Just four thousand words to go, and we’re free!  Freeeeeee!!!

“I’m afraid it doesn’t look good, Mrs. Wolf,” the doctor said as we arrived at the hospital, “Your husband has been savagely beaten, and this has lead to a severe heart attack.  Surgery will be necessary, but even with it he may not survive the day.  I’m dreadfully sorry to have to tell you this, especially so soon after your wedding.”

Cherry and Joe might have been crying, but I wasn’t.  I was busy staring into space, sickened at the thought of Jordan doing this to Gary. 

Heaven only knew how the evil stepbrother had escaped from prison.  Maybe James Foster had helped him, as Gary had worried he might.  That would make sense, because if he hadn’t, how would Jordan know where we lived?

Oh Lord.  I’d dismissed Gary’s fears about Jordan as paranoia, but as it turned out, they had been right on the money.

And Gary was as good as dead.  That news had almost caused actual physical pain inside my heart, and yes I do mean my heart.  Its beating was now so sharp that maybe I would be joining Gary at the end of the day.   That was my only hope, but I knew it wasn’t likely.  Not many sixteen-year-olds die of shock induced heart attacks, although one seventeen-year-old would probably do so that day.

I would never, ever be able to comfort Gary again.

This is the one thing she’s going to miss most.  Gary being in deep psychological pain so that she can comfort him.  Why do I get the impression that she’s going to be the sort of mother who deliberately makes her children sick for attention?

And I wanted him back, only for five minutes so that I could make him happy again.  My husband was probably going to die, that was bad enough.  What was worse was that the first real man in my life was going to die as well.  So was my best friend at Mark and Estelle’s in that last week of October last year.

Whenever bad things happen to me, there is always a faint voice in my head that whispers, It’s all going to be alright.  When I locked myself out of the house in Year Seven, I heard it.  When my friends were all angry with me, I heard it.  When Mr. Daly attacked me, I heard it.

I was still hearing it now, but I knew that it had no value.  It was lying.  I would never be able to believe it again.

Joe and Cherry were talking.  Why were they talking?  What gave them the right to talk when no sound came out of my mouth when I opened it?

“I’m sorry, guys,” Joe wept, “I’m really, really sorry.  If I could only turn back the clock…  It’s all my fault.”

Oh Gawd, here we go…

“Sh,” Cherry consoled, “We all feel like that.  We all could have been downstairs while it was happening.  But I’m sure Gary wouldn’t want us to feel guilty.  And besides, he might be OK.  You never know.  Miracles do happen…” But I could tell by her face that Cherry didn’t believe a word of it.  Ben, out of Cherry’s refusal to let him suffer any more than was necessary, was staying with his Auntie Melissa.  Jack and Emily had cut their honeymoon short, and were rushing home to comfort me.  Well, that’s what I thought Melissa said.  It was hard to tell, through the tears.

“No, I don’t mean that.  I mean…  I mean I was downstairs while it was happening, if you know what I mean.”

Because that’s how people sound when they confess to attempted murder!  “If you know what I mean.”

Cheery reared up in grief and rage.  “You mean to say that you saw Gary’s stepbrother kicking the crap out of him, and you didn’t lift a finger to help?  Oh, that’s low, Joe Foster, even for you, even for one of your stinking family…” 

You mean the stinking family you’ve just allowed to babysit your son? You’re not a very attentive mother, Cherry.

Joe signalled for her to shut up, apparently to defend himself.  Just you try, I thought, still unable to speak.

“It’s worse than that,” sniffed Joe, “Jordan had nothing to do with it!  It was me!  I’m sorry, Cherry, it’s just that I kept thinking about the way you’d kissed him at the wedding, and what you’d said to me a few weeks ago, and it just spilt out when I was alone with him, and…”

Cherry, her eyes wide open with shock, opened her mouth and then closed it again.  She told me later that nothing she could possibly say could do any justice to the magnitude of what Joe had done.  Gary had been a great help to everyone, always pleasant even though he’d been through a lot, and we had loved him for that.  Joe had shown no hint of a personality as sweet as Gary’s, and had been a pain in the neck almost since I’d met him.  Joe had no right to feel any anger towards Gary, and what he had done was, considering his and Gary’s respective worth, almost an act of blasphemy.   

