Too Near the Dead Read online

  Here, there are at least curtains to draw and a high-backed armchair to curl up in, and enough of James’s things lying around that I can imagine he might walk in at any moment.

  I could call him, of course. He wouldn’t be annoyed if I did, even though it must be half past three in the morning – half past four in Madrid. He keeps odd hours himself, especially when he’s nearly at the end of a book; he’s been known to get out of bed in the small hours because he can’t bear not to keep writing. I could phone him at the hotel and he’d say, “What’s up, Fen?” sounding sleepy or maybe not sleepy at all because he’d been sitting up jotting down thoughts for his next project, keeping himself awake with black coffee.

  Yes, I could call him, but I’m not going to, not even for the comfort of hearing his familiar voice. What would I tell him? That’s the thing. Of all the people in the world, the last person I could tell about that horrible, claustrophobic dream, that nightmare of being closely imprisoned in my own wedding dress, is the man I am engaged to marry.

  Chapter Three

  I never expected to be rich. I guess I’m still not rich in the having-four-different-houses and travelling-by-private-jet and wearing-a-tiara-to-dinner sort of way. But I never thought I’d have enough money to give up my regular job for something far less secure. I never thought I’d be able to buy my own home, let alone somewhere like Barr Dubh House. I’d made my bed, and I was lying on it.

  Truthfully, I didn’t expect to be getting married, either. That’s still a surprise, when I think about it.

  I spent a lot of time inside James’s imagination before I ever actually met him. Editors and publicists meet the authors; copyeditors less often. I was working on someone else’s book when James’s novel hit my desk. I remember the other book was a spy thriller, which wasn’t my favourite genre to begin with, and it had had several rounds of structural edits, as a result of which the manuscript was riddled with little inconsistencies. It was also overdue, and as I worked my way through it I began to suspect that everyone involved had lost the will to do anything further with it. It was disheartening to be typing comments like “Didn’t this character die on page 21?” when I was on page 237. The whole job was so consuming at the time that I didn’t give a lot of thought to the next one until it was done.

  I finished working on the spy thriller on a Friday and I downloaded James’s manuscript to look at over the weekend. I liked to read a whole work through before looking at the fine detail – except, perhaps, in the case of the spy thriller, which I would rather not have read at all. I had no particular expectations of James’s book. At that time, James Sinclair wasn’t a well-known name. I hadn’t read his debut novel, which had done tolerably well but wasn’t a bestseller.

  When I got back to the place where I lived, the couple on the ground floor were having another party. Even if I’d been stone deaf, I would have known from the vibrations that ran through the building. As it was, I was glad for once that I was on the top floor, in spite of all the stairs. On the second floor, Mrs. Khan was looking out through a crack in the door. She rolled her eyes, and I grimaced back at her. We both knew that it was pointless going downstairs to complain. The party throwers would probably have turned the music up, if it were possible to turn it up any higher. I toiled my way up the last flight of stairs, let myself into the flat and closed the door behind me.

  I knew it was sad to be working on a Friday night. I held out for a bit, while I made myself a plate of pasta in an unappetising sauce and ate it in front of the news. Eventually, though, I gave in. It wasn’t as though I had anything else planned, after all. I booted up my laptop and opened the file with James’s book in it.

  The Unrepentant Dead, by James Sinclair – that was the title. I had a glass of red wine at my elbow and I took a sip before going any further. The title was intriguing, even if it was a bit grim. I considered it for a moment, and then I scrolled down to the beginning of the text and began to read.

