he walks towards, I presume, the lift. But he stops in the sci-fi section. I join him. “It’s not here,” I say. He ignores me and keeps looking. “I’ve looked.”

A minute later, he sighs again. “No, it’s not here.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s downstairs.”

“Look, how badly do you want this book? I’m so fucking sick and tired of going up and down to that fucking basement.”

“I don’t want it myself, I just want copies on the shelf.”

“You what?”

“Listen,” I say, looking round and leaning into him. “I’m Christopher Hardy.”

He looks at me blankly.

“I’m the author.”

“Right.”

“Come on, mate. How are people supposed to buy the book if it’s not on the shelf?”

“There’s no room on the shelf,” he shouts, angrier than I am. “I can’t fit them on.” He stands there, pointing and panting.

“Build some more shelves,” I say.

He opens his mouth again, winding up for an enraged meltdown.

“I’m joking,” I say, my own anger dissipated. “I feel your frustration. I’ll give you ten pounds if you bring up all the copies.”

“Thirty,” he says immediately.

“Thirty? But I won’t make a profit even if they all sell.”

“Thirty,” he says again, folding his arms and smiling smugly.

“Fine,” I say, shaking my head and handing him the cash. “But I’ll be back to check.”



I run out of the shop, a new hope rising that sales are low only because the copies are all hidden in storage rooms around the country. All I have to do is tour the UK, personally visit every bookshop and give them thirty pounds.

But this concept is shattered in the next shop along, where two copies of my book are on display, squeezed onto a shelf with their spines showing.

I approach the manager. “Hi. I’m Christopher Hardy. Would you like me to sign copies of my book?”

“Which book is that?” she says.

I lead her to the shelf and slide out the copies.

“Erm… I don’t think it will make much difference,” she says. “Thanks anyway.”

Another man asks her a question and she moves away. I leave my books with the covers facing outwards, blocking others.

Outside, I look through the shop window and see the manager putting them back.



Back at home I lie on my sofa in the living room, staring up at the framed Clear History poster on the wall, imagining how good it would have looked as a giant billboard on Earl’s Court Road.