The Paper Cell

by Louise Hutcheson

  Lying in bed in Edinburgh, Lewis experienced a strange sort of misery recalling this. It seemed now that most of their conversations had ended this way. It was doubly demoralising to realise that not only had he loved Freddie, but he had loved him foolishly.

  He had had affairs with other men over the years, but he had never loved – not in the sudden, lurching way he had loved Freddie Hobbs. There was once a young man who had loved him, and he had enjoyed that. It suited his ego well. But his affairs were always short-lived, and always very shallow.

  He threw his pillow aside, angry and warm, and lay flat on the mattress, glaring at the wall.

  What had he done, allowing Ken and Barbara to trample through his memories? He was choking on the dust of their disturbance, his mind teetering dangerously close to that thing he had carefully, deliberately pushed down over the years.

  He did not sleep that night, or the next.

  6

  ‘You’ll have seen the news.’

  Sarah stepped aside and allowed Barbara to enter the house. She was holding a copy of the Guardian and her face was flushed, as though she had run there.

  Sarah ushered her into the kitchen and made a hushing gesture – she didn’t want her father to hear them. She boiled the kettle in silence and made two cups of black coffee. To Barbara’s, she added two sugars. It struck her that she barely knew the woman, yet she knew how she took her coffee. A product of the two months spent delivering trays to the three of them in the study, pretending it didn’t bother her that they stopped talking when she entered and started again as soon as she closed the door behind her. Sometimes she would leave the vacuum running at the end of the hallway and creep to the door, pressing her ear against it to see how much she could hear. She was like a child again, she thought.

  Well, not quite. Then, in the big writing study in their London house, he’d allowed her to play while he worked. Most days it would be quiet, his pen scratching across the paper (or, latterly, fingers tapping on a keyboard) along with the occasional sound of her fanning out a deck of cards. She would use the sunny square of carpet underneath the window, spending hours at a time teaching herself how to shuffle the deck or playing Solitaire. When she met her ex-husband at university, it was at a student poker night. He had grinned at her as she split and shuffled the deck, fanning it out on the table with expert control.

  But some days in the study were less quiet, the days Ken would visit, or her father would call him on the telephone. When Ken came he brought her sweeties, showed her a card trick, and then they would forget about her. She would stare at her game of Solitaire and pretend she was deep in thought, when really she was listening to the adult conversation. Mostly it was boring. Publishing contracts, book fairs, reviews. Sometimes they spoke in hushed voices about a woman, but never by name and never when her mother might overhear. Sarah sighed. Now she was the excluded one.

  Barbara thanked her for the coffee. They sat on the same side of the kitchen table, their shoulders almost touching as they bent over to read the article.

  ‘Jesus,’ Sarah whispered. She had seen a variation of the headline on the 6am breakfast news, called to her father to come listen. She realised that he must have known this was coming – ‘Carson has thus far declined to comment’ – and wondered at the fact that the telephone was not ringing. When Lewis eventually closeted himself in the study, she discovered he had pulled all of the telephone cords from their wall sockets.

  Celebrated author accused of plagiarising prize-winning debut novel –

  45 years after its publication, evidence emerges that Scottish author Lewis Carson may have stolen the basis for his first novel from an unpublished manuscript.

  ‘Is it true?’

  Sarah was surprised. She frowned at Barbara. ‘You think I would know?’

  Barbara shrugged, turned back to gaze at the paper. Sarah examined the by-line, wondering if she recognised the journalist. Bryony Palmer. Was she a former student, perhaps? From Dad’s days as the Creative Writing Fellow at the university? No. The name was unfamiliar.

  ‘This is Ken’s work,’ Barbara said.

  They were both startled by the doorbell. Sarah moved to stand, but Barbara reached out and grabbed her arm.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘It’s the press.’

  Sarah sunk back into the chair and felt a flutter of panic as the letterbox rattled. A fist thudded against the door.

  ‘Close the curtains. All of them,’ Barbara said.

  She obeyed, walking through the ground floor of the house and shutting out the weak morning sunshine, room by room. Barbara dealt with the front of the house, for which she was glad. They met in the hallway, and Sarah noted that Barbara had closed the outer storm doors. She must have had to open the front door to do it. Sarah imagined her squinting against camera flashes, pushing journalists away. She was impressed with this idea.

  Her eyes fell on a photograph of the three of them on a ferryboat – her, Mum and Dad – taken when she was teenager.

  ‘Shit. Mum.’

  Barbara seemed to understand immediately. She handed Sarah her mobile. ‘Call her nurse. Tell her not to answer the phone or the door to anyone.’

  By the time she had hung up, Barbara had mercifully removed the batteries from the doorbell’s wireless transmitter box, silencing its repetitive sing-song. The thudding on the storm doors continued, though, and they retreated back to the kitchen.

  Sarah took a gulp of cooling coffee, her face pinched in distaste.

  ‘Will he speak to me?’ Barbara was biting her lip.

  Sarah realised that this would impact on her, too. What would the publisher say about the biography now? Would they withdraw from the contract? Ask them to rewrite it?

  ‘I think he owes you that much,’ she answered.

  They climbed the stairs to the study in silence but for the steady, relentless thuds against the door.

  ‘Will they give up?’ Sarah asked.

  Barbara sighed. ‘Not any time soon.’

  She didn’t knock before entering the study, and Sarah realised that she was angry. Angrier than she’d ever been in her entire life, angrier even than when she’d discovered Mark’s affair.

  ‘Barbara’s here,’ she said, her voice flat. Her father looked up at her, no expression on his face, and put down the pen he had been writing with. Barbara sat down in her usual chair without speaking, and they stared at one another for a moment.

