The Glass Tower

by Gregg Dunnett

  Author’s note

  Much of the action in this book takes place on the island of Hunsey just off the Dorset coast in the south west of England. Keen observers of geography will be aware that no such place actually exists. Nonetheless, a map appears on the following page showing its rough outlines.

  A powerful prescription-only painkiller named Dramadol also features prominently in the story, and is also fictional, though based loosely upon similarly named opiate drugs.

  But apart from that, everything else is true.

  I do hope you enjoy meeting Julia.

  The Glass Tower

  Gregg Dunnett

  Part One

  One

  It promised to be the most exciting night in Julia Ottley’s life so far. And that was before the accident.

  And since Julia was already well into her forties (she’d told her agent she was thirty-eight, but now she had acquired a Wikipedia page she was concerned the truth might get out) – there had been quite a few nights gone by already, rather too many of them spent on the sofa with her cats. So let’s just say she hadn’t lived the wildest of lives up to that point.

  But lives can, and do, change.

  The problem of what to wear had plagued her for days. She had gone shopping twice – Marks and Spencer on both occasions – and after much deliberation had settled on a neat and modest bottle-green skirt, a brown jacket and a cream blouse underneath. She dressed in the outfit now and inspected herself in the mirror, adjusting her hair and smoothing down the soft fabric. She noticed how her hands shook, as if the room were cold, but she knew it wasn't the temperature affecting her. But neither was it pure nerves. It was a combination, of fear and something else. Anticipation. Sheer wonder.

  She allowed herself a brief moment of delicious anticipation, imagined herself walking into the room, seeing it filled with some of the most brilliant people in the country, all there for her. But then, doubts crept in. Would they really come? Was this even truly real? Her body shivered.

  Her hands were on the material of the skirt. The touch of the fabric was sensual. Soft and textured. An idea sparked in Julia's mind. An idea that – for her – was quite bizarre. A dirty idea. In her reflection, staring back at her, she saw her own eyes widen, in surprise at even thinking about such a thing. Tonight, the self-restraint she prided herself on was strangely absent.

  Turning away from the mirror, she unzipped her skirt and pushed it down, out of the way. She lay back on her bed, slipped a hand into her underwear and began to touch herself. A part of her recoiled in horror at what she was doing, but she shut it out. She began rubbing, pushing her back into the mattress. There was a noise in the cool of the room, the noise of small, urgent gasps as her fingers moved quicker and quicker.

  When she had finished, which was rather sooner than these things often took, she lay still. Then she removed her hand, reached for a tissue to clean herself, and threw it in the wastepaper basket.

  "Goodness!" she said as she sat up. The old Julia was back. She found her skirt and hastily stepped back into it.

  A cat wandered into the room, and began scratching itself against the edge of the open bedroom door. Julia met the animal’s gaze without embarrassment.

  “Well, Edgar,” she said after some time. “That hasn’t happened in quite a while.”

  Julia saw now that her curtains were open, and had been the whole time. She was shocked that she hadn't noticed, but told herself to calm down. Her little one-bedroom cottage stood a way back from the road. The village was quiet, and she wasn't overlooked. Even so, she approached the window cautiously, and looked out, but the scene looked reassuringly normal. Her neighbours opposite were out – or at least their lights were off and she was unable to see into the rooms. Further away a tractor was doing something in a field, followed by a few gulls.

  "Goodness!" she said again.

  And the evening hadn't even begun yet.

  Two

  Julia checked her appearance in the mirror again. She adjusted her make-up in the couple of places that had suffered over the preceding minutes, then she went downstairs.

  On the wooden farmhouse table, which took up most of the little kitchen, stood two neat stacks of paper. One with the text turned face down, the other with the text facing upwards, and marked here and there by red pen. On seeing them her heartbeat pulsed again. For a moment she tried to resist touching them, but the temptation was too strong. She let a finger run down one of the pages, and as her eyes scanned the words she felt her anxiety rise. Surely this was all a mistake. They’d picked the wrong book, they didn’t want her. But then the clarity and power of the language soothed her. It drew her in. The power of her own words. They wanted these words. They had bid for them. It was good. There was no mistake. She placed her hand palm down on the entirety of the manuscript, as if it were the source from which she drew all her strength.

  Suddenly, her mobile rang. She looked around, unsure where she had left it. Her ears were curiously poor at locating where sound was coming from. Her eyesight wasn’t great either. It had been that way since school, when she had worn glasses that were thick – but not spectacularly so. The phrase summed up her entire experience of education. Nothing about it, or her, had been spectacular, and that theme had continued for her entire adult life. Until now.

  The ringing continued, and there were only so many places in the small cottage where a phone could be. This time it was on top of the fridge. She picked it up and looked at the screen.

  Geoffrey

  Julia's hands moved automatically to answer, but something stopped her. Instead she stared at the name for a few moments, then moved her finger over the button to reject the call. Geoffrey could talk for hours, she told herself, and she had to be on her way. It wouldn't do to be late to one's own party.

  Slipping the phone into her bag and slinging it over her shoulder, pausing only to check her reflection one more time, she opened the front door and stepped outside.

