“Toni knew her biological clock was ticking but she pulled her Kangol hat over her ears to try and shut out the noise. Dave was an OK guy but he didn’t love her, she knew that. She deserved someone that loved her…didn’t she? She stopped at the kiosk outside the tube station and bought twenty Silk Cut. She could stop smoking tomorrow. When she’d found true love.” Ali reread the first words of her first chapter over and over again. Was it really that bad? Yes. Was it the ultimate corny cliché-ridden crap? Yes. Was it any worse than many things she had already written and seen published? No. Was it worse than much of the prose available freely across the nation? Probably not. Well then, best get on with it. That’s not the only clock that’s ticking. Ali chewed on her organic cheese and organic pickle sandwich and wondered what healthy version of chocolate biscuit there might be skulking in the tin downstairs. She looked round the room for inspiration but couldn’t see anything to get her verbs going - her friend Becky’s bedroom was so homely and label-free with its comfortable clothes and interesting books and odd bottle of inoffensive moisturising cream. The room was clean and relaxing but it was absolutely useless for someone trying to conjure up amusing incidents in metropolitan locations. Maybe trying to get some work done here had been a little over-optimistic. Ali was used to writing in her own home – in her much more sophisticated West London flat. There she could nip out for lunch and pick up character ideas in a deli. She could have coffee with a media mate and then, later that day, use their love life almost word for word in her next chapters. The mate wouldn’t be offended – more likely flattered, excited, used to it maybe. But here? There wasn’t a deli for miles and the one she’d spied in a local market seemed to sell salad cream and tinned hot dogs and not a lot else. She might have found it all very charming and post-war if it wasn’t for the fact that she’d grown up in a town quite like this one. She knew these time warps – London and the big cities were more than just a motorway away. Ali pondered and continued the hunt for inspiration. Becky’s love life was no use at all. It was too perfect to write about – too happy to be in the slightest bit believable or comical. Becky had met Ged, through a friend, and they had fallen for each other straightaway. They had been, ever since, so in love it made you chuck. They lived here in this happy, sunny house and now Becky was expecting, no doubt, their first of a row of happy, sunny children. Ali and Becky were two very different thirty-one-year old women but they had been best friends in high school and the connection had just about lasted. A pair of bad-tempered English roses, at fifteen they had sat at the back of science classes together and wondered why physics was so hard and French was so easy. At eighteen they’d gone in opposing directions - Ali had gone south and Becky further north. Ali had got smart and expensive - Becky individual and second hand. Ali had become a career woman - Becky had worked and loved and decided work was definitely the less enthralling of the two pastimes. Without ever saying it out loud they each liked having a friendly foothold in a world so opposite to their own. Sometimes they envied each other but mostly they thought ‘God how can she bear it…it’s so quiet/busy, so boring/superficial, so provincial/claustrophobic.’ It was a loose friendship that had stumbled on haphazardly through men and careers and hormonal changes. It had only ever had one really tricky patch, triggered when Ali, quite new to London, had invited Becky to a nice restaurant with a group of fresher, posher friends. The conversation had been dire – too much politics, too many personalities – and a couple of cool years had followed with Xmas cards the only attempts at communication. Finally relations had reheated when Ali had thrown off some of her more annoying London connections and Becky had decided she just liked hanging on to things from the past. She still does, thought Ali, taking in some of the familiar third hand clothes hanging on the rail, the photos of old landscapes on the wall, the furniture her friend seemed to have owned forever. Ali tapped her fingers on the table. She wasn’t getting anywhere with chapter one and she knew that thinking about Becky was not helping matters. It was hard not to get distracted by the past though when here it was all around. Ali gazed out of the window at the little garden below. She could easily have ended up in a place like this, in a house like this - no contracts, no deadlines, just an organic bun in the oven. She wondered if this material could ever have its uses and considered, not for the first time, the Ali/Becky plotline for a novel. The old grow-up-together-but-go-different-ways formula was always so successful. It had worked for everyone from Danielle Steel to Margaret Drabble, hadn’t it? Now, if those two had gone to school together or been twins separated at birth…that really would be a good story. Ali smirked but knew none of this was aiding the current project. Where to go, what to do? Why not be more methodical and work to a plan like a normal person? I’ll just check my messages first, she thought, and whilst I’m online I may as well look at a few things. She hunted through the pile of papers next to the computer. That pregnancy site address was here somewhere. She could look up ‘nipples leaking orange fluid’ for Becky and print out the info. You never know, I might need to know myself some day, she thought and then thought how frightening that idea was. She sifted the pile of papers and found the sheet she wanted. The stash of leaflets and notes was Becky and Ged’s life in a handful. There was stuff connected to his job (IT for environmental campaigners), stuff about how to reach him (away on Very Important Project), stuff about pregnancy (Becky’s project), stuff about second hand books (Becky’s job and interest when not pregnant). They’re so bloody genuine, Ali muttered inwardly, so worthy of their place on the planet. She tried to remember what sat at her workspace at home. A dirty glass or two, some post-it notes, a statement or two about financial matters (quite healthy, despite an over-fondness for shoes and holidays and bottles of wine in restaurants). There was nothing about any interests or emotions or her current stage on the platform of womanly life. No partner, no children, no interests, no substance - that’s what it said to anyone who cared to look. She’d had a string of hopeless so-called love affairs and had totally failed to find anyone bearable. She was the advertiser’s dream and in career woman hell. Bloody Bridget Jones, sodding Sex in the City, Ally McFriggingBeal. Ali (as in Alison Newley, as in write under my own name, despite pressure to call myself Helen because it always seems to sell women’s books) caught herself being pathetic and thought how pathetic that was. You like that life, idiot, you chose it, you made it. What do you want, now you’ve got it made, an hour whining on daytime TV? Ali blinked fiercely to