Gary is Jesus, apparently. 

So Cherry couldn’t possibly articulate all the loathing that filled her brain at that moment.

I could.  I let him have it.

*** 

By the time that the doctor came back into the waiting room, Cherry and I both knew that we would never see Joe again. 

And that’s how the “Anja has a grudge against Joe” storyline is resolved.  With Anja being completely vindicated, even though her grudge made no sense whatsoever.  She’s the Mary Sue, after all- if she’s wrong about something, reality warps itself around her so that she’s actually right.

Although our main thought was one of “Good riddance,” I couldn’t help feeling guilty about the way I’d stopped trusting Joe after what his father had said.  Maybe if I’d trusted him about Vi, it would…  No, that was a ridiculous thought.  I couldn’t feel sorry for the bastard who had led Gary to an early grave.

“No, that was a ridiculous thought.  I’m never wrong!”

“Mrs. Wolf?  Miss Hughes?” asked the doctor; “I have good news and bad news.”

I looked up, my misery being replaced, if only temporarily, with curiosity and maybe even hope.  What good news could she possibly have at a time like this?

“The good news is that, thanks to the surgery, Gary is past the worst this time.  The bad news is that he will have to be careful from now on.  You tell me that he’s had a heart attack before?”

I nodded, but my brain wasn’t connected to my ears.  What did she mean, “past the worst”?  She was playing a cruel joke on me.  Yes, that must be it.  There was no way in the world that she could be telling the truth.  No way.

And yet…

“Well, I’m afraid that his heart has weakened terribly.  His life expectancy is much lower than it would otherwise have been.  Mrs. Wolf, I’m sorry to have to tell you that it will be a miracle if he lives for another ten years.”

I have no idea if this is a realistic diagnosis after a second heart attack.  It sounds like the kind of thing that might be true, but it’s awfully convenient- ten years is just enough time for Anja to put on her “brave martyr caring for her ailing husband” act, before neatly burying him and falling in love with someone healthier.

I don’t think there was a word to describe what I felt at that moment.  I knew that I was supposed to either be overjoyed that Gary had survived this time, or heartbroken about his reduced life expectancy.  The two feelings must have cancelled each other out, because try as I might, I couldn’t feel either.  The event, and the fact that I couldn’t produce the required emotions, made me feel as though I had suddenly slipped into a parallel universe where nothing was as I remembered it or as it seemed.  I almost understood how Melissa must have felt when she was told that the son whose death she had come to terms with was alive and well.  I began to hope that this was all a dream and that I could forget about all the confusion and stress it caused when I woke up.

Cherry clearly didn’t feel that.  I wish I was more like her.

“He’s alive!”  Her face lit up with relief like someone switching on a lightbulb in a gloomy shed.  She actually laughed, the cow.  “Oh, Anja, he’s alive!” she squealed, hugging me, “He’s alive!  It’s a miracle!”

“Wait a minute,” the evidently puzzled doctor interrupted, “I just said that…”

“Oh, I know it’s terrible about the heart and the ten years and…  But he’s alive now!  And when he eventually does… you know…  At least then you’ll get the chance to say goodbye and be prepared and Anja he’s alive!”  With that, she hugged me again.  This time, I hugged back with equal enthusiasm.  The joy had kicked in, which was a bad sign as it meant that the heartbreak might want its turn at any moment.  At the moment, though, the only negative emotion I had was slight guilt at the fact that Cherry had felt the emotions before I had, when I was the would-have-been-widow and Cherry wasn’t.  Did that mean that Cherry loved him more? 

Probably.  That would make this story more interesting, at least.

No, of course not.  What it meant was that we had different ways of reacting to a strange situation.  It wasn’t any judgement on either of our personalities.  It wasn’t.

Keep telling yourself that.

