Frances
Frances felt the soft, frosty tickle of snowflakes on her face as she and her friend Gillian flew across a star-studded sky in a sleigh drawn by white horses.
A pile of books filled her lap. They were all the books she’d ever written, including foreign language editions. The books were open at the top like cereal boxes. Frances dipped her hand into each book and pulled out great handfuls of words to scatter across the sky.
‘Got one!’ said Sol, from the back of the sleigh, where he and Henry sat smoking cigarettes and killing off unnecessary adjectives with catapults.
‘Leave them be,’ said Frances snappily.
‘Let’s get all those adverbs too!’ said Sol happily.
‘Even the rhyming ones?’ asked Henry affably.
‘That’s an imperfect rhyme,’ pointed out Frances.
‘They’re just words, Frances,’ said Gillian.
‘So profound, Gillian,’ said Sol.
‘Shut up, Sol,’ said Gillian.
‘She never liked you,’ Frances told Sol.
Sol said, ‘That sort of woman always secretly wants an alpha male.’
Frances smiled fondly at him. Egotist but sexy as hell. ‘You were my first-ever husband.’
‘I was your first-ever husband,’ agreed Sol. ‘And you were my second-ever wife.’
‘Second wives are so young and pretty,’ said Frances. ‘I liked being a second wife.’
‘By the by, Gillian kissed me once,’ said Henry. ‘At someone’s thirtieth birthday party.’
‘She was drunk,’ said Frances. ‘Don’t get a big head about it.’
‘I was drunk,’ agreed Gillian. ‘I felt bad about that until the day I died.’
‘Henry, you were my second husband,’ said Frances. ‘But I was your first wife. Therefore not as pretty.’
Gillian said, ‘Why do you keep identifying your husbands?’
‘Readers get impatient if they have trouble working out which character is which,’ explained Frances. ‘You’ve got to help them out. None of us is getting any younger.’
‘Except this isn’t a book,’ said Gillian.
‘I think you’ll find it is,’ said Frances. ‘I’m the protagonist, obviously.’
‘I feel like that tall Russian lady is giving you a run for your money,’ said Gillian.
‘She is not,’ said Frances. ‘It’s all about me. I’m just not sure of my love interest yet.’
‘Oh my God, it’s so obvious,’ said Gillian. ‘Blind Freddy could pick it.’ She shouted at the sky, ‘You knew it from day one, right?’
‘Gillian! Did you just try to break the fourth wall?’ Frances was shocked.
‘I did not,’ said Gillian, but she looked guilty. ‘I’m sure no-one noticed.’
‘How tacky,’ said Frances. ‘How very gimmicky.’
She dared to look up and the stars were a million darting eyes on the look out for rule-breaking in her story: sexism, ageism, racism, tokenism, ableism, plagiarism, cultural appropriation, fat-shaming, body-shaming, slut-shaming, vegetarian-shaming, real-estate-agent-shaming. The voice of the Almighty Internet boomed from the sky: Shame on you!
Frances hung her head. ‘It’s just a story,’ she whispered.
‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you,’ said Gillian.
An endless gossamer-like sentence embroidered with jewel-like metaphors, far too many clauses and meaning so obscure it had to be profound wrapped itself around Frances’s neck, but it really didn’t suit her, so she wrenched it off and flung it into space, where it floated free until at last a shy author on his way to a festival to accept a prize grabbed it from the sky and used it to gag one of his beautiful corpses. It looked lovely on her. Grey-bearded critics applauded with relief, grateful it hadn’t ended up in a beach read.
‘Will younger readers even recognise the term “Blind Freddy”?’ asked Jo, who floated alongside Frances doing a line edit. She sat astride a giant lead pencil. ‘Could it be ableist?’
‘What’s interesting is that I’m a fictional character,’ said her internet scammer from the back of the sleigh, where he sat between Henry and Sol, his arms around their shoulders. ‘Yet she loved me more than either of you.’
‘You’re nothing but a scam,’ said Sol. ‘She never even met you, let alone fucked you, cocksucker!’
‘!!!!’ cried Jo.
‘I agree. Delete,’ advised Gillian. ‘My mother reads your books.’
‘As her loving ex-husbands, it’s our duty to beat you to a pulp,’ said Henry to Paul Drabble. ‘Scram, scam.’
‘Life is nothing but a scam,’ said Gillian. ‘It’s all just a giant illusion.’
‘Scram, scam,’ chuckled Sol. ‘Good one.’
He and Henry fist-bumped.