change the subject and clicked on the icon for her email. It was Ged’s computer and all his choice of software so some of it had taken a bit of getting used to. Still through email queries she’d managed to get the hang of it all. He’d sorted out a mailbox for her and everything was in working order. She sometimes felt a bit of a fool having paid so much for a top-of-the-range laptop that seemed to spend most of its time in the shop getting fixed but never mind, this was a good second choice and Becky wasn’t using it much at the moment. All her blooming friend wanted to do was sleep and eat and read books about babies. Should I send anything, Ali studied the mailbox? Do I owe anybody a message? She looked down her inbox list and saw a few jokes and bits of gossip from London friends trying to keep her in the loop, updates from her agent and publisher, a few newsletters she kept forgetting to unsubscribe from. She decided there was nothing she needed to worry about and opted to just check her mail for new enticements or distractions. Maybe her agent would have news of some exciting writing prize or a well-paid, luxurious appearance at a conference somewhere by a warm sea. Such things did happen – she was in a healthy middle lane, not a bad place to be. She got some good offers. Sometimes. Send and receive. Connect. Wait. Wait. Verifying thingy and thingy. Checking for messages. Receiving list of messages, blah, blah. Good that meant something was coming in. Three messages. Good. Better disconnect – not my phone bill. Now let’s see what there is. Message one – gossip from Sue, another paperback-writer and one of her near neighbours in London. Ali skimmed the message for interesting snippets. There wasn’t much. She’d come back to that. She moved to the next line. Message two – from her agent. Another request for a timetable regarding completion of her next book (working title ‘This always happens’). Better come back to that too. She moved on quickly. Message three – an unknown source. Intriguing. It was from someone she didn’t know – an ‘Olga’. Ali racked her brain. She hadn’t known an Olga for years, not since college. It was probably a virus, they often took foreign names, she remembered. And it was hardly likely to be her nineteenth century Russian literature tutor from 1987 now was it? Mrs Olga Tsareva probably didn’t know what email was never mind how to track down one of her less spectacular students several years after graduation. Ali looked for attachments but there weren’t any. Viruses (was that the plural? She must check that) always had attachments, didn’t they? Ged had given her strict instructions on such matters. I’m quite busy enough over here, he’d said in that straightforward way he had even from all those miles away, I can’t be your 24-hour tech support. So just looking at the message can’t do any harm, she figured. So she looked. “Great to see you again after all these years. You’ve hardly changed at all. Do you still visit Petersburg? If so I look forward to meeting up with you again soon. Your friend Olga” Ali reread the message three times but still had no idea what it was on about. Must be a mistake, she thought. Strange coincidence though – she did used to go to Petersburg (although it had said Leningrad on the map when she did). She had attended some Russian courses and escorted American teenage tourist groups on trips of the Hermitage whilst pretending to know about art and culture. No, it must be a coincidence. She hadn’t been back. She hadn’t even thought about going back. She could barely remember a word of Russian so what would she say to anybody – ‘where is Gorbachev?’, ‘look another McDonalds, you must be so proud?’ Ali decided it was all too totally strange and that maybe she should get on with some work anyway. She closed the email program and reopened Word and the folder that contained the various bits and pieces of ‘This always happens’. She tried to find the point she’d left dangling – the omnipresent Silk Cut and the thoughts on modern love. She looked and looked but couldn’t find anything on the page. What is wrong with this sodding machine today, she humphed and fiddled with the mouse. Ali looked up at the header – she was definitely in the right file but the text she’d put there seemed to have disappeared or moved itself around. Where was Toni on her way to her job at a publishing house? Where were the romantic dilemmas (Dave the love rat or reliable Jim the gym teacher?)? They weren’t the most marvellous words ever written in the English language but she still wanted to locate them, thanks very much. Ali’s mind couldn’t help itself and reconsidered this recurring theme. Why didn’t she write anything marvellous, it goaded her? Why was she so unimportant to literature, so superfluous to seriousness? Even her comic moments were bland and predictable – was it worth writing them at all? Becky, pregnant but as ever supportive of anyone and everyone, always reassured her that people needed entertainment and that one day, when she was ready, she would write the book she’d always carried inside. Ali was not so sure. It sounded a bit like Becky-hippy-clap-trap that sentiment. Maybe she just was deep down shallow and no amount of worrying would change it. Some women could compete with all the terribly well-read men producing terribly well-written books but she wasn’t sure that she could – even if she tried. Maybe light romance, not particularly funny comedy and minimal social comment were all she was good for. And why not, after all, she sometimes thought? Why not enjoy life and make money? If she was nothing special in herself then maybe run-of-the-mill formula feel-good fiction was exactly what she was destined to produce forever. Even better, if it was, for then she’d found her niche young. She could settle back and metamorphosise over the years into a Barbara Cartland figure in big hats and frock coats. She could be socially useful at the same time to keep her conscience happy. She could take in stray dogs or something. Sue would say, drink more wine and relax – even Shakespeare was a tart for his art wasn’t he? Ali always laughed and pretended to agree but only because she couldn’t remember much about Shakespeare these days anyway. Her A level in English seemed a long way away and though she recalled once seeing ‘Hamlet’ played by a bloke who had since featured on ‘Cheers’ she could hardly remember much of the play beyond “To be and not to bloody be, that is the bloody question”. She knew more lines from “Frasier” by heart than “King Lear” (“is Seattle experiencing a Prozac shortage?” her all time favourite). She probably knew more “ER” too, though that was a little sadder. And maybe she wasn’t such a philistine either. “Frasier” was great comedy and drama and if Shakespeare were still around he’d probably watch it on his quieter Friday nights. Christ, he’d probably prefer it to too many long sessions at the RSC. What would he make of “The Merry Wives of Windsor” done in 1950s rock’n’roll outfits? What could anyone make of a spectacle like that? Ali found herself drifting and started to reel herself in. Enough rambling