The bruises hadn’t spoiled Gary’s face any more than the bandages had his body.  They’d told me that Joe had broken his ribs, nose and left arm, as well as the superficial damage to his skin and the loss of a few of his teeth.  What a bastard Joe truly was. 

“And wasn’t I truly perceptive for treating him like crap for six months before he even did anything wrong?  I must be a genius.”

“Hello, Anja,” he managed in a cracked and tired voice, “I missed you.”

“Hello.  You’re looking a little worse for wear, eh?”  He laughed, more out of relief than humour, I think.

“Where’s… er…”

“Cherry?”

“No… er… Joe.”

I couldn’t respond quickly enough.  “He’s gone, Gary.  He’ll never hurt you again, I promise.”  Of course, I’d also promised him that nobody would ever hurt him while he was with me.  Maybe I’m just a liar.

“Oh.”  Gary looked upset.  He was being sympathetic to the one person who didn’t deserve it.  That can be very irritating at times.

“He should only be sympathetic towards me!”

This was the part I had been dreading.  “Gary?”

“Yeah?”

“The doctors said I had to tell you something.”  Here it came.  Telling unpleasant news is like ripping off a plaster- with both; it’s better to do it really fast so the pain is shortened.   “They’re saying that you’ll probably not last ten years.” 

“What?”

“I’m sorry!”  I yelled, almost crying.  You know the heartbreak I was worried about?  This is where it came in.  I suddenly realized what terrible cards life had dealt to Gary. 

“Suddenly”?  We’ve been reminded of it every time Gary’s appeared in the book!

Being born with a life-threatening condition, losing his mother at a young age, having no friends at school, being tortured by his stepbrother, seeing the friends he eventually did get killed by themselves or others, being separated from his decent relatives, and then, after he’d finally started to have a few friends and even get married, being told that he wouldn’t live to see thirty. 

Gary is the woobie to end all woobies!  Fear him, fear him!

Nobody on Earth would have switched places with Gary, not even me.  I wished more than anything that I could rewind time to that morning, so that I’d be able to stop Gary from getting out of bed and going downstairs to the room where he’d met Joe.

Gary was having the same thoughts.  “Well, that figures,” he muttered, “Some people marry beautiful women and live happily ever after, but not me.  I marry a beautiful woman, and the next day she tells me I’m dying.  But then, that’s just my life, isn’t it?  I’m the biggest loser anyone’s ever met.  I might as well give up and die here and now, then you’d be a free woman.  You’d get over it eventually.”

Something in me changed.

Ooh!  Did it cure you of Smug Drunk Sociopathy?

Maybe it was the way that Gary spoke, almost blaming me for something that I’d had no control over.  Or maybe I felt that he was fed up of me supporting his tiny ego.  Either way, for a few seconds I turned into my grandma.

Oh.

“Gary Wolf, stop this nonsense right now,” I snapped.  As soon as I realized what I’d just said, I clapped my hand over my mouth.  I really, really shouldn’t have said that.

“It isn’t nonsense,” Gary retorted, though with a little less anger than his previous comment, “It’s the truth.  Anja, think about it, I’ve only got ten years.  That means I’ll be gone before I’m twenty-eight, and you’ll be a widow by the time you’re twenty-six.”

“I can add up, Gary,” I responded testily.

“So… what I’m saying is, you can leave any time you like.  I’ll understand, honest.”

Passive-aggressive Gary strikes again.  “Yes…  I’ll completely understand if you walk out on me, in my hour of need…  I’ll understand if you leave me lying in a hospital bed with no-one to turn to…  You need your space; it doesn’t make you a heartless monster at all…  Don’t torture yourself with mental images of me strangling myself with the IV drip…”

“That’s enough, Gary!” I snapped.  I was beginning to suspect that he was trying to get rid of me.  With that, I left the ward in a huff.  Halfway down the corridor I was greeted by somebody who, if not exactly identical to Joe, certainly resembled him enough to make me jump.

“Honour!” said Vick, “I’m glad I caught you.  Cherry told me that Gary’s going to be OK.  I’m so pleased for you, honest I am.”

“Thanks, Vick,” I replied, deciding not to correct him on the “Gary being OK” matter for the time being. 

