Read Online The Ghost Writer by John Harwood - Free Book Online Page B

blank as the sheet in front of me. And all too soon, she noticed.
I feel there's something wrong, your letters aren't as long as they used to be, and they seem—I don't know—a bit stilted?—anyway something's changed in the feeling of them. Please tell me. I'd hate it if you felt there was
anything
you couldn't say to me—even that you'd fallen out of love with me—I do mean that, truly. Trust me. I'll always adore you with my whole heart.
Your invisible lover,
Alice
    I agonised over and destroyed one reply after another as the days slipped remorselessly by, and there was nothing left to do but tell the truth, at least as much of it as I could bear to confess. So I told her the dreams I'd been describing were really daydreams, though they still said how much I loved and adored her—I just hadn't been able to do the dreaming, hadn't dared tell her because I thought she'd think I didn't love her as much as she loved me, whereas I loved her truly, madly, desperately. And that I was unhappy because I really, really needed to be with her, couldn't go on living so far from her, and so—assuming she didn't decide to break it off right now, which I knew I deserved—if she did still love me would she please, please say that we could be together one day, I didn't care how long I had to wait. And so on, for several more scrawled, incoherent pages which I posted in utter despair, and dragged myself home in the spirit of a prisoner on his way to the condemned cell.
    Over the next fortnight I learned the meaning of anguish. My face was numb and stiff with misery; I could scarcely speak. My appetite had vanished, my tongue sat in my mouth like some bloated alien substance, and yet the black gnawing hole in my stomach made me feel continuously sick. My mother pleaded with me to tell her what was wrong. My class teacher phoned my parents; the family doctor was summoned; I fended them all off with the adolescent's listless nothing', whilst wondering how I could find out how many aspirins you needed to swallow to die a painless death, and whether inhaling bottled gas would knock you out and kill you before the smell of it made you vomit. Alice's letters continued to arrive, even after she had answered the last of mine but one, wondering anxiously, tenderly, if I was sick or unhappy, telling me that she would always love me no matter what happened. Unable to write, I re-read all of her letters from the beginning several times over, waiting for the end.
    When the letter finally arrived it took me an hour to summon the courage to open it.
Dearest Gerard,
    I'm so, so sorry, I've been selfish and insensitive, too wrapped up in my own happiness—the happiness you give me—I should have realised. You're so brave to have told me, I would have done exactly the same if it had been the other way round. Can you ever forgive me?
    And I haven't been completely honest, either, because I haven't always been asleep. When I've imagined making love with you, I mean. I was afraid you'd be shocked. I'm such a coward, I should have trusted you the way you've trusted me.
    But now at least we know that neither of us needs to be shocked or embarrassed about wanting to make love. I really did mean what I said before, that nothing between us could ever be wrong, and to prove it to you ... every day from now on, at half-past one, I'm going to lie down and close my eyes and imagine myself into my dream-body, and make love with you. And if you were to do the same, at ten o'clock at night, in your bed, then you can tell me exactly how you'd like to make love with me, on a special day, say in four weeks' time, so I can write back to you, and then we'll both know, on that day, that everything we've said is really happening.
    And then ... well how much can distance really matter, when I'll be as close to you as your dreams, your heartbeat?
Your invisible (but very passionate) lover
Alice
    And so we became, in our strange and solitary way, lovers. She taught me not to