and especially in your limited vocabulary, she said to herself. You probably haven’t acquired a new word since you were fifteen and as for anything in another language – forget it. She’d never learned as much Russian as she should have and why? Because there had been other things to do at the time? Boys, men, wandering about daydreaming? It was really no surprise (to herself at least) when she’d only scraped a pass at college and had not gone on to a career in diplomacy, international banking or multi-lingual administration of anything significant. True, she had the degree and Russian was one part of it but all she could recall now were the vague outlines of a couple of classic novels and short stories and a handful of the easier words. She certainly couldn’t recite any Pushkin or have a chat about the way of the world with a passing Russian academic. She remembered Dostoevsky but only just. He was dead right? Very funny. Ha Ha. No wonder you never write anything serious Alison, you have the mental agility and recall of a field mouse. Mouse, she thought, funny that. She looked down at the technological variety and wondered how it had got its name when it looked more like a dirty bar of soap than an animal of any kind. It didn’t seem to be helping her retrieve her lost beginnings either. Where is Toni the under-valued food writer, Ali zoomed her soap-mouse up and down the pages, where are the outlines for bitchy boss Barbara and funny feisty friend Fiona (may or may not be lipstick lesbian)? About halfway down the document Ali found some typed words that were most definitely not familiar. No wonder, she said to herself, that’s the Cyrillic alphabet and you haven’t seen it for about ten years. She racked her fluffy brain and started to recognise the letters. Looks like a ‘p’ that’s an ‘r’. Looks like a ‘c’ – it’s an ‘s’. Not bad, she thought, not bad for starters. Then she got stuck. There were letters she couldn’t place at all and as for the words and final translation – not a hope. Ali clicked on Help at the top of the screen without really knowing why. She knew there were ways of translating online and special packages but maybe there was something quicker too. This was the latest version after all – maybe you could just click once, like magic, and the words would just appear in fool’s English. She chose the Office Assistant option because she’d used it before and she liked the little Einstein cartoon who came out to help. She clicked and the usual tiny door opened at the bottom right hand corner of the screen. A miniature genius walked out into the grey. The only man I’ll be approached by this week, she thought, philosophically. Ali looked at the animation more closely and saw that in fact the Einstein looky-likey looked not very likey at all today. The giveaway shock of white hair had been replaced with dark brown, the huge tache with a thinner one and a mischievous pointy beard had appeared on the little fellow’s chin. This figure looked more like Hercule Poirot than the master of physics but she couldn’t imagine what Agatha Christie had to do with Microsoft applications. Except that today everything on the screen was mysterious and it was getting more so by the minute. She clicked on the new assistant and up came the usual bubble with ‘what would you like to do?’ written across the top. Ali wondered what to type in as her question. Maybe ‘translate from other language’. As she thought she read the possibilities listed in the bubble. She couldn’t be sure but they didn’t seem the kind of thing the Help section usually dealt with. The first one read ‘murder someone and see how your conscience deals with it’. Unusual. Strange. So totally not what she was expecting. All concerns about her missing introduction and the Russian words vanished from Ali’s head as she realised there might be something not at all light-hearted and humorous going on. Was it Ged’s idea of a joke? Who else could get to her through the pc? Was it someone trying to spook her up? A stalker? A deranged fan? A spurned lover? She’d be lucky, she rationalised, spurning was not something she’d had to do a lot of. Not ever. “Ali! Ali! Are you ready?” The loud voice made her freeze. Who the hell was that? At least it was in English. It was a voice she recognised. Of course it is, you prat, she calmed herself roughly. It’s Becky, she lives here, it’s her house. Listen to yourself. “What’s up?” Ali called back, trying not to sound too hesitant. Becky might think she was masturbating over internet porn or something. “Shopping, remember, we’re going, aren’t we?” Ali looked at her expensive watch (a present from her last disappointment of a boyfriend, Tim, the advertising sales manager). It was half past one - hours had passed and she’d done no work to speak of. She’d even managed to lose what little she’d scraped together. This was ridiculous – not like her at all. “Sorry, yes, just coming.” Ali exed the assistant without stopping to read any more of the gruesome topics. She exed the program but didn’t save the document. Maybe when she came back things would have returned to normal. Maybe Toni would be there. And Barbara and feisty Fiona. Maybe Fiona would even have decided what she wanted to do about her sexuality which would be a bonus (Ali really couldn’t decide whether it was more corny for a heroine to have a gay best friend or not to have one). Hamlet, you weren’t the only one with dilemmas, she joked to herself and then wondered if that should be dilemmi. She closed the programs and put the machine on suspend. They wouldn’t be out that long. Downstairs Becky waited with a handful of carrier bags to reuse and a huge cartoon shopping list like something out of ‘Scooby Doo’. She didn’t drive and she was far too large to walk back from the shops with anything more than a Mars bar these days so help with housekeeping was one of the main reasons for Ali’s long stay. You could just order online and get it delivered, Ged had told her, but Becky didn’t like that idea. She was too wholesome for virtual retail. She wanted to see people and chat and choose her own vegetables. She liked to pick up and prod every last tomato – check its country of origin and farming credentials. “How’s it going today?” Becky asked the question but her mind was on other matters. She had an appointment with the midwife later in the week and a whole host of burning questions to ask her. This was just filling in time. “Not great really. I’m not sure if the machine is playing up or I’m just being useless. I’ll have another go later on.” “Oh.” Becky was surprised at how often her totally modern, big city friend needed Ged’s help with the PC. So much for the independent woman she thought, at times, uncharitably, uncharacteristically. “Shall we go then?” Becky locked the sunny little house with its one simple lock and complete lack of expensive digital alarm system. The two old friends - one large and curvy, one slim and square – made their way down the scruffy lane to where Ali’s smart green French car was parked. Ali looked at it and felt better instantly. She knew she loved that car more than was healthy but it was