“Do you want me to give you a lift home?” he asked, “Only Emily and Jack took Cherry back to Ben while you were in the ward, so…  Unless you want to stay here for a bit longer…”

“Pfft, why would I want to do that?  It’s certainly not as if my terminally-ill husband needs me around, or anything!  I needs me beauty sleep!”

“No, I’d rather go home,” I said.  The sooner I could get to sleep and not still be in the same day that all these awful things had happened, the better.  At least tomorrow I could think of it all as something that happened yesterday.

“Right.  My car’s outside.”

In the car park, I began to wonder if Cherry had dumped Vick for the right reasons after all.  I’d always been suspicious of him after she mentioned his “obsession” with Vi, but maybe she’d just been exaggerating.  He seemed normal to me.  And even if she had been telling the truth, just because Cherry no longer wanted to be his girlfriend didn’t mean that I had to hate him or anything.  Besides, that had been two months ago.  He might have straightened up by now.

It was only when he turned the car in the opposite direction to Wild Cherry that I realized he hadn’t.

Serves you right!

I stared at the hotel outside the car window.  The Black Heart was, maybe by coincedence, maybe through some kind of plan…

Maybe through lazy writing…

…the hotel that James Foster had moved into after putting the house on the market.  According to Vick, he hadn’t chosen the same room as any of us had in November, but then he didn’t know which ones we’d been in. 

So…  How could he know it’s not the same one?

“So go on, Honour,” Vick grinned, “Go up and talk to him.”

I told myself to remain calm, which is a good bet in most situations.  Maybe if I spoke to him in an authoritative enough voice, he would listen to me.  He’d never struck me as being very strong-willed.  “Vick, take me back home right now.  I need to get some rest.”

“Get some rest in my Dad’s room,” Vick smirked (you know my feelings on the Foster males’ smirks already), “He’s always liked you, you know.”

“Since you were fourteen, in fact!”

“Vick!  How can you even say that, you pervert!”  The remaining calm strategy had fallen apart.  “I’m married, for Heaven’s sake!  What does this ring look like to you, Scotch mist?”  I waved my hand in his face.  Now it would be in the right position to slap him if he made any more insinuations.

“Please, Honour!”  He stopped acting cool and started to plead. 

“‘Please!’ he pleaded, pleadingly.”

That felt better, for me at least.  “Dad says you have to come.  He says something bad will happen if you don’t!  He says you’re the only one who can…” Clearly he knew what he was going to say next but didn’t want to say it.  He looked so pathetic that I gave in. 

It would have taken far too much effort to actually resist doing what the villain wanted!  That’s not the protagonist’s job!

Walking up the stairs, I wondered what the girl I’d been when I first arrived here would think if she saw me now.  I came here when I was still a virgin, when I was still on good terms with Joe, when Cherry was still Svetlana to me, and when I’d never even met James Foster.  And it occurred to me that, apart from meeting Gary, I might have been happier if I’d never caught that sodding bus in the first place.

No!  Really?  You might have been happier if you hadn’t completely lost contact with all your loved ones and made friends with a serial killer and his family?  Perish the thought!

“Come in, Honour,” said James’ voice after I knocked on the door of Room 202, “Or should I say Anja?”

DUN DUN DUUUN!

The room was similar to mine (and, I’m prepared to bet, every other room in the building) except for one crucial difference.  It wasn’t clear exactly what he’d done with the lights, but there was an iron pole fixed to them somehow, hanging above James.  His face wasn’t in the Foster family grin, but in the look of a man who has been overworked and had a lot demanded of him recently.  He was sitting in a pool of water, holding out the empty kettle from where the water had come. 

Electrical socket…  Iron pole…  Pool of water.  Electrical socket…  Iron pole…  Pool of water.  It will take Anja most of the rest of the chapter to put those three things together.  But if she just worked it out and wandered off, she wouldn’t be able to dramatically wrench her hands away, now, would she?

