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Who is the man called Paul, and where is he?
Dudley needed to become a detective to find him... |
Wishing
Chapter 7
Adam felt like that cigarette on the patio -- used by someone who really wanted something else. But he followed her through the house if only to see her for the remaining moments of her stay. She entered a room where coats were piled high on a double bed, and Lisa rummaged through the pile to pull out a dark jacket which Adam guessed was expensive. She brushed it down. “That will teach me for treating cantware with so little respect,” she said.
She sat down on the bed, holding the material as though it were some aide-mémoire and looked up at him.
“I came in here to get away from the party for a while,” she said. “I just wanted to escape your make-up artists so I sat on this bed wondering whether to stick it out or leave.” She pointed to the window and Adam leaned across her to look out. It was the window he used to illuminate the note handed to him by Shamus O'Short -- he could see the round patio table and the chair he’d been sitting on only a few feet away.
“People who live alone,” she said, “even those with a spider in the kitchen, tend to verbalise their thoughts. They like the sound of a human voice, even their own. It becomes a habit. They do it at parties too.”
“Ah.”
“Carlton Dangerfield who works for the Government but not behind a desk? It made you laugh and that's what did it for me. Or the prospect of your uncontrolled winking. I'm wondering if the tap-selling persona isn't your version of the mild-mannered reporter? I think there's more to you than meets the eye.”
She went into her bag and removed a notepad and pen. Adam saw her write a phone number and beyond that, something he couldn't read because he had lost the ability to see with any degree of certainty. She tore off the page and handed it to him.
It was indeed a telephone number, followed by an email address -- Lfou_01@CaesarianShift.com. She worked for a literary agency in the home counties according to the heading on the paper. Below it she had written 'Call me when you've come up with something -- Lisa x.'
Below that was:
Gideon Faint, Forensic Poet
by Carlton Dangerfield.
Chapter One. Wishing on a Firework
She stood up and kissed him. It was not a goodbye kiss. It was an exploration of things to come. “I have to go Mister Faint. Or is that Mister Dangerfield? Write something for me, and I'll decide if I want to take you on.”
“Take me on?”
The smile that crossed her lips became the entire setting of his first novel. He demanded that she wear the red dress on the day of its publication, and also on the publication of 'Farewell to Taps,' the second in the Gideon Faint trilogy, for which Invicta paid him a five-figure sum.
She remained for Adam the epitome of beauty, and a woman who, under normal circumstances, would have been unapproachable. The fake remembrances of a tap-selling author allowed him to lie close to Paige Turner, the woman whose hobby was reading. Her scent perfumed the paragraphs of Shamus O'Short and Pattie O'Doors -- An Irish Love Story. Her kiss on the back of his neck excited every sentence of 'Pineapple, Cheese and Wood.'
She wore the red dress for the launch of every book, which she placed, with enormous pride, on the shelf by their bed.
Adam felt like that cigarette on the patio -- used by someone who really wanted something else. But he followed her through the house if only to see her for the remaining moments of her stay. She entered a room where coats were piled high on a double bed, and Lisa rummaged through the pile to pull out a dark jacket which Adam guessed was expensive. She brushed it down. “That will teach me for treating cantware with so little respect,” she said.
She sat down on the bed, holding the material as though it were some aide-mémoire and looked up at him.
“I came in here to get away from the party for a while,” she said. “I just wanted to escape your make-up artists so I sat on this bed wondering whether to stick it out or leave.” She pointed to the window and Adam leaned across her to look out. It was the window he used to illuminate the note handed to him by Shamus O'Short -- he could see the round patio table and the chair he’d been sitting on only a few feet away.
“People who live alone,” she said, “even those with a spider in the kitchen, tend to verbalise their thoughts. They like the sound of a human voice, even their own. It becomes a habit. They do it at parties too.”
“Ah.”
“Carlton Dangerfield who works for the Government but not behind a desk? It made you laugh and that's what did it for me. Or the prospect of your uncontrolled winking. I'm wondering if the tap-selling persona isn't your version of the mild-mannered reporter? I think there's more to you than meets the eye.”
She went into her bag and removed a notepad and pen. Adam saw her write a phone number and beyond that, something he couldn't read because he had lost the ability to see with any degree of certainty. She tore off the page and handed it to him.
It was indeed a telephone number, followed by an email address -- Lfou_01@CaesarianShift.com. She worked for a literary agency in the home counties according to the heading on the paper. Below it she had written 'Call me when you've come up with something -- Lisa x.'
Below that was:
Gideon Faint, Forensic Poet
by Carlton Dangerfield.
Chapter One. Wishing on a Firework
She stood up and kissed him. It was not a goodbye kiss. It was an exploration of things to come. “I have to go Mister Faint. Or is that Mister Dangerfield? Write something for me, and I'll decide if I want to take you on.”
“Take me on?”
The smile that crossed her lips became the entire setting of his first novel. He demanded that she wear the red dress on the day of its publication, and also on the publication of 'Farewell to Taps,' the second in the Gideon Faint trilogy, for which Invicta paid him a five-figure sum.
She remained for Adam the epitome of beauty, and a woman who, under normal circumstances, would have been unapproachable. The fake remembrances of a tap-selling author allowed him to lie close to Paige Turner, the woman whose hobby was reading. Her scent perfumed the paragraphs of Shamus O'Short and Pattie O'Doors -- An Irish Love Story. Her kiss on the back of his neck excited every sentence of 'Pineapple, Cheese and Wood.'
She wore the red dress for the launch of every book, which she placed, with enormous pride, on the shelf by their bed.