loyal, shiny, sporty yet petite. Why shouldn’t she love it? Why should she feel bad? Her posh friend Cleo always joked that, as her namesakes, she should get a percentage for every one of these cars sold. Like she needed the money, Ali always responded but never out loud. Cleo had a rich confident family and had grown up in a circle where everybody jetted between at least three homes (usually in an assortment of impressive cities). Now she had an even richer, more confident husband and a string of published but largely unreadable novels in her portfolio. She had been interviewed widely – done a few slots on Woman’s Hour. Ali often spent time with Cleo just wishing that some of the plushness and birthright would jump ship and inject her own life with new p’zazz. How did Cleo manage to get ‘serious writer’ recognition and media interest without ever actually wasting her costly time writing serious books? It was so unfair. Settling into the car (unhampered by paparazzi or press interest of any kind) Ali and Becky continued with the small talk whilst both their minds rolled deep in other subject matter. Becky was wondering about the possible benefits of anti-stretch mark creams and what the health food shop in the next town might sell for the same affliction. Ali was trying to stop feeling bitter about Cleo, she of the easy life, and concentrate on Clio, she of the easy acceleration and quite-high-up-the-range CD player. “Which shops today then?” “Just local, I think. I feel tired – I can’t face the crowds everywhere else.” Ali opened her window – it was a warm day and the air in the car was musty and heavy. She found the smell of nature that seeped in from the surrounding gardens no better though – it was sickly and unfamiliar. Bring back the traffic fumes, Mediterranean tourists’ cigarette smoke and restaurant rubbish rotting in sunshine, she thought with some longing. London in the summer – she knew where she was with that state of affairs. Becky arranged her seatbelt so the unborn baby wouldn’t get throttled in an emergency stop. In position and as comfortable as a big pregnant woman can be in a small hot car she gave Ali her ready smile and the little green vehicle did as it was told and got started, headed off down the road and delivered its two passengers to the not very exotic nearby shopping centre. The car obeyed well enough but really it found all this very lame. Where was the fighting atmosphere of Hyde Park Corner on a Friday afternoon? What had happened to the sociable crush of any London bridge going in any direction? The car, quite frankly, was bored and wanted to go home. Parked up and back on foot the two friends took a short wander past some bargain clothes shops, the video shop and the cheap off licence. Becky led Ali (though she knew the way) into the refreshingly cool atmosphere of her local supermarket. It wasn’t really that super by current standards but it had all the basics and a steadily growing supply of more bourgeois produce. It had olives. It had cooking oils with extract of this and essence of that. It had fresh pasta, for God’s sake. Things were better than they might be. The women, who still felt like girls, fell into their current shopping-together roles. Ali drove the trolley aimlessly and picked up useless items that would never make a meal. Becky drove the shopping list, thought about prices and calculated what would go nicely with what in her healthy, vegetarian, pesticide-wary world. They made their way through a couple of aisles and collected a bizarre mix of clean and unclean food from around the globe. Once they had got through fruit and veg and soups, beans and pasta, Becky suddenly looked at her shopping list and made a face. “I forgot avocados,” she made the face again, “I’ll have to go back and see if they’ve got any.” Ali thought maybe she should offer to go and fetch the missing fruit from aisle one but she knew she’d only get the wrong sort or the ones that were too ripe or not ripe enough. She really wasn’t much cop with fresh things - she was better with menus and credit cards and convenience stores. Anyway, Becky was already halfway there. She could see the large, layered figure shuffling past the two-for-one scone multipacks up at the aisle end. As Becky disappeared Ali let herself switch off completely from shopping mode and just stood there leaning on the cart and thinking about nothing. It had been a confusing morning so far and the pressure to get some work done was starting to build. She needed to let her brain off the hook – if only for a few minutes. Her peace was interrupted almost as soon as it began. A truly foul smell was coming from somewhere further along the aisle and Ali couldn’t ignore it – it was just too severe. She looked towards the source and spotted the most likely culprit – a dirty greatcoat containing a stooped man whose smeared hands were busy wandering all over the continental breads. He was muttering to himself quietly and he seemed to be quite upset. Despite the day’s odd happenings and the even odder odour, Ali found herself walking towards the stinking stranger. What was that smell? She’d never knowingly met anyone who’d gone their whole life without a wash of any kind but she had the feeling all that might be about to change. The closer she got the more the figure looked strangely familiar. He had a beard, a dark complexion, greasy, messy hair. He wasn’t a relative so how did she know him? Was he an old teacher, down on his luck? A friend of Becky and Ged’s that she’d met in that miserable pub they liked to go to sometimes? “This is no bloody good,” he was bitching to himself in a heavy foreign accent, “sun-dried tomatoes! How else would you dry a fucking tomato - with a fucking hairdryer? I just want some good honest bread for a good day’s work and there’s nothing here. What can I do with organic walnut wholemeal and Swiss chocolate chunks? The bloody Swiss! What do those lazy oafs know about passion and labour and a good decent meal?” Living in the capital, Ali was used to crazy characters in shops but somehow there was something different about this mysterious muttering tramp. What was that accent? The way his voice went down at the end of every thought sounded dangerously like Russian. What was it - the theme of the day or something? “Excuse me,” Ali wondered if the noxious fumes would sneak into her mouth as she spoke, “I’m sorry but do I know you?” The man turned from his bread contemplation and his dark, glittering eyes studied Ali in a none too flattering way. “Do you know me? Do you know me? I should think you bloody do you idle girl. I am an extremely important individual. I am a great man. I am a writer of substance!” Ali started to wish she had left the mad tramp alone. The last thing she felt like doing was reading some rambling poetry and having to pretend she liked it. Any minute now he’d be in one of the pockets of that stinking coat and pulling out some scribbled verses for her to admire. Don Quijote made real? No thanks. Not in Tescos if you don’t mind. “Tramp? Don Quijote?” apparently the mad mutterer could mind-read too, “why do you insult me with these