  If this were a romantic film, I would have read the entire book at one sitting and fallen in love with James on the spot because of his soulful prose. I didn’t read the whole book that evening, and I didn’t fall in love with James, either. But I read about a quarter of it, and when I stopped it was simply because it was too good to gorge upon. I’ve read a lot of books by anyone’s standards, both as an ordinary reader, and professionally as a copyeditor. James’s book was special. My copyeditor’s brain noted that he made very few mistakes with grammar or spelling. Of course, everyone makes a few, however careful they are, but James was very correct, which was a great relief after the last job. That wasn’t what made his book stand out though. It was such an original idea. It was based on a legend common in both Scotland and Ireland, of the sluagh, the restless dead – spirits who return to this world, flying out of the west like a flock of birds, to steal away the souls of those who are close to death. James hadn’t simply made a ghost story out of this. He had made it into an allegory for the malign influences of the past, against which his heroine struggled to assert herself. The book was tender, tragic and occasionally horrific; it was weird and beautiful. It was also a book with heart. It’s hard to explain what I mean by that. It didn’t feel as though he had tried to write what he thought would sell, or written to impress. It felt as though the author had really written his own feelings into the book.

  Was I curious about the person behind this amazing book? Yes. Did I rush off and look at his website, or look to see whether he was on Twitter or Instagram? No. The truth was, the more I read of his book, the more I loved it, the less I wanted to know about James Sinclair. I’d heard enough tales from my colleagues, of authors who wrote beautiful, sensitive novels and were narcissistic monsters in real life. If James Sinclair was like that, I didn’t want to know. Nor did I want to know if he was old or hard-looking or avuncular. I had a sense of the shape of him, of his personality, through the way that he wrote, and I wanted to hang onto it, even if it was a mirage.

  I read the rest of The Unrepentant Dead that weekend, finishing the bottle of wine as I did so, and on Monday morning I started again from the beginning, this time as a copyeditor. Amendments were highlighted, and any comments I added appeared to the right of the text, to remain in the file until the author had read and – hopefully – accepted the changes.

  Most of the time I confined myself to the usual things: correcting typos and checking for inconsistencies. At the denouement of the story, however, I couldn’t resist commenting. This is amazing, I typed in the comments. I really meant it.

  When I’d finished working on James’s book, I was straight onto the next manuscript – this time a historical romance. The author of that particular work had a persistent habit of using commas and semi-colons instead of full stops, so that reading her work was rather like listening to someone who never shut up, not even to draw breath. I didn’t give The Unrepentant Dead much thought until a number of weeks later, when it turned up in my inbox again. James and his editor had agreed on some very last minute though minor changes – I forget why – and the editor wanted me to take a final look at the manuscript.

  By that time, there was not much to look at. James had accepted most of my previous amendments, so the marks showing that there was a change had nearly all vanished. The changes he had made since then were uncontroversial. Then I came to the climax of the story, where my comment, This is amazing, still remained. Underneath it was a comment in a different colour. Thank you Fen, it said.

  I was illogically pleased with this simple exchange. I spent most of my working life pointing out the errors in other people’s work, so it was nice to express appreciation and be acknowledged in return. I was almost sorry to have to delete the comments and send the file off again.

  The critics agreed with me about The Unrepentant Dead. It was reviewed enthusiastically, and then it won a major book prize. The prize didn’t bring a lot of money with it, but it brought literary glory.
That is not to say that it propelled the book onto the bestseller list either, but it made the publisher we both worked with very eager to hang onto James: prize-winning authors brought them a lot of cachet. Suddenly there were enormous reproductions of the book’s cover all over the office. All of this meant that there was a certain amount of pressure on James to produce another book, and produce it quickly, before the momentum was lost. Never mind that it had taken him three years to write the last one.

  All the same, he managed it. The next manuscript that eventually pinged into my inbox was shorter than the last one had been, and I thought that you could tell that it had been written under time pressure. There were more little inaccuracies for me to pick up. It was still brilliant, though. He had an intense, vivid style of writing – whether the scene was a cobbled city street or an expanse of moorland, he brought it to life, utterly – but he managed it deftly, without overdosing the reader with lengthy descriptions.

