Alistair had just come back from the en suite feeling a little better, but he still couldn’t bear to even sit down at his desk, let alone make contact with the keyboard. The room was large and bright and looked out onto their garden which backed onto the common, so the view was sunny and cheerful and Natasha had thought it would be a wonderful place for him to write. In London yet out of it, she’d said when they’d been to look at the house with the weaselly prick of an estate agent who Alistair had always felt like punching. Alistair hated the room now. It made him feel trapped, locked in an airless hostile space with just the deeply irritating Shouty Mouse and Rude Rabbit for company. He thought if he had to do this for much longer it would drive him insane – but his agent was breathing down his neck, threatening that if he didn’t come up with Volume Six soon the publisher would be taking back part of his latest advance for breach of contract. As if. Alistair Smart, king of children’s fiction, author of the bestselling series about behaviour-challenged furry creatures, a poor Tourette’s-ridden mouse and an autistic rabbit. Child psychologists had queued up to fete him, he had made ‘different’ children feel normal, had created tales of such moral fortitude he’d helped parents and children alike gain empathy and understanding for these all-too-common conditions. His writing was acerbically, charmingly witty. He was a modern-day Roald Dahl, a fucking hero!
Alistair finally stopped pacing, sat down and clicked onto one of his favourite porn sites, and as he watched two big-breasted girls cavorting in baby oil he felt his desire build all over again. What the hell was wrong with him these days? Just how much sperm could one man produce? He heard a noise on the stairs and quickly flicked over to his email, and swore he was going to get rid of their housekeeper. He loathed her being around – even when Natasha was at work and the kids were at school he felt like he had to be on his guard, behave himself, almost as if he were just visiting, in his own fucking home. There was always someone in the house to intrude on his loneliness – the cleaner, the housekeeper (what was the difference between the two, he wondered idly), the gardener, the nanny. And how much did they all bloody cost?
The idea came to him in an instant then, and he kicked himself that he hadn’t thought of it before. That’s it! He’d get a lock for his office door. Then he could browse lesbian porn and wank to his heart’s content without even leaving his desk, whenever he was bored rigid (quite literally, he sniggered, always the master with words) or stuck on Shouty Mouse’s latest tedious adventure he couldn’t give a shit about.
Alistair was so excited by his idea that he thought he might go to Homebase right now, so he could buy a lock and a drill and fit it himself; it couldn’t be that hard, surely. That would give him something to do. He was about to get up from his desk in a rare burst of energy when his email refreshed and two new ones appeared: the first from his agent which he ignored, and then one from someone called Smartfan, entitled: HELP ME ALISTAIR. Alistair was used to getting fan mail, mainly from seven-year-olds, saying things like: ‘Dear Alister Smart, thank you so much for riting Showty Mous, he has mad me so hapy that I am not the only won lik him, love Oliver,’ or, worse, from gushing mothers saying, ‘You have made my darling Lucy one happy bunny (pardon the pun!), she no longer feels so isolated by her condition, and you have made me one very happy mummy!! Thank you so much, and please keep on writing your wonderful books.’ They made Alistair want to puke.
This email however seemed a bit too shouty (he couldn’t bring himself to snigger again), too desperate, to be just another fan letter, and although he usually left this kind of correspondence to his agent’s assistant Xavier, he found himself opening it: he didn’t dare go back on the Internet while Mrs Cole was outside hoovering, and he couldn’t face even looking at his hopelessly overdue manuscript today.
Dear Mr Smart,
I am a budding new writer and I have written a new children’s book about a boarding school for dogs. All the dogs have different characters and the book is the first in a series that deals with all sorts of issues for the ‘Tweenie’ market, from bullying to how to cope with not having the latest must-have possessions, to realising you might be gay. I haven’t sent it out to any agents yet because I would so love to have your view of my book first, and perhaps even a quote to put on the cover. You are the absolute champion of children’s issue-based fiction and I have admired you for many years, from when I was a behaviour-challenged child myself. I am nineteen years old and this is my first novel.
Yours excitedly,
Lucinda Horne
Normally Alistair ignored these kinds of emails, but there was something about this one: was it her name, or maybe her age (totally legal) – he still hadn’t quite settled down in the trouser department – or was there something interesting about her story? He opened the attachment and started reading about Bottersley Dog School, with its three houses, Barkers, Howlers and Sniffers, and its key characters Fluffy, T-Bone and Wowser, and as he whipped through the chapters he found the story surprisingly compelling, and so he settled down lengthways on the sofa under the window, bare feet up and over the end of it, and he felt himself relax for a minute, and then tighten – and then he felt his heart rate whoosh as the idea came to him, devilish and fully formed.