  She climbed into her car – a maroon Morris Minor with biscuit interior trim – and before she could pull on her leather driving gloves the phone made another noise. Geoffrey had sent a message.

  Just to wish you the best of luck tonight. We're all thinking of you.

  A pang of guilt surfaced, but Julia stifled it. It wasn't her fault that Geoffrey wasn’t coming. Nor that none of her local friends had invitations. Once the date of the party had been confirmed she had asked if she might bring along a few of those who had supported her while she was writing the book – never expecting for a moment that she might need to, after all it was supposed to be her party. But to her surprise, her agent had gone very quiet on the telephone. Then, clearly implying that this was a most awkward and odd request, James had replied that it might be possible, but would be difficult at this late stage. Julia had found herself waiting for nearly a week, worried that James had forgotten her request, and not wanting the further embarrassment of having to remind him. When his reply finally came it was disappointing. James told her that the publishers had already invited more people than the small hall was allowed (for insurance purposes) to hold. He went on to say that although her invitation was also valid for a partner, the caterers were assuming she would be coming alone.

  She had considered inviting just Geoffrey at that point. But the thought of who else might attend stopped her. They would inevitably form the impression that she and Geoffrey were more than friends, whatever she said. It wasn't just that he was a little older than her, nor that he would talk about his own books, which might be embarrassing. It was more to do with not allowing her old life to mix with the new life that was about to begin. It was just better that way. So in the end she simply told him, the rest of her local friends, and herself, that they w
ould have their own party, when this tiresome one was out of the way.

  She slipped on the leather gloves, secured the seatbelt and started the engine. Then she carefully released the handbrake and backed out onto the road. Anyway, she thought, as she checked her mirrors, she was the one who had landed the biggest publishing deal of the decade, not them. You couldn't drag all your baggage with you.

  The roads were empty and the car was behaving itself. She steered it between the hedgerows, but after a while she found herself distracted by something. In the boot she had placed a bottle of wine, and somehow it had worked its way loose. It rolled annoyingly from one side to the other as she steered around the corners. She stopped at the next lay-by, wrapped the bottle in a blanket and then firmly stuffed the package into her wicker basket. She checked the bungee cords holding the basket in place, then continued on her way.

  Julia lived about an hour away from her destination, the small and curious island of Hunsey, which lay just off the coast of rural Dorset. When the tide was high, Hunsey was a true island – surrounded on all sides by water. But at low tide the half-mile of shimmering water separating it from the mainland, drained away to reveal a bank of muddy sand and shingle, neatly bisected by a concrete causeway just wide enough for cars to cross.

  The location had been chosen for Julia’s party – obviously – because it was where her novel was set, specifically around the beautiful but somewhat threatening lighthouse that towered over the south of the island. But again, there had been a little misunderstanding about this. Both her agent James, and as a result now the publishing house, assumed she actually lived on the island itself – and it would thus be a convenient venue for her. And though Julia told herself that the origins of this misunderstanding were a mystery, the truth was that she had implied as much to James when she first met him. At that point he was yet to make a firm offer to represent her, and it seemed a harmless white lie to associate herself more closely with the beautiful location that had been the inspiration for her novel. However, the result of this confusion meant the publishing house had not considered her needs when it came to the not-inconsiderable task of arranging transport to and from the party, or indeed overnight accommodation afterwards. There had been a time when Julia had considered putting the record straight, but it was now far too awkward to do that.

  Once the party was confirmed, Julia had attempted to book a room on the island where she could, quietly, stay after the party had finished. But despite an increasingly desperate search it became clear there was nothing available. This should not have been a big surprise. Aside from the lighthouse itself, which was being refurbished into bed and breakfast accommodation but wasn’t yet open, the village of Hunsey contained few hostelry options. Indeed, there were probably fewer than thirty buildings on the two-mile stretch of land. Whilst not a surprise, it was a problem. If Julia could find nowhere to stay – and the tide was high – she would be trapped on the island for the night. At first this caused her considerable panic but when she checked the tide tables she realised there was a simple solution. The party had in fact been planned around the tides. It began at eight, when the water would have dropped away enough to expose the road so that guests could arrive. Assuming it ended on time (indeed, the invitation stressed it would have to) there would be just time enough to depart before the rising tide cut them off. It meant she could simply drive there, and once the party was over, drive home.

  The necessary subterfuge was a shame, but it couldn't be helped. Actually, while this was just the sort of thing that might have dampened the old Julia's enthusiasm, perhaps sending her into a spiral of worry and self-doubt, it seemed to have little effect on her now. Her recent extreme good fortune had enveloped her with a new-found sense of optimism that nothing was able to puncture. Even when she had to cross the main dual carriageway – which normally she dreaded, and would go miles out of her way to avoid – she did so with confidence, the car's little engine roaring proudly as she pulled across the lanes of fast-moving traffic.

  But as she got closer, her nerves did begin to kick in.