  If, like me, you have worked for years correcting and polishing manuscripts, it’s easy to become brusque about it. There is no use pussyfooting about, after all, especially not when the deadline is looming. With James’s book, though, I did my very best to be diplomatic. I liked his writing too much to do otherwise. By the time I had finished going through the manuscript, it was bristling with red corrections and comments explaining them, but I’d added a few remarks of my own. I love this, I said of one moment of electrifying suspense, and of the redemptive scene at the end of the novel, simply: Beautiful.

  I did see that manuscript again before it was published, and at first I thought all my comments had simply been removed, along with all the suggested amendments that had been accepted. The first ones certainly had. I was faintly disappointed, and then embarrassed. Perhaps I’d struck a wrong note, sounding pathetically starstruck, or perhaps my comments had simply come across as insincere, like those people whose favourite and indiscriminately-applied adjective is “incredible”. But then I came to the final scene, and underneath my comment was another one from James Sinclair: Thank you for your comments, Fen. I looked at that for a moment. When I closed my laptop, I was smiling to myself.

  Several months passed, and then one afternoon when I was deeply engrossed in my work, I heard voices outside the office door. I didn’t look up. People quite often had tours around our offices – prospective interns or authors, and occasionally book bloggers. They tended to home in on the enormous shelf of free books, rather than lingering around the copyeditors’ desks.

  Then someone cleared their throat right in front of my desk and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I looked up into a face I didn’t recognise, with dark intelligent eyes and sharp cheekbones. I was so flustered that when he said, “Are you Fen Munro?” I very nearly said, “No.”

  But I nodded, and he said, “I’m James Sinclair.” He smiled at me, and his rather severe features were suddenly engaging. He said, “I had a meeting here and I wanted to drop in and thank you for your comments on the book. Well, both books. You were very diplomatic.”

  “I wasn’t being diplomatic,” I said. “I really liked them.” I was doing my best not to stare at him. Then I winced inside; liked didn’t sound enthusiastic enough. I should have said I loved them.

  He didn’t seem to mind. “Well, you were kinder than the copyeditor who worked on my first book, anyway.”

  “That was probably Gen–” I began to say, before stopping myself. “I mean, Suzanne Caan, right? She’s a legend for her bluntness.”

  He looked at me for a moment and then he grinned. “You were going to say Genghis, weren’t you?”

  “Shhh,” I said urgently. Then I lowered my voice and said, “Yes.” There was something infectious about his amusement, but all the same, I really hoped he wouldn’t repeat the name to anyone else. “She’s alright – she’s just a little...”

  “Brutal?” he suggested.

  I bit my lip, trying not to laugh. “A bit.”

  “I hope–” he started to say, but he was interrupted; someone put their head around the door and announced that his taxi had arrived.

  “Got to go,” he said. “It was good to meet you, Fen.”

  “It was nice to meet you too,” I said, but I’m not sure he even heard me; he was halfway out of the door already. I didn’t see him again for half a year.

  Chapter Four

  Sunlight is shining on my closed eyes. This time I wake from a true, deep and dreamless sleep to an orange glow behind my eyelids. I open my eyes and blink at the bright morning light.

  I’ve been lying across the armchair in James’s study, with my head pressed against one of the padded wings and my legs over the armrest, bare feet dangling. I strongly suspect I have been sleeping with my mouth open, drooling a bit. Worse, the moment I start to move, I can feel various bits of my body protesting: my neck, my lower back, my right arm. Everything feels stiff.

  Uncoiling myself slowly and painfully from the chair, I see the tin mug lying on its side on the floorboards. There is a sticky residue of brandy at its lip, though seemingly I managed to drink nearly all of it before I fell asleep.

  Everything in the room – the chair, the mug, the small stain on the boards – is very clearly delineated by the strong light streaming through the gap in the curtains. I rub my eyes. I thought I’d drawn the curtains right across, wanting to shut out the unfriendly night. Apparently I didn’t. I drift over to the window, and pull them back, wincing at the sunshine.

