For Rye Gavin Gardiner (best book club books for discussion TXT) 📖

light. She heard footsteps and chattering outside the door. A clipboard hung over the rail at the foot of her bed, the back of which was headed with the words Millbury Peak Community Hospital. No, not the right hospital. Not her hospital. Back to reality. She looked at the drip in the back of her hand, then at the pale blue hospital gown as it rose and fell, rose and fell over her chest, faster and faster with her quickening breath. More smoke inflated around the figure in the shadows. Her heart raced. Her teeth clenched. She waited for the smoke alarm to go off.

‘Two days,’ he said as he recrossed his legs, his corduroys riding up his socks. Mickey was back.

Renata tried to open her dried out lips but failed.

‘You’ve been out two days,’ he continued. ‘I’ve been right here the whole time. How’s that for lover’s dedication?’

She ran a bone-dry tongue along the inside of her lips, unsealing them. She tried to speak but found the words caught on thorns in her throat. Quentin came closer and held a glass of water to her mouth. She gulped greedily, the thorns melting under the flow of liquid. She bit down on the inside of her cheek. Where was that smoke alarm? Go off, please. Go off.

‘How do—’ She choked on the words, then cleared her throat. She stared at the man through tramlines of sunlight in the smoke. ‘How…do you know what I dream?’ She spotted the room’s pristine sink in the corner, a bar of fresh soap sitting ready to go at the base of the gleaming silver tap. She thought again of the smoke alarm.

Go off, damn you. Go off go off go off go off go—

‘Dream? Don’t make me laugh. I told you, dreams are just piss in the wind. I don’t know what you dream.’ Quentin returned to the chair. Strips of light smeared across the lenses of his glasses as he leant through the smoke, smiling. He was spinning a pen between his fingers. ‘I know what you did.’

There it was, the stabbing pain in her brain, back to make up for lost time. She ground her teeth against the spasm of agony. ‘I…don’t know…what you’re—’

‘Thirteen times?’ Quentin jeered. ‘The autopsy showed thirteen blows to that poor kid. Honestly, I’m not sure even I could have come up with that shit.’ He flicked ash from his cigarette onto the floor. ‘You should write horror.’

‘The dreams, I…don’t understand. I don’t—’

‘I still remember the day your pop called,’ he interrupted, wiping his glasses on his turtleneck. ‘Imagine: a budding young author being told his debut novel had driven a seventeen-year-old girl to murder. Good old Thomas was pretty pissed off, understandably. My book was, he said, blasphemous, unholy, a work of Satan. Blah, blah, blah. You see, although after your little joyride you were out for the count – “vegetative state of unresponsive wakefulness”, they called it – you were still able to mumble two little words.’ His smile stretched. ‘Horror Highway. I’m told that’s all you said for years of your downtime. Over and over again.’ He stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Vegetative state of unresponsive wakefulness – know how I remembered those words, Renata? Because in all those years following that phone call, all those years I disobeyed your dear old daddy and kept churning out my blasphemous, unholy works, I began to see my readership as just that: vegetative.’

His eyes pierced her own. She spotted that glimmer again, that twinkle of creative energy, except now she saw it for what it really was. He leant forward.

‘If they’d been awake, truly awake, they wouldn’t have demanded that same tripe year after year, that same old psycho with a kitchen knife. You get me, I know you do. You see, us writers are all the same. We start out with something new, but it’s only new for a while. Before long we’re jumping through hoops for those…those bastards.’ He rose from the chair and began pacing the room. ‘Tone it down, they say. Then ramp it up. Can’t you make it more like your last one? I told you, Renata, fiction is the vehicle in pursuit of truth. How can you pursue the truth if you never get to say anything new?’

He rose his hands in apology like a lecturer realising he’d lost his class. ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry. This must be a lot to take in. I told you it was going to be a big day for you.’ The chair screeched like fingernails on a blackboard as he dragged it to her bedside. ‘Nothing’s changed, my darling. I want you to know that.’ He sat and took her hand, smiling encouragingly. ‘You’re still helping me in my work, in my pursuit of truth. I’m sorry if I had to edit the truth a little to get you to play along.’

Her muscles felt atrophied. It took all her strength to pull her hand from his. ‘I…don’t know what you’re trying to tell me, Quentin. I don’t know what you’re trying to do. You come into my life playing these games just when my mother’s died and—’

Her stomach dropped.

‘You…didn’t.’

His hand rustled in his pocket.

‘Kola Kube?’

She stared.

Quentin turned and walked to the window, flinging a sweet into his mouth. He peered between the slats of the blinds. His tone turned solemn. ‘When your dad called, he told me everything that happened. Every detail, from the colour of the spade to how many blows they found on the boy’s body. Every detail, Renata.’ A hint of joy squeezed through his words. ‘Every beautiful detail.’ He turned back to her, that grin creeping through. Evidently, this was too much fun. ‘Mr Daddy Wakefield had friends in all the right places, not least our dear old buddy Detective O’Connell and his chief inspector. The whole thing was kept as quiet