  Hunsey Island sits, almost like an egg nestling in the eggcup of Hunsey Bay, and both are cut off from the world by a half bowl of green hills facing out towards the sea. The bay – when approaching from the land – is completely hidden until you crest the final hill, but then it stretches out before you in a scene that has graced a million postcards. It’s a view that looks almost too perfect to be real, as if sculpted by an artist and not just a happy accident of geology and coastal erosion. The island – all rocky cliffs and jewel-like bays, and topped with fresh green grass – meets the blue white ocean, and everything appears quite natural, with just the addition of the few stone houses dotted around the island – and the towering lighthouse that dominates its southern tip.

  It was just getting dark as Julia climbed the hill that early spring day. Her engine whined in protest, the little car almost panting with the exertion. Julia slowed, both to let it rest a moment, and because she always lingered here to take in the sight of the island below her. That day, the sun had only just set, leaving the whole lower half of the sky a brilliant chaos of oranges and pinks, streaked here and there by wisps of cloud. The ocean itself was calm, with just a light chop to the surface. It made the sea act as a giant mirror, taking the colours of the sky and breaking them into a billion tiny parts. The island was a dark shape cut into the scene, but already punctuated with points of bright warm yellow as the island’s residents turned on their lights. But Julia’s eyes were drawn, as they always were, to the thin, elegant lines of the lighthouse, now silhouetted black against the reflected colours of the sea. The mysterious, beautiful tower that had inspired her novel, that had somehow led her to this wondrous moment.

  Julia gripped the wheel harder through her gloves. She felt the shake of her hands again. She took two deep breaths and moved the car forwards with a jerk. Carefully, she drove down the hill and out onto the stone quay that marked where the road stopped and the causeway began. Now it was high and dry. The road across to the island was laid out before her, raised up a little from the mix of sand and patches of rough strewn rocks that made up the bay. There were no bends and it fed directly across to the island, but it dipped in the middle following the topography of the bay. In front of Julia was a sign – one of several –warning her of the danger in crossing. As always, Julia gave it due consideration and rechecked her calculations. The tide was definitely dropping – looking out she could see the water shimmering either side of the road in the middle – but soon it would pull away entirely, leaving the causeway surrounded by nearly half a mile in either direction of sand and scuttling crabs. After that the water would turn and begin to creep back, but by then the party would be over and she would be safely back on the mainland side.

  It was funny though, the tide. Deceitful somehow. She had come here to write sometimes, when she needed inspiration, and tried to watch the water come in. It didn’t appear to move and yet – if she were to become absorbed in her work – the next time she looked up it would have swallowed up great swathes of the beach. It was not unknown for walkers and children playing out in the bay to get cut off. It was not even unheard of for some of them to drown before reaching the safety of either the island or the mainland.

  Julia calmed her nerves again and drove out onto the causeway. Her tyres splashed through the seawater puddles that reflected the dying sunset. And once on the island she drove carefully through the hamlet and on towards the tower.

  It looked different now. The derelict, almost skeleton remains of the lighthouse that had first inspired her had since been the subject of a major fundraising and rebuilding programme. The tower had been shored up and made safe, and the nearby former lighthouse keepers' quarters had been extended and refashioned. Now it served as accommodation for those seeking solitude and oceanic respite, and close by a small museum had been added to host a collection of fossils found on and around the island. It wasn't normally available to
hire for something so prosaic as a party. But then, this wasn't a normal party.

  As Julia pulled into the gravel car park she saw it was already full of a large number of vehicles, including several minibuses. There was the faint noise of music. She felt a momentary flush of panic at the thought of going inside, then another at the thought that she might be late. For her own party. But she calmed herself. She visualised her book cover. The tower. She drew strength from its proximity. She parked at the back of the car park, intentionally hiding her car behind a camper van.

  "If I’m late, I'm fashionably late," she said out loud. It was an odd comment. Julia had never been fashionable in her life.

  Actually, while such a statement would definitely have been true six months previously, it was clearly no longer the case. Right now, in publishing at least, she had found herself in the peculiar position of being the very height of fashion. And she still had only the dimmest understanding of how this had happened.

  The facts of the matter are easy to establish, so perhaps we should get them out of the way now. Julia had, some ten years previously, left her short-lived teaching career due to poor health (stress, made worse by ill-disciplined children). When sufficiently recovered she decided that rather than return to work, she would begin the novel that she had always believed herself destined to write. She put pen to paper (initially literally, only later turning to a computer for practical purposes), and relatively quickly she wrote the opening chapters. It was a strange, highly literary opening, about a woman who lived in a tower made entirely out of glass, so that everyone around her was able to see all aspects of her life. Julia then got stuck, with no idea why her heroine lived there, nor what was supposed to happen next. She soon realised the tower in her story was actually based upon the lighthouse which commanded the cliffs at the southern end of Hunsey Island, a place she enjoyed visiting. She didn't know why, or what – if anything – this meant. But she did know that there was a beauty to her words that eclipsed anything she had ever written before. She knew she had something. Julia spent the next two years writing and rewriting herself into various corners. But, with little else to do with her time, and supported morally by her collection of friends (who had their own creative projects they were working on), and financially by the little money left by her parents (she was an only child and rather indulged), she ground onward. Finally, five years after she began, she was in possession of a completed manuscript. And two years after that, she felt it was ready to send to publishers.