  Outside the window there is a strip of gravel path, a patch of earth that will eventually be a flower bed, and a fence. Beyond the fence is an expanse of rough pasture, stretching away to the treeline perhaps three hundred metres away. Now, at the very end of summer, the pasture is green and overgrown.

  The land belongs to Barr Dubh House; it was one of the reasons we chose this place. We don’t have any livestock to graze on it, but it will be a wonderful buffer of peace and solitude, a perfect environment for James’s writing. It’s also an unimaginable luxury: a house with actual land. In London, I didn’t even have a window box. It’s still very hard to take in – the change in our lives, and everything that goes with it.

  As I stare out of the window, my eye is drawn to movement at the treeline. It’s too far away for me to see clearly what it is. Not an animal, that’s for sure, although the solicitor who handled the sale of Barr Dubh to us told us we might see deer: I see a patch of colour that clearly isn’t fur.

  Lilac, I think, and then: No, lavender. That’s the right name for that shade of light purple.

  I squint at it. It must be a person, but I can’t quite work out what they’re wearing. Whatever it is, it’s voluminous: fabric seems to billow out from it, so that the movement seems to take the form of a series of surges. I briefly wonder if I’m seeing something other than a human figure – a piece of tarpaulin or tent fabric blowing in the wind? But there is no other movement; the trees and grass are unruffled.

  A person then.

  But whoever it is, it’s not as though they are wandering right past the house staring in through the windows. I watch for a few moments longer and the patch of lavender dwindles and vanishes. Presumably the person has stepped into the shadows under the trees. I wait, but they don’t reappear.

  Maybe there’s a path over there. I make a mental note to go and have a look later. Then I turn away from the window and head for the kitchen. What I need right now is very hot, very strong, very sweet tea.

  An hour later, I’m in the car, heading for the town. It’s not far in miles, but it takes longer than you’d think, because of all the twists and turns, not to mention the uneven road surface on the stretch between Barr Dubh House and the main road. There is also a triangular warning sign with a stag on it, galloping at full tilt. I have no idea how seriously to take this. Perhaps deer are as rare as yetis on the roads here, and the local council are just covering themselves. Or perhaps there is a real
danger that I will come around a corner and find one charging across the road, tossing its antlered head at me. I go cautiously, just in case. I pass a few cars going the other way, to the town further up the valley. I also see a tractor with some terrifying-looking agricultural machinery attached to it. Mostly though, it’s just me following the serpentine route of the road, like a leaf borne downstream on a current. On one side of me are fields and a distant hill, and on the other, a forested slope. We have very few neighbours. There is hardly anyone at all living between us and the town.

  Even when I get to the edge of the town, the place does not immediately open itself up to me. The first houses I pass are large Victorian mansions, set well back from the road in mature gardens with tall shrubs and hedges discouraging the idle gaze. The park with its jolly-looking bandstand seems deserted; I suppose by now the schools have gone back.

  I park in the square with its dried-up fountain, a monumental creation of polished granite. I suspect this town had a heyday, and quite a lot of time has passed since then. But it’s still grand, in a faded sort of way. Most of the buildings around the square look as though they date to the nineteenth century, and even if at least one of them has what looks like a small shrub growing from the top of it, the balconies and pediments and bay windows are impressive.

  I get out of the car and stand for a moment on the pavement, looking around me. In a year’s time, I suppose, this place will be as familiar to me as the London streets around my flat were. I will probably be on nodding terms with people I haven’t even met yet. At this point in time, however, I don’t know a single soul in the entire town. Even the solicitor was from Perth.

  Anyway, pretty soon I’m going to have made my first introduction. I’m here on a mission. It takes me a minute to orient myself – I have no idea whether the High Street numbers run up or down the hill – but after that, it’s not difficult to find what I’m looking for. This isn’t a huge town, after all – there are two main streets and most of the shops are on one of them.