vicious slurs? Is it not enough that I am doomed to illness and misery? Is it not enough that I cannot decide what to do with the central character in my latest work – that I am caught in a cycle of murderous rewrites that makes me hungry as a dog with nothing decent to eat in this stupid country?” “Actually that bread with the walnuts isn’t too bad.” Ali knew this conversation was already coming under ‘surreal’. She saw no reason to try and make it any other way. “Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you? You who are so easily satisfied. You who settle for the mediocre and the bland every time? You with the warm, comfortable apartment and the pissing permit parking spot! You with the complete lack of mental agitation!” Ali knew it was impossible that this slightly familiar, now obviously East European figure had so much of her background on tap but she went with it, refused to be shocked and just told herself that she was probably asleep. She’d read a piece about the latest ‘Anna Karenina’ dramatisation in the ‘Radio Times’ yesterday. Now she was having related dreams. That was all it was. “European? Do you mind? Have I no backbone, no philosophy, no pride? Anna bloody Karenina? Since when has anything that aristocratic old fart wrote been of any relevance to anybody?” With that the bearded and angry Russian slammed down a bruschetta and stormed off in the direction of the breakfast cereals. “Bastards,” he growled, “bread alone, my arse!” Ali couldn’t help herself – she wheeled her trolley after the irritated ghoul. She was quite inexplicably unafraid even though it seemed more and more likely that she was being haunted by a nineteenth century Russian intellectual with a hygiene problem. She followed him for a simple reason – if this was her imagination at work then what was it up to? How far it was willing to go with the game? She’d done a lot of writing in recent times but she had not used this ambitious part of the brain for years and years. It would be comforting to know it still worked after all this time. Just as he passed the Golden Grahams the dirty Russian turned and spat out some more venom in Ali’s direction. “Your imagination, ha! You’d be lucky my overrated friend. This is absolutely not a happy little daydream. I am here – trapped in your useless time and your useless place. I am wandering the planet, caught in purgatory, because of the sins of my life, because of the unfinished work that lies there, driving me more and more insane every day.” The tortured soul pointed to the top of the aisle, up by the dairy fridges that ran along one side of the store. A supermarket trolley stood there unmanned and over half filled with what looked like pages and pages of yellowing manuscript. “It will be the greatest book ever written,” he said wistfully, fingering a box of Maple and Pecan Nut Crunch, “but I may never write it. And unfortunately for me I’ve already spent the advance.” “Ali, what are you doing down here? We haven’t got any bread yet and I want a couple of loaves for the freezer. And I need pitta and naan bread. Come back here.” Becky stood, slightly vexed, clasping a couple of Hass avocados. She looked like Madonna bearing child and still life all rolled into one. Ali turned back to her ghost but he had vanished into mid air. She looked up towards the novel on wheels - it had flown too. So it is a daydream, she thought, disappointed on one level. I must just not be sleeping properly. People always have odd dreams when they hang round with pregnant women. The hormones must rub off or something. “What’s wrong with you?” Becky placed her avocados carefully next to the broccoli and courgettes. She steered Ali and the trolley back to the rows of baked goods in bags. “Will you pick out some pains au chocolat please? You ate all the last lot.” Ali wondered if she should try to tell Becky about the grumpy shopper but she couldn’t think of a place to begin. If it was a daydream, what did it matter? And if she was going mad, she could always wander down to the psychiatric ward and get some mind-unbending drugs whilst Becky slept off her labour in hospital. She hoped it wouldn’t get to that of course - Ged should be back by then and she should back in her own place in the big city where everyone was delusional anyway. Maybe that was it – she just felt mad because life here felt too sane, too simple, too one-directional. But on the other hand, what if her visitor really was a ghost – doomed to walk the earth until he finished his life’s work? It was unlikely but then so was space tourism and the global enjoyment of muckburgers. Stranger things than this happened. Happened all the time. Becky tutted a little and busied herself with bread. She squeezed loaves and checked dates and changed her mind a few times about whether she would be eating any curries in the next few weeks or not. “They say spicy food can bring the baby on if it’s overdue,” she twittered to herself over a garlic and coriander bread product. Ali, meanwhile, leaned on the trolley and racked her brain for any traces of classic Slavic literature. It didn’t take long for her to recognise that the identity of the bread-groping office assistant was information she already possessed. The clues were none too subtle and as someone who had actually taken a whole paper in his collected works she really should have recognised him sooner. There were hints of Gogol with the hallucinations and surreal scenarios but overall it was the author of ‘Crime and Punishment’ who she suspected most of all. She’d never seen him so close up before but the line about murder, the illness, the whole content of the angry rants – it all suggested Dostoevsky more than any of the other suspects. She couldn’t bring to mind any of her 10 year old essays on his form and content but Ali remembered some things quite clearly about Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. He spent his money at the roulette table and was once very nearly executed. He was passionate and bitter. He was mad as a balloon. The rest of the shopping seemed to take forever. They spent hours by the soft drinks and ages in the crispbreads. Once it was all paid for and crammed into the boot of the little car Becky was reminded by her list of one last minor errand. “I need to ask in the library for a book about breastfeeding.” Another one, thought Ali, but said nothing. She had learned, through experience, to keep her mouth shut around pregnant mothers. “What about all the shopping?” she tried instead. “We need to get the frozen stuff back to the house.” “I won’t be a minute. We can park right outside.” Becky, of course, was right. The town was so small and unattractive to shoppers with any real money that you could always park wherever you wanted and the privilege was even free. It made Ali feel like she was in another universe – free parking in London usually involved double yellow lines and public humiliation of some kind. The library’s interior was quiet and pleasant and most often dominated by talkative old Asian men who liked to use the reading room as some sort of laid-back gentlemen’s club. No one ever dared to