‘You’re both far too old for fist-bumping,’ sighed Frances, but her ex-husbands were busy bonding. She always knew they’d like each other if they ever met. She should have invited them both to her fiftieth.
She realised that Paul Drabble had vanished, as easy as that. There was no pain in the empty space he’d left behind. It turned out he’d meant nothing at all. Not a thing.
‘He was just a credit on my bank balance,’ she told Gillian.
‘Debit, you idiot,’ said Gillian.
‘Debit, credit,’ said Frances. ‘Whatever. I am completely over him.’
‘I was the one who meant something,’ said a child’s voice. It was Ari, Paul Drabble’s son.
Frances didn’t turn around. She could not look at him.
‘I thought I was going to be his mother,’ she said to Gillian. ‘It’s the only time in my life I even considered being a mother.’
‘I know,’ said Gillian.
‘So embarrassing,’ whispered Frances. ‘I am so deeply embarrassed.’
‘It’s a loss, Frances,’ said Gillian. ‘You’re allowed to grieve your loss even if it’s embarrassing.’
The snow fell silently for days as Frances grieved her loss of an imaginary boy and Gillian sat beside her, head bowed in sympathy, until they were frozen, snow-covered figures.
‘What about my dad?’ asked Frances in the spring, when the snow melted, butterflies danced and bees buzzed. ‘Why isn’t he here on my trip? I’m the one writing this thing, Gillian, not you. Let’s get Dad on board.’
‘I’m here,’ said her dad from the back of the sleigh.
He was alone, wearing the khaki safari suit he wore for Christmas lunch 1973, captured forever in the framed photo on her writing desk. She reached back and took his hand. ‘Hello, Dad.’
‘You were always so crazy about the boys.’ Her dad shook his head. Frances smelled his Old Spice aftershave.
‘You died when I was too young,’ said Frances. ‘That’s why I made such bad choices in men. I was trying to replace you.’
‘Cliché?’ asked Jo from astride her lead pencil, which was bucking like a horse. ‘Whoa, boy!’
‘Stop editing me,’ said Frances to Jo. ‘You’re retired. Go look after your grandchildren.’
‘Don’t even pretend you have unresolved daddy issues – you do not,’ said Gillian. ‘Take responsibility.’
Frances pinched Gillian on the arm.
‘Ouch!’ said Gillian.
‘Sorry. I didn’t think it would hurt. It’s not like any of this is real,’ said Frances. ‘It’s just a story I’m making up as I go along.’
‘Speaking of which, I always thought your plots could be better structured,’ said Gillian. ‘The same goes for your life. All this chopping and changing of husbands. Maybe you could think about planning ahead for the final chapters. I never had the courage to say that when I was alive.’
‘You actually did say that when you were alive,’ said Frances. ‘More than once, as a matter of fact.’
‘You’re always acting like you’re the heroine of one of your own novels. You just fall into the arms of the next man the narrator puts in front of you.’
‘You told me that too!’
‘Did I?’ said Gillian. ‘That was impolite of me.’
‘I always thought so,’ said Frances.
‘I could have been kinder,’ said Gillian. ‘I may have been on the spectrum.’
‘Don’t think you’re getting any more character development now you’re dead,’ said Frances. ‘You’re done. Let’s focus on my character development.’
‘You’re easy: you’re the princess,’ said Gillian. ‘The passive princess waiting for yet another prince.’
‘I could kill the emu,’ said Frances.
‘Well, we’ll see, won’t we, Frances? We’ll see if you can kill the emu.’
‘Maybe.’ Frances watched the emu, alive again, but still incapable of flight, run across the star-studded sky. ‘I really miss you, Gillian.’
‘Thanks,’ said Gillian. ‘I would say I missed you too, but that would not strictly be true as I’m actually in a constant state of bliss.’
‘I’m not surprised. It’s so beautiful,’ said Frances. ‘It’s kind of like the northern lights, isn’t it?’
‘It’s always there,’ said Gillian.
‘What is? The northern lights? They are not always there. Ellen paid a fortune and didn’t see a thing.’
‘This, Frances. This beauty. Just on the other side. You just have to be quiet. Stay still. Stop talking. Stop wanting. Just be. You’ll hear it, or feel it. Close your eyes and you’ll see it.’
‘Interesting,’ said Frances. ‘Did I tell you about my review?’
‘Frances, forget the review!’
Gosh. Gillian sounded quite cranky for someone who didn’t have anything to do except lie back and enjoy the exquisite beauty of the afterlife.