“I need to confess, Anja,” he gasped, “Many religions say that you need to, before you…  Well.  I know what you know, Anja.  And I know that you’re the same person as the sweet little blonde child who broke the nation’s hearts last year.  You’ve grown up now, though, haven’t you?”  A loving smile crossed his lips.  “I want you to understand about the bus, about the snail…  About everything.  Sit down, and I’ll begin.”

“Are you sitting comfortably?  Then here comes the Motive Rant.”

Before you what? I wondered as I sat down on the carpet next to James, avoiding the wet patch.  He was planning something for us, I could tell.  I hoped I could work out what it was before he did it.

The rest of us worked it out two paragraphs ago, Brain of Britain.

“As a child, I was always very close to my Aunt Jean,” he explained, “She was my father’s sister, and of course she’d never married or had any children of her own, so I was the closest thing she had to a son.  Jean had invested her money more shrewdly than my father had, and my parents always suggested that she would leave the money to me when she died.  Not that this was ever about the money, of course, but that would have been good security for me, especially when I had Melissa and the children to think about.  Jack and Joe were the eldest, you know that, but from when he was a toddler, Joe always seemed full of anger.  Melissa dismissed my fears as paranoia until Violet died.  You know that was his fault, Anja.  He was so jealous of that child, so full of life.  Maybe I mistreated him after that, but wasn’t I justified?  Jean thought I wasn’t, so she took him to live with her at Wild Cherry.  Now, she’d always put all her energy into her nightclub, Blaze, which she owned with Victoria Jewel.  Victoria knew glamour when she saw it; she wasn’t a film star for nothing, but such a cruel woman.  She proved that when she abandoned her lovely daughter to Jean’s care, while she went off to America with her new husband.”

This is a fascinating story, but you know what would have been great?  If we’d heard any of this before the final chapter!

“Was this Estelle?”

“Yes, Anja, Victoria doesn’t have another daughter.  Unless she had one and she swapped it for a Gucci dress.  Sweet little Estelle.  She was like a third sister to Joe.  If only Jean had known how Joe had treated his real sisters, she would have separated them quickly enough.  But no, not even Joe could fail to be enchanted by that gorgeous creature.  She was fourteen when she started living at Wild Cherry, and we saw her every time we went up to visit Joe. 

What is it with this guy and fourteen-year-olds?!?

You’ve met Estelle, Anja.  Can you blame me for only wanting the best for that darling girl?  When Estelle was… oh, eighteen or so, she would have been, Jean suddenly decided that the nightclub needed new talent, young people to give it a little more energy.  Only three people showed up. 

“Clearly, word had got around that the club attracted Smug Drunk Sociopaths.”

Now, I’ll never hear a word said against Emily or Svetlana, but the young man was simply awful.”

I pretended to be interested as I remembered something about electricity, metal and water.  With a thud, I knew what James was thinking.

“With a thud.”

“Mark Freeman is loud, volatile, rough and superficial, but somehow- I wish I knew! – somehow, he managed to sweep Estelle, his polar opposite, off her feet.  Never were a couple less suited to each other.  Can you blame me for wanting to stop the wedding and get rid of Violet’s killer at the same time?  And when the snail didn’t work…

More books should contain sentences beginning. “And when the snail didn’t work…”

and Svetlana knew about my thoughts, I knew she wouldn’t understand.  It was a stroke of luck for me when Joe decided to stay with Estelle and the man she’d married.  They lived in the same town as you; I knew that because Svetlana had mentioned it when she was told.  I heard Joe mention in a telephone call that they always stayed in the pub until a certain time- alcohol is evil, Anja, you must never drink it- and drove over to the town for the day.  It wasn’t easy to get into your school undetected, much less to put a fraudulent note into the box in the office, but all I could think about was scaring Svetlana with the death of a relative close enough to frighten, but not close enough to provoke real pain. 

“And obnoxious enough for her to not really give a toss.”

Oh Anja, can you ever forgive me for thinking such thoughts about you?  I didn’t know you then, I didn’t know that your sweetness equalled that of Estelle, Leah, and even Violet.  And you are the only person I would want to take with me, my scarlet-haired beauty!” 

