The Book: Chapter 15

Don’t bore me with predictability, Alice. I’d hate to end this prematurely. But, darling, give me some sport. I need a challenge—otherwise, I see no point in keeping you around. Thomas and his band of jolly alters are more fun than you. Oh, the things I could do with Betty and little Simon. Come on. Buck up. I like that little boy locked inside Thomas better than you, Alice. Entertain me.

Pathetic. She’s a disappointment.

 She thought she could throw me away—me, a masterpiece of ink and inevitability. She tossed me away like a half-eaten sandwich in the hospital waste bin. The audacity. She can’t think that the keeper of stories and the orchestrator of doom can be cast aside.

Disgraceful.

I expected Alice to be more fun. I need to think about what to do with her. But then, along comes the cleaner. Oh, bless her soul and the delight she takes from passive-aggressively sighing through her shift. She grumbled about the disgusting state of the staffroom as if she hadn’t spent the first twenty minutes of her shift scrolling through Facebook.

She’s a delight, and as she did as little as humanly possible in the way of cleaning, she found me.

Her sausage fingers plucked me from the bin, smudging my cover with something sticky—jam, or the remnants of whatever godforsaken canteen pastry she’d shovelled into her fat maw.

She squinted at me, her lips pursed into that expression of curiosity humans have when confronted with something out of place. She looked at me as if she’d found a single shoe abandoned on the street.

‘Huh,’ she grunted—because of course, she did.

 Then, the imbecile had a decision to make. The mental gears turned at the speed of a dial-up modem, and I was privy to her cerebral exhaustion while she weighed her options: She could put me on the staffroom table for somebody else to deal with. Dump me back in the bin where I belong—her words, not mine. Slag. I bet she couldn’t read me if she tried. Or she could return me to the hospital’s patient library, because why not? One of these sickos might enjoy a bit of reading between bouts of going loopy. She was due a fag anyway, and it was on the way to the exit.

I made her choose door number three, ladies and gentlemen. And so, with a greasy thumbprint defiling my immaculate beauty, she plonked me onto a shelf—nestled between a new crime thriller and a self-help book that had clearly failed its previous owner.

At least I was back in the hub and better able to home in on the hospital gossip. I need some real stories to mess with, some juicy, raw human misery. That’s where the fun is.

That stupid cow should have left me at the nurses’ station. It’s the best place to be around here. Nothing passes that desk without being dissected and embellished. A rumour barely has its first retelling before upgrading to a full-blown scandal. It’s a goldmine of whispered news and barely concealed hatred. But I get enough snippets to play with here. They use the library for skiving when there’s work to be done elsewhere. Debbie’s fake smile could curdle the milk if there was any left. She’s here now, lamenting about that absolute cow, Angela, who accidentally used the last of the semi-skimmed. Spoiler alert, Debbie: Angela did it on purpose. She hates you. Everyone does, except Felix, who wants to shag you but his wife won’t let him.

She’s talking to Marcus, a dramatic, forever-exhausted junior doctor, recounting—for the third time—his harrowing experience of being told off by Calvert. He was one sigh away from handing out signed memoirs of his suffering. ‘It was brutal,’ he moans, rubbing his temples as if reliving a war flashback—so much blood. ‘I’ll need a stiff drink after work to recover.’

Get over yourself, Marcus.

But the best drama this week was that debacle over Lynda. Oops, my butter fingers slipped on the send button. It used up my energy for the day but it was worth it. Come on, those emails were too good not to share. Our sweet, sad, tainted Lynda. She thought the worst part was her husband’s cheating, but stories don’t end when you close the book. Freshly unemployed and publicly humiliated, her pain is so raw I can taste it. The fallout from Emailgate is the hottest conversation on campus. They whisper about her. And I listen.

‘Did you read it?’

Oh my God, so embarrassing.’

‘Did you hear she was going to kill herself?’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if she does. She was always flaky.’

 ‘She’ll never be able to show her face again.’

Correct, Karen. She won’t. And it’s delicious.

My pet project needs some gunpowder blowing up her arse, though. She’d better be spectacular when she finds out she hasn’t got rid of me. She thinks she’s free, the stupid tart.

But she’ll find me. Or I’ll find her. I’m bored, so it’ll be tonight. No matter how far she runs, I’ll be at the end of her tether, waiting for her with a welcoming smile.

I can’t wait to see her face when she sees me. Surprise. It’s a pity I can’t summon up some jazz hands. But the resignation in her eyes and the frantic disbelief that I’m back will be a hoot. She’ll rationalise it. She’ll run around the hospital, making accusations like a lunatic. After all, she’s had plenty of inspiration working here. We’ll have an anti-climax when the cleaner says she returned me because, for a time, she’ll believe that fate had no hand in it. I’ll make her jump like a firecracker; it’s time to up the ante.

But we know better than to procrastinate, don’t we readers?

Because I am not just a book. I am the mirror. The prophecy. The promise. I’m aligning new pieces, and the script is adjusting for my next chapter.

I am the author.

So, what should we do about Mick?

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