ask them to be quiet but then there weren’t usually many other people in the building to complain in the first place. Ali liked it and had visited a couple of times. She always liked to look up her own books on the database and see if any were out on loan or better still ‘in transit’. Becky liked it too. Books were her work and her hobby so she and the collection of staff were on well-worn first name terms. She was soon deep in conversation with a permanently frowning middle-aged woman about British editions of U.S. health manuals and some of the language they contained. The building was emptier than usual today so Ali wandered unhampered to the fiction to see if there were any Dostoevskies in translation that she could cram up on, just in case. Would they be in with the general fiction or in a special section for whatever they called foreign literature these days? In amongst the general works she quickly spotted a couple of the familiar dark Penguin classic covers that she had used in college. There was ‘Crime and Punishment’ (always his most popular) and beside it ‘The Idiot’ (heavy going and pointless in places). She couldn’t see any more. She expected to see her smelly friend again – surely he would sneak up on her and make some snide comment about her never reading him in the original. She’d tried once or twice but the books were just too bloody long. If only it had been Gogol. Short stories were a bit more approachable in a complicated language like Russian. “Well that’s just typical.” So he was here. “I’m sorry I inconvenienced your stupid student social life by writing such bloody long books. Some of us got paid to come up with a good wodge of quality fiction you know. Some of us had debts to pay and others to support. Some of us weren’t asked to write in snappy chapters just long enough to read between dips in the hotel pool and chatting up the bloody waiters!” “OK, OK, you miserable git!” Ali was getting a little sick of the jibes and self important self pity. “Hah, a reaction! Finally. You’re still alive then. We weren’t sure.” The serious writer’s voice lost its edge and gained a little warmth. “We? Who’s we?” “Oh, there’s a few of us in the same predicament. We get together for a writers group whenever we can manage it. There’s Sylvia Plath and Edgar Allen Poe and a couple of French chaps I try to avoid if I can. A few of your First World War poets come from time to time but their injuries are a bit tough to stomach, if you know what I mean.” Not so gorgeous or sweet smelling yourself, Ali smiled but then remembered the ghost could hear her inner thoughts. She blushed briefly and tried to sidetrack him. “And why would any of you be paying any attention to little old me?” “Good question and you know I have really no idea. We just get sidetracked very easily and caught up in a good story. You’re a terrible writer but you’re not a bad subject. I suppose we’re wondering if we can use you in some way in the great unfinished masterpiece in the sky.” “So you’re writing an ensemble piece?” “Some of us are getting on a bit. We’re trying anything that might work.” Ali wondered why no one in the library was paying any attention to this bizarre interchange – they were talking loudly and the undead Dostoevsky was still giving off an unhealthy stench. She cast a look round and saw that everyone else in the building was caught up in their own affairs. The old guys were not in today but there were a couple of white middle aged women ambling by hobbies and interests, a solitary red-haired eight year old boy in the children’s section and a few leather jacket-clad bodies with heads staring at the computers (they might be young men but Ali couldn’t make them out very well). If none of these people could see or smell her harasser Ali figured she would just look like yet another eccentric woman shouting at bookstands. Nothing that unusual for a metropolitan building on a Saturday afternoon. “Am I so interesting?” “Well, yes and no, of course. Obviously the humdrum details of your life are pretty sad. You don’t travel much and your emotional life is very disappointing. You haven’t attempted suicide for far too long either. But saying all that you’re a great snapshot of contemporary life and all that is wrong with it. The mighty English and how they have fallen and all that. The only decent books from your generation are by people you think of as foreigners, thieves who’ve snuck in the night and stolen your Booker prizes – it’s quite entertaining. Also, on a historical note, it’s interesting to see how the writer’s main dilemma is always the same.” “And what’s that?” “So innocent, I don’t think! It’s easy money no effort or loads of effort no money. What else would it be? That’s the way it pretty much always has been too. Only a handful of writers have ever been great and paid to be great you know. And even them…well, obviously there are rumours about them farming some of it out…” “Easy money?” “Well, isn’t it?” The ghost ran his fingers over the spine of ‘Crime and Punishment’ and his withered chest puffed up. “Can you honestly say you’re proud of anything you’ve produced?” “Sometimes you just have to write popular stuff to begin with,” Ali’s chest tried to swell, “and it can take a while to find your feet. It’s a different world these days. People want books that are easy to digest.” “Oh please, you talk in clichés that offend my aged ears. ‘Find your feet’ – what is wrong with you? Did women fight for equal rights so they could spend their lunch breaks reading your light literary snacks? I’d have more respect for you if you wrote a…what do they call them… Mills and Boon? At least then we’d know where we stood with you. You wouldn’t be lecturing to writing courses and signing copies of your flimsy fodder in perfectly respectable bookshops.” Ali was running out of energy to combat her aged opponent. She felt uncomfortable and a touch nauseous and she was starting to wish the shelves would switch on the suction and just swallow her whole. The mention of bookshops reminded her that she was due to do a reading & signing in the neighbouring city’s major store the following week. If she was wary about it before (and she was) then she was dreading it now. The staff were always polite to her but they couldn’t hide the look on their faces that said ‘can’t wait till next week when Jeanette Winterson/Ian McEwan/someone decent is coming.’ The worst thing was she felt the same way. She would never go and listen to what a boring person like her had to say. She’d look down the month’s programme of events and find someone interesting, someone unusual, someone really original. When she was a student she had been quite a writer’s groupie – hanging round with sweaty paperbacks hoping to have a meaningful conversation with someone really clever who might notice her potential. No one had then and now, painfully, she knew why. “You see, you see…you do know what you’re doing. You know you’re selling yourself to the devil – it’s the oldest story in the world. We quite like this new twist on it and we could always spice up the dull bits…maybe add a bit of intrigue…give you a love affair with Robbie Williams or Prince William or someone. Maybe a gay affair – what do you think? Anyone you fancy, I know you’ve tried it before.” “No, no one at the moment thanks.” Ali was totally lost in the freakiness of the subject matter. How did a dead Dostoevsky know anything about Robbie Williams? Did he read ‘Smash Hits’? Did he have cable TV? And how the hell did he know about her drunken fumblings with a certain female friend? “And then of course there’s the fact that you’re seeing me. That’s always a good plotline…a bit of insanity…a confused mind…a hallucination wandering around town. It worked for Gogol – it’s not a bad device as they go...” “But I thought you were real.” Ali wondered if she’d ever known what ‘real’ meant. She certainly didn’t now. “Well, exactly, there you are. Not a bad story, not a bad story at all.” And with that the bearded one took a notebook out from his huge coat and started scribbling in it with what looked dangerously like a souvenir pen from Lightwater Valley. Ali turned deflated to see how her old friend Becky was getting on. She must practically be lactating by now. The frozen food would be melting in the car too and Ali paused and pictured it, suddenly keen for some mundane details about life and the living. The food would be mingling with its cardboard packaging, swapping substances and settling in for a long stay in a small space. Becky was still occupied - leaning over the ‘In’ desk, studying her latest guide to baby management. Ali teased her about her studies but was in fact only impressed with her dedication. The baby wasn’t even here and Becky was more prepared for it than Ali had ever been for anything in her life. Becky was a caring, careful person – she wanted to look after whatever she brought into the world. Ali walked towards her and saw how the baby’s bump meant Becky was standing about a foot away from the counter she leant on. It was an awkward but not unnatural position and Becky had one hand keeping her clean brown straight hair out of her face and the other on the book, keeping track of her thoughts. She had fears about the birth and her future responsibilities but she was determined to deal with everything. Here she was – doing her research… whole government departments did less. Just looking at her friend in that nearly maternal state made Ali feel petrified at the possibility of her own procreation. She knew that over the years she had always been the more afraid of the two of them. She had been afraid of her ambitious family, of not being liked, of not getting out and doing something amazing. She had been wilder than Becky but how could the wildness count for much if you spent so much of your uninhibited years being terrified half the time? From a young age she had been ruled by the fear of being unoriginal and yet, bizarrely, here she was, a good way into adulthood, doing possibly the least original work anyone could ever do. She had tried to be different but so far she had been nothing but a huge stereotype. She’d made coffee for a video company (badly), written weak articles for wimpy magazines (averagely) and promoted dance music and modern art (quietly) to people who’d like anything if you dressed it up in the right outfit and squeezed it into over-priced sports shoes. In all probability she had not had an idea worth sharing since she was sixteen years old and instead she had talked herself into liking an existence that wasn’t anything she ever wanted. No wonder she couldn’t find a person to share her life – she didn’t want any of it herself. Even if she found someone she wasn’t sure she knew what love (the feeling) would feel like anymore. Becky looked up from her focussed reading and saw her friend looking grey and worried. She’d thought this might be good for both of them - spending some time together before the baby came – but really it had just showed her again how different they were now and how long it had been since they had been real friends who had anything in common. Becky liked bits of Ali but she didn’t pretend to understand her or any of those crap books she wrote. Most of all she didn’t really understand what had happened to the outspoken, idealistic seventeen year old she had once known. Why bother rebelling against the middle of the road if you’re going to end up writing its promotional material anyway? Becky knew she hadn’t achieved anything monumental herself yet but she knew she’d never done much to be ashamed of either. She’d stood up to everyone and lived her life her way - she hadn’t just pretended to and then caved in when things were starting to get interesting. Becky closed the book and packed it under her ample left arm. “Ali, are you OK?” “Yeh, of course. It’s me who should be asking you that anyway. Are you ready? Do you want to go home?” “Yes, I think so. I could murder a cup of tea.” Ali turned round to make sure there weren’t any more major literary figures hanging around behind her, waiting to have a go. For now there was no one – no one she could see with her eyes anyway. “Good idea. I could go for some of that healthy carrot cake of yours too… if you can spare a piece.” Becky smiled. Maybe Ali wasn’t such a lost cause. She’d come to help her hadn’t she? She’d left her precious London and her overpriced eating establishments. “If you’re sure it’s refined enough for your sophisticated palate.” “Oh, I’ll manage.” Ali found she really was hungry all of a sudden. It had been a difficult day – she had literally seen a ghost. How often did that happen to a young woman just minding her own business in a small town in the north of England? Becky practised her motherly tones. “Well, come on then,” she said, taking her friend’s thin pale arm, “you’ll need some energy. We’ve got that labour video to watch tonight. Parentcraft homework – don’t think I’ve forgotten!” Driving back to the house the young women laughed about the two classes they’d been to so far and how all the other couples obviously thought they were lesbians but were too polite or too disgusted to say so out loud. The girls had decided to make things more entertaining by not revealing the truth and talking loudly about vaginal deliveries and nipple confusion whilst winking at dads-to-be when their corresponding mums-to-be weren’t looking. The friendly mood continued as the girls unpacked the shopping, made their tea and ate their cake. Ali felt so relaxed she almost forgot the strange goings on in the earlier part of the day. They washed up (Ali washed, Becky fussed about with recyclable containers) and after that they ran out of jokes and Becky went off for a nap on the sofa. Ali sat for a few minutes at the kitchen table, putting off the inevitable return to work upstairs. “Haven’t you got a deadline?” a voice shouted from the other room. The reminder was light-hearted but firm and Ali felt like she was back at home with her Mum reprimanding her for avoiding maths homework. She didn’t like thinking about her mother so she stood up and fiddled with a dirty teaspoon that had been overlooked during their giggly clear-up. Drops of milky tea from the back of the spoon had stained the cloth and now