‘No thanks, buddy,’ said Lars. ‘I’m busy right now.’
He recognised this little kid. It was his boyhood self, little Lars, trying to give him a message.
‘Please,’ said the little boy, and he took Lars’s hand. ‘I’ve got something I need to show you.’
‘Maybe later,’ said Lars, pulling his hand free. ‘I’m busy right now. You go play.’
Remember this, he thought. Remember it all. He would tell Ray all about it when he got home. Ray would be interested. He was always interested in everything that happened to Lars. His face so earnest and open and hopeful.
Ray didn’t want to take anything from him. All Ray wanted was his love.
For a moment that simple thought was everything, it hung there suspended in his consciousness, the answer to every question, the key to every lock, but then his mind exploded into a billion purple petals.
chapter thirty-two Zoe
Zoe’s dad was refusing to lie down and put on his headphones, and those were the rules, but her dad didn’t want to follow them and that was the first time in Zoe’s life that she had ever seen her dad break the rules and it was so funny and awesome.
Zoe carefully pressed each of her fingertips against her thumbs as she watched Masha try to convince her dad to lie down. Her mum was shouting: ‘Illegal . . . Unconscionable! . . . Appalling!’
She was a savage little spitball of rage. It was cute. What did Zach used to say when Mum got mad? ‘Mum’s being a savage cabbage.’
She closed her eyes. Mum is being such a savage cabbage right now.
Thought you weren’t talking to me. His voice was clear as a bell in her ear.
I’m not. I hate you. I can’t stand you.
Yeah. I can’t stand you either. Why do you keep telling people we weren’t close?
Because we weren’t. Before you died, we hadn’t talked in, like, a month.
Because you were being a bitch.
No, because you were being a total loser.
Fuck off.
You fuck off. I downloaded your Shakespearean Insult Generator.
I know you did. It’s funny, right? Do you like it? You pribbling half-faced harpy.
And I broke your electric guitar.
I saw that. You threw it across the room. You spleeny milk-livered lewdster.
I’m so angry with you.
I know.
You did it on purpose. To get back at me. To win.
Yeah, no. I can’t even remember what we were arguing about.
I miss you every single day, Zach. Every single day.
I know.
I’ll never be a normal person ever again. You took that away from me. You made me ABNORMAL and it’s lonely being abnormal.
You were already kind of abnormal.
Very funny.
I think the parents want us over there.
What?
Zoe opened her eyes and the yoga studio was a million miles wide and her mum and dad were tiny specks in the distance, beckoning to her. ‘Come sit with us.’
chapter thirty-three Frances
Frances felt the soft, frosty tickle of snowflakes on her face as she and her friend Gillian flew across a star-studded sky in a sleigh drawn by white horses.
A pile of books filled her lap. They were all the books she’d ever written, including foreign language editions. The books were open at the top like cereal boxes. Frances dipped her hand into each book and pulled out great handfuls of words to scatter across the sky.
‘Got one!’ said Sol, from the back of the sleigh, where he and Henry sat smoking cigarettes and killing off unnecessary adjectives with catapults.
‘Leave them be,’ said Frances snappily.
‘Let’s get all those adverbs too!’ said Sol happily.
‘Even the rhyming ones?’ asked Henry affably.
‘That’s an imperfect rhyme,’ pointed out Frances.
‘They’re just words, Frances,’ said Gillian.
‘So profound, Gillian,’ said Sol.
‘Shut up, Sol,’ said Gillian.
‘She never liked you,’ Frances told Sol.
Sol said, ‘That sort of woman always secretly wants an alpha male.’
Frances smiled fondly at him. Egotist but sexy as hell. ‘You were my first-ever husband.’
‘I was your first-ever husband,’ agreed Sol. ‘And you were my second-ever wife.’
‘Second wives are so young and pretty,’ said Frances. ‘I liked being a second wife.’
‘By the by, Gillian kissed me once,’ said Henry. ‘At someone’s thirtieth birthday party.’
‘She was drunk,’ said Frances. ‘Don’t get a big head about it.’
‘I was drunk,’ agreed Gillian. ‘I felt bad about that until the day I died.’
‘Henry, you were my second husband,’ said Frances. ‘But I was your first wife. Therefore not as pretty.’
Gillian said, ‘Why do you keep identifying your husbands?’
‘Readers get impatient if they have trouble working out which character is which,’ explained Frances. ‘You’ve got to help them out. None of us is getting any younger.’
‘Except this isn’t a book,’ said Gillian.
‘I think you’ll find it is,’ said Frances. ‘I’m the protagonist, obviously.’
‘I feel like that tall Russian lady is giving you a run for your money,’ said Gillian.
‘She is not,’ said Frances. ‘It’s all about me. I’m just not sure of my love interest yet.’
‘Oh my God, it’s so obvious,’ said Gillian. ‘Blind Freddy could pick it.’ She shouted at the sky, ‘You knew it from day one, right?’
‘Gillian! Did you just try to break the fourth wall?’ Frances was shocked.
‘I did not,’ said Gillian, but she looked guilty. ‘I’m sure no-one noticed.’
‘How tacky,’ said Frances. ‘How very gimmicky.’
She dared to look up and the stars were a million darting eyes on the look out for rule-breaking in her story: sexism, ageism, racism, tokenism, ableism, plagiarism, cultural appropriation, fat-shaming, body-shaming, slut-shaming, vegetarian-shaming, real-estate-agent-shaming. The voice of the Almighty Internet boomed from the sky: Shame on you!
Frances hung her head. ‘It’s just a story,’ she whispered.
‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you,’ said Gillian.
An endless gossamer-like sentence embroidered with jewel-like metaphors, far too many clauses and meaning so obscure it had to be profound wrapped itself around Frances’s neck, but it really didn’t suit her, so she wrenched it off and flung it into space, where it floated free until at last a shy author on his way to a festival to accept a prize grabbed it from the sky and used it to gag one of his beautiful corpses. It looked lovely on her. Grey-bearded critics applauded with relief, grateful it hadn’t ended up in a beach read.
‘Will younger readers even recognise the term “Blind Freddy”?’ asked Jo, who floated alongside Frances doing a line edit. She sat astride a giant lead pencil. ‘Could it be ableist?’
‘What’s interesting is that I’m a fictional character,’ said her internet scammer from the back of the sleigh, where he sat between Henry and Sol, his arms around their shoulders. ‘Yet she loved me more than either of you.’
‘You’re nothing but a scam,’ said Sol. ‘She never even met you, let alone fucked you, cocksucker!’
‘!!!!’ cried Jo.
‘I agree. Delete,’ advised Gillian. ‘My mother reads your books.’
‘As her loving ex-husbands, it’s our duty to beat you to a pulp,’ said Henry to Paul Drabble. ‘Scram, scam.’
‘Life is nothing but a scam,’ said Gillian. ‘It’s all just a giant illusion.’
‘Scram, scam,’ chuckled Sol. ‘Good one.’
He and Henry fist-bumped.
‘You’re both far too old for fist-bumping,’ sighed Frances, but her ex-husbands were busy bonding. She always knew they’d like each other if they ever met. She should have invited them both to her fiftieth.
She realised that Paul Drabble had vanished, as easy as that. There was no pain in the empty space he’d left behind. It turned out he’d meant nothing at all. Not a thing.
‘He was just a credit on my bank balance,’ she told Gillian.
‘Debit, you idiot,’ said Gillian.
‘Debit, credit,’ said Frances. ‘Whatever. I am completely over him.’
‘I was the one who meant something,’ said a child’s voice. It was Ari, Paul Drabble’s son.