Page 46 of Glitterland
Best-selling crime novelist A.A. Winters sat at his desk unable to write and thought perhaps he would never have a good day again.
***
Another Day
Afternoon was dripping into evening. Sleeping and waking had blurred into a grey haze. There was a packet of Weetabix on my kitchen table, the gaudy yellow box burning my heavy eyes.
I didn’t even like Weetabix, but I couldn’t find the motivation to throw it away.
My routines were crumbling around me. I could feel depression gathering like shadows in the corners of the room.
In short, I was fucking up.
I put my head in my hands. Realised they were shaking. Folded my fingers together tightly until they stopped.
There was a tatty brown envelope, with an Essex postmark and my address incorrectly spelled, propped against the empty fruit bowl.
***
Another Night
In the buttery half-light of a spring dawn, I sat cross-legged on the floor where we had fucked atop my Scrabble board and opened Darian’s envelope. It contained, as I had known it would, two glossy, complimentary tickets to Essex Fashion Week (Day).
There was no note. But on the inside flap of the envelope there was the shining pale pink imprint of his lips.
I rested my chin on my palm to smother something that felt like it could become a smile.
Then I rang Niall.
His voice, when he finally answered, rasped with sleep and alarm. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine, I just wondered if you wanted to come to Essex Fashion Week with me.”
“Jesus Christ, Ash…it’s half past five. Have you taken your medication?”
“Yes, not insane at the moment, thanks. It’s next week.”
“Uh. What is?”
“Essex Fashion Week. Except it isn’t really a week, it’s only a day.”
Niall groaned. I could picture him running a hand through his sleep-tousled hair and falling back against his pillows with a despairing flump. He was even worse in the morning than me. It had led to grim and silent breakfasts. “I have to be up in forty-five minutes.”
“Will you come with me?”
“What? Where?” he asked. “I have a meeting this morning. It’s important.”
Perhaps I shouldn’t have rung him so early. But my determination might have faltered if I’d waited. I certainly couldn’t imagine making a decision like this at any other time. It had to be wrung out of me when I was weak, foolish, and impulsive. To say nothing of lonely, miserable, and half delirious with lack of sleep. “To Essex,” I said, as patiently as I could. “Not today. Next Monday.”
“Why do you want to go to Essex?”
An unanswerable question. “Essex Fashion Week.”
There was a silence. “Is this a dream? Why the hell do you want to go to Essex Fashion Week?”
Because there’s a man I can’t stop thinking about. Because I feel terrible and I want him.“Research,” I said.
“Research?”