“My scarlet-haired beauty!”  Try adding that to the end of all your sentences.

“I’d like to pay by debit card, my scarlet-haired beauty!”

“I think we should go and get some lunch, my scarlet-haired beauty!”

“These vomit stains are really hard to clean up, my scarlet-haired beauty!”

Hours of fun.

He grabbed my hands in his, and I knew that what I’d noticed would only help if I acted quickly.

I wrenched my hand from his and ran out of the door.  James grabbed the bar attached to the light before he noticed that I’d escaped.  I didn’t see him die, and I’m glad.  I was determined that there was only one person whose death I’d be present for, and if he was lucky he had another ten years on the clock.

James Foster had liked me a lot more than I’d thought.  He was going to die, so he decided to take the woman he loved with him, and I don’t mean his wife.  If I hadn’t noticed that the bar was in exactly the right place for him (us) to be electrocuted, I’d have fried along with him.

Very keen on electricity, was James Foster.

Yes.  Life would have been so much simpler if he’d just bought a gun like all the other homicidal maniacs.

Anyway.  On with the epilogue!

I’ve got a whole scrapbook full of newspaper and magazine articles that have something to do with the events that you have just read about.  It starts with the articles that marked the first anniversary of the “death” of poor little Anja Cleary.  “If Anja had survived, would she have fared any better?  Or would she have fallen victim to the drug abuse and casual sex that blight the nation’s youth?” 

The sad thing is, that’s a more-or-less direct quote from an article sixteen-year-old me read about two murdered teenagers.  Apparently, it didn’t matter if they were shot by a nutter, because black inner-city kids have a short life expectancy anyway.  Of course, the fact that I then turned around and made it all about a self-absorbed fictional white girl isn’t necessarily any less offensive.

No, she wouldn’t.  Honour Wolf might be a little different, but Anja Cleary wouldn’t have said boo to a goose, let alone do anything like that.  “The nation wept along with Anja Cleary’s parents last year…” And so on.

Yeah, let’s not dwell on Anja’s parents weeping.  It might remind us that Anja is a pustule on the arse of humanity, and we don’t want that.

Speaking of my parents, the next article is from my mum’s favourite magazine and entitled “Why We Can Smile Again.”  That’s nice to know.  I’m glad I don’t have to go around scowling all the time anymore.  There’s a photo of me at the top, along with others of my parents with my brother and this girl they’ve adopted, Sara.  Mum says in the article that she adopted Sara as “a choice of life, not death” rather than trying to replace me.  Hmm.  I just hope that they won’t expect this Sara to dye her hair red when she’s fifteen, or something equally stupid. 

Oh, screw you, Anja.  I hope your mother is so enchanted with her new daughter that she forgets you ever existed.

Apparently she calls me “Sister Anja in Heaven.”  In a way, she’s right.  I’m happy now.  Maybe I won’t be for long, but I am now.

There’s a short obituary of James Foster, a man apparently driven to a bizarre suicide in the Black Heart Hotel after his wife had left him.  He leaves the aforementioned wife and five children.  Apparently, the Black Heart might have to close down.  There’s an investigation going on into how safe their lights are.

There’s an advert for Blaze, which is doing really well under its new management.  Cherry now splits the work with Jack and Emily, on the grounds that the nightclub has been in their family for decades, so they’ve every right to it.  Jack and Emily were suitably delighted when she told them this.  Then there’s a photo from a tabloid, of 70s film star Victoria Jewel coming down to England to visit her beautiful daughter, Estelle, and equally beautiful granddaughter, Jean.  I still haven’t met Victoria.

No word on whether or not Victoria (or anyone else) still believes her son-in-law to be dead.  That would smack of actually resolving the plot threads I set up.

The next one is a strange article from a national paper.  Apparently, Keith Daly, a resident of a mental hospital in Essex, has been claiming that he has seen Anja Cleary since her death.  In fact, he’s saying that her spirit’s presence was so strong that it broke his wrists.  A group of American psychics keep asking the hospital staff for interviews with this interesting clairvoyant, but they haven’t had any luck yet.  Well, that’s a turn up for the books.

