Page 2 of The Book of Lost Stories
He looked at me quizzically, raising one eyebrow. He has a mischievous sort of face, but his eyes are a clear smoky-quartz grey and hard to look away from, even on a screen. ‘You look excited about something: come clean! What is it, some rare first edition?’
‘Well, there were some first-edition Orlando Browne books in the box, plus a couple of small non-fiction works by the same author that I’d no idea existed, among the later editions of Mrs Radcliffe and what Unks calls “her ilk”. It wasn’t thosethat were the most exciting find, but a sort of journal mixed in with them, a really old one with board covers.’
‘The plot thickens,’ Tris said, sounding amused, and his quizzical eyebrow now practically vanishing into his tangled mop of chestnut curls.
‘The journal certainly explains why there were first editions of all Orlando Browne’s works in the box, because even though I’ve only managed to make out the first few pages – the handwriting is minute and fills every bit of each page – it makes it clear that it’s written by him.’
‘Really?’ He sat up a little straighter. ‘Thatisquite a find. And it solves one argument, doesn’t it? Your contention that Orlando Browne was the pen name of a female author.’
He looked pleased with himself, but my next words wiped the smirk off his face.
‘No, actually, Tris, it doesn’t, because, as I knew from reading the novels, the author was a woman – Alys Weston.’
‘I suppose the journal is authentic?’ he said, fighting on into the last ditch.
‘Unks says everything about it rings true to him. He can’t get excited about any book or author before the nineteenth century, but the journal was begun in 1808, so he’s delighted his birthday present turned out to be so fascinating to me.’
‘It’s pretty fascinating to me, too,’ Tris admitted, accepting Ambrose’s expert opinion. ‘Tell me more.’
‘No, I want to hug it to myself for a bit longer. Also, I’ve just started to type it into my laptop, which is slow going since it’s so hard to read.’
‘OK, tantalize me a bit longer,’ he said, grinning. ‘But this means you’ll have to tweak your thesis a bit, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, but my contention in it that Orlando Browne was awoman has now been proved, so I can add a footnote and make the necessary changes to the rest. And if you ever get on and finish your thesis, you’ll have to do a little tweaking, too.’
‘Funnily enough, finishing my PhD is one of the things I’ve decided I want to do in the near future,’ he said to my surprise.
Something about the room behind him, which I’d been too excited to take in until now, suddenly struck me, as did a life-size hair-covered cardboard figure that chose that moment to topple over on to him.
‘Is that Chewbacca? Where on earthareyou?’
He fended it off. ‘In my friend Jason’s spare room. He’s a massiveStar Warsfan and stores all his memorabilia in here.’
I assumed Tris was away from home. He now has friends all over the States, not to mention that his parents had retired to Florida a couple of years back.
‘I’ll arrange about finishing my PhD when I’m over,’ he added. Chewbacca had set off a sort of chain reaction and he was now rebuffing Princess Leia’s advances.
‘For a holiday? Is Marcy coming with you?’
I liked Marcy, even if she had taken my best friend so far away.
‘No, I’m coming alone – and for good. Marcy and I have decided to split up.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said sincerely, because I’d always felt that calm, organized, sensible Marcy provided my mercurial friend with a bit of ballast.
‘It was her idea, although actually I was getting a bit tired of being sweetly reasoned with when what I really needed was a good fiery argument, like the ones we have. Anyway, there’s nothing to keep me here now and I want to come back to York. I’m really looking forward to seeing you again in three dimensions.’
‘Unlike Chewbacca,’ I said. ‘And I suspect what you really want to see is that journal.’
‘That too, if you’ve stopped being dog-in-the-mangerish about it by then,’ he admitted. ‘I’ll have to be here for a few more weeks yet, so I don’t suppose you’d like to email me the typescript of the journal when you’ve finished it?’
‘No, you’ll have to wait until you are back,’ I said firmly. ‘I’m sure Unks won’t mind you staying in the spare room till you get yourself organized – whenareyou coming back?’
‘Around the end of the month, I should think. I’ve got some work to finish off first.’
‘Ah, yes, the great work of taking really good novels and turning them into TV and film scripts that bear no relation to the original.’
‘That’s it,’ he agreed, very cheerfully considering he’d just split up from his long-term partner and was now in a small room shared with two-dimensional people. ‘In fact, I’ve got a script to finish tonight, so I’d better get on with it. Same time tomorrow?’
