Chapter 30 #2
“I’m not suffering for you,” she said. “If I suffer for this, it’s on me.
And you know something? I’m not sorry.” She was thinking aloud, analyzing how she felt about the day’s turn of events as she went along.
“I love the book so much. It’s sorrowful and raw and hopeful all at the same time.
Whoever said being a guardian angel was going to be an easy job?
” Kate placed a hand over one of the giant claws.
“I’ve had so many readers tell me they’ve found real comfort in your words, people who’ve been through unimaginable things and can relate, who’ve found solace and comradeship in this story.
Sanctuary in your grief. One woman even got herself a rescue dog, just like he did in the book.
Can you believe that? You’ve provided a blueprint for grief, a map of survival.
” She paused, hoping her words were landing somewhere inside the ridiculous costume.
“Dog sanctuaries around the country will be grateful to you,” she said, trying to shine a light into the darkness.
Something like a low growl emitted from deep inside the T-Rex.
“What the fuck, Fiona?” he shouted, startlingly loud. “There was no fucking dog in my story!”
“Er, there is a dog,” Kate said. “Hamlet, the rescue Jack Russell.”
“Fucking Hamlet?” he full-on roared, and Kate backed away again.
Fiona inched the storeroom door open just enough to shout back. “Readers need hope! The ending was too dismal so they made it more upbeat.”
“Hamlet? What did you do, get the book of one hundred and one clichéd fucking dogs’ names out of the library?
” He stomped around the shop in a temper.
“And dismal? Grief is dismal. That’s what you should have called the fucking dog, Dismal.
” He stopped and stared toward the storeroom door.
“I can’t believe you did that, Fiona, I really can’t. ”
Fiona still had the door open just enough to shout through. “You didn’t want to be involved in the edits, you said so yourself.”
“Because I trusted you not to give it a Disney makeover! Christ, this thing just gets worse and worse.”
Kate pinched the bridge of her nose and stepped into the breach.
“Don’t out yourself. It won’t help either of us,” she said.
“I don’t even know anymore.” He hung his massive head. “That dog has floored me. We never had a dog, my wife was allergic to fur. A costumer’s nightmare, she always used to say.”
Kate let his words, his snapshot recollection, sit between them in the air for a few beats.
“You really don’t want to be connected to that clichéd ending,” she said softly. “Think of your fan base, it just wouldn’t work.”
He grumbled and thrashed about, muffled words she couldn’t quite catch.
“I need a drink,” he said, sudden and loud. “A fucking big one.” He swung around and stomped out into the sunny afternoon toward his low black car, too intent on escape to consider the fact he was still dressed as a T-Rex.
Kate followed him to the step and watched him battle to fold himself into the driver’s seat as a woman with a small child crossed the road to avoid him.
He slammed the door on his tail and let out a full-throated roar as he flung the door open again, dragging the tail into the footwell before he shot off down the road.
Back inside the shop, Fiona and Liv had emerged from the storeroom.
“Where’s my T-Rex?” Liv said.
“Heading for the M25,” Kate said.
Fiona gathered herself to her full, still-diminutive height.
“Your job right now is to do precisely nothing,” she said, eyeballing Kate as she gathered up H’s left-behind belongings.
“No more wild soliloquies or galivanting around town drawing yet more negative attention.” She stood in the doorway to deliver her parting shot.
“It’s time for this ghost author to be exactly what the name suggests. Invisible.”
Liv practically ran to lock the door behind her. “Well, she’s hideous.”
Kate slumped against the nearest wall and slid down onto her bum.
“What an almighty mess,” she said, weary.
Liv dropped onto the floor beside her. “Look on the bright side.”
“Is there one?”
Liv cast around for a second. “Alice is okay.”
Kate sighed, because that truly was the most important thing. “Yes.”
“And you got to meet the author.”
“Dressed as bloody Godzilla,” Kate said. “I couldn’t make this up.”
“Godzilla wasn’t a T-Rex,” Liv said.
Kate shrugged, not willing to argue the toss.
“You missed a call from Charlie,” Liv said, handing Kate her mobile, rescued from the storeroom.
Kate took it back, glancing at the stacked-up messages on the screen with trepidation. Clicking to return Charlie’s call, she sighed when it went to voicemail.
“Will you be okay if I head upstairs for a while?” she said, giving Liv her bangle back.
She needed some time to try to make sense of the chaos.
She’d been blindsided by the news and jumped straight in to comfort Alice, then Fiona and H had barreled through the door and taken over the afternoon.
She’d automatically assumed her customary role supporting everyone else when, actually, she was the person at the center of the story.
“Promise me you won’t go online?” Liv said, hauling her up by both hands. “It’s news today and chip paper tomorrow.”
Kate nodded and hugged her sister quickly. It probably would be chip paper for everyone else come tomorrow morning, but the fallout was going to reverberate through her life for far longer.
—
She did go online, of course, and what she found there sent her plummeting into a pit of self-loathing and misery.
Readers were understandably up in arms. She’d written her email to Alice in such a way as to deliberately downplay things to her daughter, making it sound like a lighthearted dash of excitement to perk her boring life up.
If she could just offer her side of the story she might feel better, but as it was she could only read the endless vitriolic comments and let shame burn her cheeks.
People were marveling at her sheer gall to go on the radio and TV, to turn up at events and sign her fake name without a care in the world.
Someone even said they might set fire to their signed copy, because they’d queued for an hour to meet Kate and now felt like a complete idiot.
They may as well have stayed home and signed the book themselves.
They all felt taken in. They all felt fooled.
The more she scrolled, the more desperate she felt, because the fact was there was an element of truth to what people were saying.
Without context or nuance, it looked as if she’d mercilessly lied and exploited the reading community for her own financial benefit, laughing behind their backs because she knew something they didn’t.
She longed to reply, to try to change the narrative, but she’d agreed to wait for Charlie, at least. Besides, what would she say anyway?
She’d most likely plunge in headfirst and make things even worse.
Kate closed her laptop and pressed her face into her pillow, searching for the oblivion of sleep over the misery of being awake.