So Anja’s actions have got Mr Daly sectioned.  Good to know!

Then there’s something about Jordan Albright, the evil man suspected by conspiracy theorists of causing the Anja Cleary disaster. 

It’s not nice to call your husband a conspiracy theorist, Anja.

He’s been imprisoned for twenty years for the murder of Topaz Seaman.  His mother, who has recently given birth to a boy named Gary…

So Mr Wolf’s second son has the same name as his deceased first son?  That’s not creepy at all!

…has disowned him.  An older article that I found on the internet tells of a tragic event eight years ago, in which a small girl named Violet Foster was drowned after swimming out to sea in adverse weather conditions, much to the horror of her three brothers, who were present at the time.  It was suggested in the article that one of her brothers dared her to go swimming in the first place, but it wasn’t known which one.  I know which one.  Jack told Gary and me all about it shortly after his father’s funeral.  We both assured him that he was only a kid, and kids don’t usually think about consequences when they’re having fun.  Besides, Vi might have gone swimming anyway.

So, in conclusion, Joe did absolutely nothing wrong, and Anja ostracised him anyway!  Yay for Anja!

Finally, there’s an article with a picture of me, not as the cute blonde tragedy queen Anja Cleary, but as the worried, redheaded tragedy queen Honour Wolf.  The same magazine that printed the Sara article has told the story of a young girl who, while most of her peers are worrying about “boys and hairdos” (no comment) must look after the man she loves, a man without much time to live, and how she is now, to put it delicately, in the same “condition” that Estelle was when I met her. 

Oh, great.  Now she’s going to be raising a child in the ways of Smug Drunk Sociopathy.  And she’s eventually going to be a single parent.  I think we can safely say that kid is going to grow up to be a supervillain.

After the readers had read about me, the letters pages filled with comments like “Honour is a sign of self-sacrifice in a selfish world,” “I wept when I read about the man who did such terrible things to poor Honour’s husband,” and “It is a sign of great corruption in the world that a girl who should be out enjoying life is forced to take care of somebody who needs professional help.” 

…Hang on, if he needs professional help, why isn’t he getting it?  It’s not as if they can’t afford it- his wife’s cousin’s a millionaire!  Is it because Anja wants to play the martyr as much as she possibly can?  You know, I think it very well might be.

All in all, nobody paid Gary much attention.  Poor Gary.

Sometimes it irritates me that, even after changing my name, my hair and my lifestyle, I’m still destined to be a tragic figure.

Shut the hell up, Anja.

…Actually, she has!  That was the last sentence of the book!  We never have to listen to anything Anja says again!  We’re free!  Free, I say!  Oh, joyous moment!  Oh, happy day!

The thing I’m going to take away from this (other than things like “protagonists actually have to do stuff occasionally” and “sustained misunderstandings are a terrible way to add conflict”) is something I mentioned at the beginning:  Just because somebody’s written a terrible story doesn’t mean that they’re a terrible person.  Fifteen-year-old me had a series of cool-looking moments in her head, and she didn’t think too hard about how the characters got them.  I wanted a story where the main character was separated from her parents and had to survive on her wits… and didn’t notice that I’d made her callously ignore her parents’ grief.  I wanted a story where the main character got to live in a big, fancy house… and didn’t notice that an innocent woman had to be murdered in order to make that happen.  I wanted a story in which the main character brought her enemies to a stunned silence with her biting wit… and didn’t notice that some of the enemies didn’t really deserve it.  In real life, if fifteen-year-old me had been told not to contact my parents and allow them to think I was dead, I’d have ignored that and got in touch at the first opportunity.  If not because I was concerned about their feelings, then definitely because I missed them.  Anja Cleary might have been a Smug Drunk Sociopath, but fifteen-year-old me wasn’t.  At least, I hope not.

I leave you with a merry song, and a suggestion that you drink a large bottle of whatever it is you like best:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ05LV…

(Fifteen-year-old me preferred the Robbie Williams version to the George Michael version.  So does twenty-eight-year-old me.)