Normally, I love delving into a fictional world where anything is possible and I’m very much in control. But tonight, the words won’t come. I’m trying to write the first chapter, which picks up after the end of the last book when Molly, my heroine, discovers that she died in a car accident. But for some reason, this evening, I feel completely uninspired. Every single sentence squeezes its way on to the page, painfully. After about an hour, I give up and check my phone to see if the guy from the other night has phoned me. Of course, he hasn’t. Feeling disappointed but not that surprised, I pick up my laptop and wander absent-mindedly into the kitchen where I open the packet of chocolate animal biscuits I bought for Dylan and munch my way through them while I read what I’ve written. The whole thing seems like garbage and it doesn’t tie in with the first book at all. I sigh, and reaching for another biscuit, I realise there aren’t any left. I’ve eaten the entire jumbo-sized packet. And I’ve dropped crumbs all down the front of my t-shirt. My stomach seems to have grown exponentially in the last five minutes, bulging over the top of my jeans. What would Sara at Weight Watchers say? What would Luke think if he did actually phone for another date?
Feeling frustrated and disgusted with myself, I delete the whole chapter. Then I check my messages on Facebook. I have two Facebook accounts – one for me and one for ‘Ophelia Black’, my alter ego. Ophelia Black is the pseudonym dreamed up by the publishing team for Embers because they thought that my real name, Catherine Bayntun, was too difficult to spell and not very sellable.
On my real Facebook page my friend Gaby has sent me a message asking what happened after she left the other night. Ophelia Black has two: one from some obscure magazine asking me to answer a few questions and another from someone called George Wilkinson. I open the message from George. There’s no writing, just a photograph – a picture of a gravestone.
Weird.
The headstone looks relatively new, shiny and black. The inscription is obscured by a vase of pink roses; just the last letter of the name is visible. I enlarge the image, but I still can’t read it. The last letter could be an R, but I am not sure.
Why would anyone send me a picture of a grave? It’s slightly unnerving. Is it some kind of threat? No, it’s probably just a fan trying to spark a new idea for a sequel to Embers, I decide. I click on George’s profile. He looks like an ordinary middle-aged man from Wisconsin in the USA. In the picture, he’s grinning at the camera. He’s wearing a baseball cap and has a bushy moustache. He doesn’t look like the kind of person who would read Embers. He’s way too old for a start. I close the page. It’s nothing, I tell myself. George Wilkinson has clearly mistaken me for another Ophelia Black. But even so, I feel a twinge of unease as I snap the laptop shut and head to the living room.
In the living room, I set up the ironing board to iron Dylan’s school shirts and switch on the TV, catching the end of the evening news. After the weather forecast, the local news comes on. The newscaster is talking about a pile-up on the A417, but I’m not really listening. I’m still wondering why George from Wisconsin sent me that message.
But when I happen to glance up at the TV, I notice that the woman reading the news is looking particularly serious. She’s talking about a crime that was committed on Friday night – a grisly murder, and in Cecily Hill of all places! It’s just a ten minute walk from here. I put the iron down. I’m shocked. That kind of crime just doesn’t happen in this sleepy Cotswold town. It’s a place where people come to retire – a pretty, peaceful place where people get up in arms when someone builds an extension without planning permission or because the new pavements caused someone to break their hip. Even the news anchor looks visibly shaken as she relates the details. The police, she says, aren’t sure about the exact time the victim was killed, but they have revealed that she was stabbed no fewer than four times in the chest.
Then a picture flashes up on the screen and everything else is completely wiped from my mind. I forget the ironing. I forget Wisconsin George. I even forget Dylan. I can’t think of anything but the image dominating the screen. Time stops and the world around me blurs and stretches into lightning-fast shrieks of meaningless colour. It’s just me and that picture in a universe which suddenly makes no sense.
‘This woman was seen on Friday night near the scene of the crime,’ says the news reader grimly. ‘She is thought to be in her early thirties, and she was wearing a white t-shirt with blue jeans. Police are appealing for her or anyone who knows her to come forward and help the police with their enquiries.’
It’s a computer-generated photofit of a woman with a plump, round face and long, brown,