she was making it worse. “OK, OK, I’m going, I’m going.” Sat back down in the worn office chair in Becky and Ged’s room Ali got herself comfortable, looked around and attempted to compose some thoughts. She must talk to Becky about moving the computer into the spare room. That way she could do some work at night and make up for some of the daylight hours she was wasting on dreaming and daydreaming and unfortunate hallucinations. Yes, that’s what I’ll suggest, she concluded, and felt better all at once. She reached for the mouse and the PC sprang back into action. She jumped when it did that – every time without fail. Ali could never resist checking email when she got near a screen. She knew it was unlikely that there would be anything new since this morning but she couldn’t help herself – it was like the seeds of a compulsive disorder, an ever so mild addiction. She went through the process again. She connected, she waited, she asked herself if there would be more from Olga, the secretive gymnast. ‘Receiving list of messages…’ well, there was something. In fact there were four new items – all racing in from far away. Ali felt a rush of joy – Xmas wasn’t exciting anymore but this was not a bad substitution. What a child you are, she said to herself avoiding her own eye in Becky’s mirror to her right. Good job it’s her having the baby and not you. Message one – just a mail-out, from a company she bought electrical items from on an irregular basis. Message two – from another friend, Elaine, a good no nonsense woman who shared Ali’s taste in films and music and days out driving to nowhere. She was beginning to miss Elaine. She would read that carefully and write her a long reply. Message three – from Tim, something about ‘did she have a number for that person who used to iron his shirts’. God, what an idiot he was, possibly the most boring man on earth. You couldn’t put him in a book because no one would believe what a cardboard cut-out he was or why any sane woman would love him for even a short time. So why had she? Because he seemed to like her when no one else did? Ali had worked this out before but today it seemed sadder, emptier, more desperate than ever. Message four – there it was, the next piece in the puzzle. ‘Message from Olga’ announced the Inbox proudly and Ali found she was surprisingly pleased to see the words. The subject said ‘writer’s block’ and she clicked on it eagerly. Maybe it would explain her crazy day, her date with a dead Dostoevsky. “I made a mistake,” the message read, “you have changed. When I knew you you were full of joy and sadness in equal generous measures. You walked alone through unknown streets without ever noticing their danger. You had hope and appetite and you would try anything more than once. Now you try nothing and you are wasting away. I am sorry to be so harsh but I cannot hold my tongue. This is how we are. Yours Olga.” Ali stopped at the end of the message and didn’t know where to go next. She knew she was crying because she recognised the signs. Tears were falling slowly down the smooth skin of her face and her brain felt hollow – just a container for stale air. She stared at the message trying to understand what it was and why it was there. Hadn’t today in the library and the supermarket been bad enough? This was worse still - like getting a letter from a boy you liked at school and finding out all it said was ‘you’re ugly and stupid, stop following me about’. She couldn’t think who would want to bother her so much. It simply must all be imaginary – there was no other explanation. Her attempts at logic didn’t make Ali feel any better or stop the tears from collecting under her chin and falling in big drips onto her soft lilac t-shirt. She tried to remember what she had been like when she was younger. She had been 19 and 20 when she had taken trips to the USSR - was she really that different now? If she was did anyone else really know or care? Was it her fault if her heart had been disappointed so many times that she had given up being full of expectations and emotions and had opted instead for a nice home, a good car and a reassuring bank account? Ali tried to remember some details of the people she’d met in Petersburg and Moscow and the experiences she’d had there. She could vaguely picture a young Russian Christian who’d begged her to marry him to free him from tyranny. Well, he said he was a Christian and he took her to a Church in Moscow but he also drank a lot of the vodka she bought with American dollars and tried to grope her on the underground. When she’d said no she wouldn’t marry him he’d asked if she had any jeans she would leave him or what about that nice yellow sweatshirt she was wearing. She’d given him the sweatshirt and had gone back to her hotel alone. Besides that she recalled a Russian tour guide (what was her name… Olga? Nadezda? Anna?). She had been beautiful but like most Russian girls of the time keen to hide all her natural beauty behind terribly applied caustic cosmetics. Ali had felt like marrying Olga or Nadezda or Anna -just to free her lovely face from the tyranny of poisonous peach blusher. She thought on - of places and monuments and food she had eaten. The meat had always been questionable and the cabbage old and stringy and she wondered how someone with ‘an appetite’ could have enjoyed those hungry cities in any sense at all. Yet now she thought about it she was completely sure that it had been a very enjoyable time. Sadness throbbed in every square inch of the two cities but in spite of it, because of it, she had felt alive and awake and aware that nothing, not one thing, was like normal life at home. Ali exed the email program and the box appeared asking her if she wanted to terminate her connection to the internet. Yes, she most definitely did – it had brought her nothing but confusion today. She disconnected and quickly closed down the computer. She was too fried by the day’s happenings and accusations to stare at a screen one moment longer. She wiped her tears with a thin, cheap tissue from the box on Becky’s bed and wondered if she should switch the pc back on to see what had happened to the office assistant. Would it be Einstein or Dostoevsky? Maybe someone else wandering through purgatory – Thomas Hardy? Alfred Hitchcock? Simone de bloody Beauvoir? Ali decided not to look. Whatever was going on (a breakdown, a bad dream, something in the water…) - it had beaten her today and there was no denying that. She may as well go and sit in Becky’s green garden and count magpies because her spirit was exhausted and good for nothing more. She thought maybe she should go and make a snack for Becky – she’d be hungry when she woke up. Ali knew a few simple recipes by heart and she could manage your basics – your fried eggs on toast. That’s what a good friend would do at a time like this, wasn’t it? Do something useful. Stop moping around and feeling sorry for herself. Ali decided that for one thing she would not be attempting any more work on ‘This always happens’ today. Definitely not today and perhaps not tomorrow either.
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