Chapter Twenty-Seven
‘Bridget? What do you mean “Not again”?’
Bridget gets to her feet and starts pacing around Mrs Casablancas’ living room, not able to gather much momentum because there is so much furniture and more than one home-made clay sculpture in her way.
She buries her head in her hands. ‘I cannot believe this. When it happened before I thought it was a one-in-a-million thing. But again? It can’t be! ’
‘What are you saying, Bridget?’ I jump up, confused. ‘What has happened before?’
‘One of my authors channelling a parallel universe!’ She throws her hands up, as if I should know what she’s talking about. ‘A character crossing over from that parallel universe!’ Her brows knit together. ‘Wait … Gertie … What did you think has been going on?’
‘I DON’T KNOW!’ I shout in frustration. ‘I’m completely in the dark right now, Bridge!’
‘Parallel universe?’ River echoes, eyes flashing.
‘I said parallel universe!’ He starts to laugh with relief.
‘I said that! I was right! See? I’m real, Gertie!
’ He makes eye contact with me for the first time since this morning.
‘I’m real. I told you.’ He swallows then, taking a deep, shaky breath, pressing Squish to his chest, as if for comfort.
‘Everyone sit back down,’ Mrs Casablancas says calmly. ‘Bridget, please explain to us what you’re talking about.’ She opens up a tin of biscuits. ‘Here, let’s have a biscuit. The sugar will help with what appears to be a large amount of shock for all of you.’
River, whose hands I’m surprised to see are slightly trembling, immediately reaches out and takes a custard cream.
Bridget nods, sitting back down on the sofa before selecting a Jammie Dodger.
‘Wow.’ She exhales slowly through pursed lips.
‘Bedlam Creek’s very own River Oakley. Live and in the real world.
When did you even arrive? How was the journey?
Do you remember the crossing? I’m assuming this is your first time?
Oh my gosh.’ She stops to press a hand to her chest. ‘Forgive me. It’s been twenty years since I experienced this. I never expected it to happen again—’
‘You need to tell us everything,’ River cuts in, rubbing his hand over his stubble. ‘Right now.’
‘Okay, okay. Goodness. So, back in 2005 I had a client with a terrible case of writer’s block.
Like, terrible. She called me up in tears one day, claiming her main character, her fictional creation – a Danish prince – had turned up at her house out of nowhere.
Of course I thought she was going mad, but then I met him and …
he was very, very real and extremely confused about how he had got here.
So I took it upon myself to do some research, to see how I could best help my client because, as you know, Gertie, I am excellent at my job.
I spent hours searching the internet and happened upon some forums. Like, you know, Reddit. ’
‘Reddit?’ River’s eyebrows furrow. ‘What’s that?’
‘It’s an internet forum in this dimension. You must not have it in your dimension.’
His dimension. Jeez. This explains River being confused about Google and not immediately getting my Beyoncé reference at the campfire. Shit, is that why he just said he’d never heard of Friends? ‘Go on,’ I urge Bridget.
She fiddles with the silver bangle on her wrist, twisting it again and again like it’s the lid of a jar she’s desperately trying to unscrew.
‘So on the forums there were all these theories that a small percentage of novels are borne entirely from an author’s connection with another universe.
A parallel universe. That these authors aren’t actually making up their stories.
That, in fact, they’re channelling elements of what already exists in another dimension. ’
‘Channelling?’ I grab a ginger snap from the tin and shove it into my mouth whole, hoping that, as Mrs Casablancas suggested, the sugar will help.
‘Gertie, when you’re writing, does it ever feel like the events are happening in your mind like a movie and you’re just transcribing them?
You can literally feel the temperature, smell the scents, hear the ambient sounds as if they were real?
Are the emotions of your character ever so strong that you feel them as if they were your own? That’s how my client described it.’
That’s exactly how it feels when I write the Bedlam Creek books, when I write Cassidy. How it’s always felt. I pinch the bridge of my nose. ‘I thought those feelings, that flow state, were just the sign of a good writing day,’ I mutter.
Bridget shakes her head. ‘I think you’ve been channelling. That divine inspiration happens when your connection to another dimension is strong. You’re seeing real events, feeling someone’s real feelings, sometimes hazy glimpses, vague clues and interpretations; sometimes something much clearer.’
‘That must be why some of the details in the books are off!’ River says, eyes shining with excitement. ‘But wait … that doesn’t explain how I got here. Or why?’
Bridget turns to him. ‘From our research, my client and I discovered that sometimes, rarely, those connections are so strong that it can cause a sort of interdimensional crossing. My client was drunk with some friends one evening and made a wish on a star of all things. The next morning there he was. Prince Helmuth. Did you wish on a star, Gertie?’
I shake my head. ‘No, of course not! But I—’
‘The manifestation ceremony,’ Mrs Casablancas gasps, leaning forward. ‘We did a manifestation ceremony on the roof! We wore kaftans and head-dresses and everything.’
‘You did?’ Bridget side-eyes me in surprise.
I start to feel a little light-headed and quickly lie back on the sofa so I don’t pass out.
A million questions battle for space in my brain.
Bridget is a serious woman. A serious, self-possessed businesswoman who has never ever steered me wrong.
Except for the one time she suggested that maybe I write a Mafia Monster Space Romance set at Christmas in the Scottish Highlands because she thought it would sell big.
But other than that, she’s not someone who fucks around.
The words she’s saying are causing my brain to do that swirling thing that used to happen at school whenever I tried to do algebra equations.
My heart lurches at the thought of Cassidy existing somewhere out there, as real as me, only in another universe. How can that be true? I know Cassidy almost better than I know myself. I … She can’t be out there, actually living. Just knocking about doing things I have no clue about.
My eyes grow wide as something occurs to me and I sit back upright. ‘Hang on … You’re saying Elizabeth Bennet might have been a real person? Mr Darcy? Peter Pan? Juliet? The fucking Gruffalo? And novelists are just tapping into their existing lives?’
Bridget raises her arms. ‘Perhaps. Some people online believe it to be so. We’ll never know which books were truly made up and which ones were glimpses into another existing world.
Perhaps this is the only way for humans to share stories across universes.
One of the many things that make books so magical … ’
‘Novels truly are the great connector!’ Mrs Casablancas pipes up, taking a sip of her tea, as if this is just any old normal conversation to her, like she’s at her local book club meeting.
‘Books are magical,’ I murmur. ‘Literally …’
River clears his throat. ‘Sorry to interrupt the book appreciation society discussion but we’re burning daylight here and I’ve gotta say we’re all missing the interdimensional elephant in the room: how the hell do I get back home?’
‘We assumed it had something to do with getting me back together with Henry?’ I tell Bridget.
‘With my client, the trouble was a case of seemingly insurmountable writer’s block.
When she overcame it and finally managed to type out The End, poof, Prince Helmuth disappeared.
And, between you and me, we were all ever so relieved.
There was somewhat of a persistent halitosis situation.
You wouldn’t have thought it, to look at him.
’ Bridget ponders for a moment. ‘But anyway, writing The End can’t be the solution with you, Gertie, because you don’t have writer’s block. ’
Uh oh.
I sink back down to the sofa and stare at my feet, a grimace turning my mouth upside down.
‘Gertie?’ Bridget says in the same voice Mrs Casablancas uses when Squish tries to steal her sandwich. ‘What is that face? You don’t have writer’s block, right?’ Bridget crouches down in front of me.
‘Um …’
‘Gertie? How many pages of book five have you written?’
It’s time to come clean.
I bury my head in my hands. ‘None.’ I cringe. ‘I’ve not written a single page.’