  ‘Is it true?’ she finally asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  Sarah’s hand fluttered oddly at her side and she clutched at the doorknob to steady herself. She had been angry, yes, but she hadn’t truly believed it until he spoke. She was angry that he hadn’t warned her, that he hadn’t confided in her. But this was worse. She thought absurdly of the night she confronted Mark. His laughing denial had felt like the cruellest slap she’d ever received. And yet this was worse.

  Barbara was nodding her head. Sarah saw her regroup, something shifting in her demeanour.

  ‘Tell me everything,’ she said.

  And so he began.

  6

  ‘So this is the only copy of the original manuscript?’ Barbara asked, gripping the copy of Infinite Eden.

  Lewis nodded. Sarah was sitting on the carpet, her back against the closed door of the study. Somewhere downstairs, someone was rapping on a window.

  ‘This is only about a third of the novel,’ Barbara said, looking at the last of the pages.

  ‘I decided not to read the full manuscript, and I never have. I used what you have in your hands as my starting point. The ending is entirely my own.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Sarah said. He bowed his head. ‘Don’t try to take credit. None of it is truly yours.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘Where is the full manuscript, Lewis?’

  ‘I burned it.’
>
  The two women looked at one another, appalled.

  ‘It’s lost? We’ll never read the real novel?’

  That stung. ‘I’m sorry.’

  At this, Sarah laughed.

  ‘What about the author? Who was F. Watson?’

  Barbara was all business. When she spoke to him, her expression was clear, her voice level. He was impressed; she must be terribly angry, but she hid it well. He looked down at the desk, contemplated the newspaper in front of him.

  ‘Just a girl,’ he said, finally.

  ‘What was her name, Dad? Fiona, Fanny, Faye – give us something, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Alright, alright. Fran. Fran Watson.’

  Barbara wrote the name down.

  ‘Sarah, go start up your computer. Search for her name on genealogy sites, things like that. See if she has any living children or relatives.’

  Sarah looked as though she might argue, but left the room obediently. Once he was certain she had retreated far enough down the hallway, he met Barbara’s eye.

  ‘She did not have any children,’ he said.

  ‘Did you know her well, then? Where is she now?’

  ‘Dead.’

  She sighed and rubbed at her temple.

  ‘Did she never confront you? Not once, in all these years? I suppose you bought her off.’

  He didn’t answer, and she rolled her eyes.

  ‘Why hide it from me now, Lewis? The question has been asked. It won’t go away just because you don’t want to talk about it. That pack downstairs will be asking this and more.’

  She was right, he knew.

  ‘Tell me everything,’ she said, for the second time.

  And he did.

  London, 1953

  Fran hurried along the street, her heels clacking into the dark and echoing back at her like a yappy dog nipping at her ankles.

  She was late, and Helen would be irritable about it. She spared a glance at her watch and cursed under her breath, hastening her pace. It would be another fifteen minutes before she reached the restaurant. Helen was insufferable when she was moody.

  She skirted onto the pathway running through the park, wondering for a moment if she should remove her wool coat. She was beginning to sweat uncomfortably, but to remove it seemed an effort. Worse still was the urge to kick off her shoes. She could feel that her toe had pushed through her tights and was rubbing on the inside of her court heels. Damn. Why were all of her clothes so cheap?

  She was looking down at her feet when the man stepped into her path, emerging from the shrubbery on her left. She wasn’t even aware of him until she bounced off his chest, and she stumbled in surprise. She meant to say that she was sorry, but his foot swiped out suddenly, and she felt her legs buckle beneath her.

  They both fell to the ground, and she was confused. He was on top of her, heavy, and she couldn’t breathe. Why couldn’t she breathe? She felt her fingers come up to her throat and was surprised to find his hands wrapped tight around her neck. Oh. That was why.

  She felt so strange. She wondered if Helen would be wearing the green dress. They were going to have a bottle of red.

  As her eyes began to close, she reached out and touched his face. For a moment, she thought she might know him. He jerked away from her touch, but in doing so moved out of the shadow and into the dim light of the streetlamp. Yes, she thought. I know you.

  She tried to speak, – to ask why – but his hands were too tight, the words only a thought, an idea never to be voiced. She found that she was angry. Angry that it hurt and that her feet scrabbled uselessly against the ground, her right shoe falling off so that her stockinged toe turned bloody on the gravel. She wanted to batter him with her fists, scream his name out loud so that someone, anyone, would know what he was doing to her.

  But the most infuriating thing of all was that she didn’t do any of those things.

  Instead, she died.

  Acknowledgements

  I started writing The Paper Cell a long time ago – back in 2012 in fact, when, like the infernal Lewis Carson, I was working as an editorial assistant at a publishing house. I assure you that no fledgling writers were harmed in the process of writing this book.

  I’d like to start at the beginning by thanking Margaret Hammond, who encouraged a very shy little girl in her writing. Never underestimate the impact of a good teacher!

  Lucy Drury and Douglas Skelton provided invaluable feedback on an early draft – many thanks for your time and your good judgement.

  To Sara Hunt at Saraband Books – thank you for everything! And to Angie Harms, my editor, who asked all the right questions – I am so grateful.

  Finally, my thanks to my friends and family – Mum, Dad, Shane, Laura, Simon, Gillian, Lucy H, Stephen – you’ve all been so supportive, and it means the world to me.

  Copyright

  An imprint of Saraband,

  Digital World Centre, 1 Lowry Plaza

  The Quays, Salford, M50 3UB

  www.saraband.net

  Copyright © Louise Hutcheson 2017

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without first obtaining the

  written permission of the copyright owner.

  ISBN: 9781910192832

  ISBNe: 9781910192955