The Book: Chapter 22

Alice was delighted when she saw the stunning flower arrangement on her desk. And Mara followed her in with a huge grin on her face. ‘Somebody’s popular this morning. Mick, I take it?’

Alice smiled, happy. She’d missed him far more than she’d expected. Picking the small envelope from between the stalks, she opened it and tried not to let her face fall. It wasn’t from Mick, but a gift from Rosie’s parents. They apologised and thanked her for caring. It was a lovely gesture—but it wasn’t from Mick.

 She checked her phone. There hadn’t been a single message from him. It was eight days, and despite countless texts and calls as her desperation increased, he hadn’t replied. She’d even gone to his new flat, swallowing her pride as she knocked on his door. There was no answer, so she looked through the window. She saw it was a partially furnished rental, but he didn’t have much in there.

She took heart from the fact that he’d only been back for a few clothes and toiletries. She was upset that he’d waited until she was at work to sneak back, which stung, but he hadn’t cleared out his things. He loved his vinyl collection. A few of his favourite records he’d brought around to share with her, still gathered dust on her bookcase. It had to be a good omen.

Mick’s neighbour came out, staring at her as Alice poked around the shared garden and peered through windows. She had a flashback to the incident with Rosie and cringed. The last thing she needed was some nosy bint calling the police. She’d tread carefully, but it didn’t stop a pang of jealousy. The lady was pretty and a couple of years younger than Alice. Her hip stuck out at the angle mothers found comfortable, and she had a toddler perched on it. Mick loved kids. He wouldn’t object to a ready-made family. The woman gave her a pitying look, and paranoia rose like bile in Alice’s throat. What did she know? Had there been pillow talk between her and Mick?

This interloper smiled. ‘Hi, you must be Alice. Mick’s gone to Scotland to see his parents for the weekend.’

How the bloody hell did she know? He’d got mighty close to another woman in a week to tell her the ins and outs of his personal life. She was still talking and the book’s influence slid into Alice’s head. She had to ram her hand into her jeans pocket to stop it coming up and slapping the woman’s face.

‘He thought you might call and asked me to tell you he was called away urgently because his dad’s not so good.’

Why couldn’t he pick up his sodding phone and tell her himself?

She heard a man shout from inside her flat. He called her darling and asked what she was doing. The lady’s face lit up. ‘Men,’ she said, and her affection was obvious. ‘I’d better go. He’ll be wanting a cup of tea.’ Alice relaxed, smiled and thanked her.

Mick was avoiding her.

The realisation chewed on her nerve endings. He wasn’t missing her at all. She’d been cruel, but she was desperate to fix their relationship. It wasn’t her fault, but she couldn’t talk to him. Before he left her, Mick’s walls went up as soon as she mentioned the book. He refused to discuss it, or even listen. She loved him. He must know that, and before this nightmare, they’d been getting closer. It was serious, and impossible that they could be destroyed so easily.
            The book was ruining every aspect of her life. Rosa had told her to burn it. And of course, she’d tried. It was futile. The day Mick left, she’d taken it into the garden, soaked the cover in accelerant and threw a match onto it. The blaze was fierce, but it petered out quickly. She’d doused it in enough petrol to spark an arson investigation, but it was still as pristine as a laminated menu. The book didn’t burn at all—not so much as a scorch or a singe.

She obsessed over finding out what it was. If she could work that out, and then where it came from, she could find out how to stop it. But every attempt to track its origins led to dead ends. It dominated her life.

She’d started with the seller. The eBay purchase had seemed unremarkable—a username, a first initial, a surname, and an address. But when she tried to contact the previous owner there was no response. Filing a complaint through the correct channels brought new revelations. The company had no record of the transaction and hounding them proved futile. There was no sale of the books, no shipment, and no D Carrington. And when she checked her tracking details, there was no bloody paper trail on her end either. She worried that something awful had happened to the seller. Paranoia took root. She contacted every D Carrington on Social media, refreshed her inbox obsessively, and waited for a reply that never came.

 She tried identifying the book through conventional means. It didn’t have an ISBN or any publishing details and there was no record of it anywhere online. Even the tiny barcode on the back was useless and refused to scan. When she’d picked it up and saw its blank cover, she thought it was quirky. It intrigued her. Now, its anonymity was terrifying. It existed without history or proof of existence.

After another sleepless night, the book turned on her.

Every morning she opened it, and it was like probing a loose molar when you had toothache. That day, the humiliating stories were about her and paranoia burned her into a hot mess. How would the book make these stories public knowledge to be dissected in the staff room? She tore out the pages and ripped them into tiny shreds, but when she picked up the book, they were back in place—one held together with a strip of aged Cellotape to mock her.

It knew her shame and her secrets. The chapter opened with a childhood memory of wetting herself in school after laughing too hard. It wasn’t a lot, a dribble more than a flood, and she covered it by tying her school jumper around her waist and holding her bag in front of her. She got away with it because, when somebody noticed the smell on the bus ride home, she’d blamed it on the person sitting next to her. It started a spate of bullying that followed the girl throughout school. Alice heard that, after leaving, Lucy had taken to a life of drug use. She often wondered if that one shameful incident was the catalyst that broke somebody else’s life. The book delighted in detailing a university party where she got drunk and threw up in a taxi causing the driver to swerve and hit a lamppost. Nobody was hurt, but there was extensive damage to the car. The chapter finished with the story of her first love and how she cheated on him when she went to university. They’d promised to wait for each other, but she’d outgrown him quickly. These days, Ben was often in trouble with the police and hadn’t done well for himself. The book blamed her. She read, horrified, as it laid out the worst parts of her past in excruciating detail.

It knew her thoughts; the ones she’d never admit to. It painted her in a bad light, twisting her shame. She slammed it shut. It was digging into her privacy and stripping her bare.

The stress bled into her work. She arrived late, struggling to drag herself out of bed. Her colleagues whispered about her again and she thought they’d seen the stories the book told. They hesitated before speaking to her, afraid she might shatter. It was happening again.

‘Another breakdown,’ she heard Debbie say.

Her mistakes piled up. A patient was left in one of the consultation rooms. It wasn’t the first time, and Calvert was furious. Alice left the session to chase some results, got distracted, and forgot about him. She opened the wrong gauge needle to use on a patient and it had to be swapped out before any damage was done. It was nothing career-ending, but enough to make people doubt her ability. She’d only recently been put on full duties after a phased return.

Over two months, her reputation had disintegrated like a biscuit dunked in tea, and she was the disgusting mess at the bottom of the mug. She caught snippets of conversations and comments that made her stomach tighten. She’d feel her temper rising and wanted to lash out.

‘She’s all over the place.’

‘It’s affecting her work.’

‘She’s wandering around with that book again. Has she mentioned it to you?’

Alice wanted to scream. She was sabotaged, trapped in a private war and tormented by something they’d never understand. But she couldn’t say anything because they already thought she was crazy. If she tried to explain, it would only make things worse.

By the end of the day Calvert had put her on shadowed consultations and Alice knew she was only there because of the staffing shortage. It begged the question: which of them carried the label of negligence?
 

I write under the pen name Katherine Black and I have 17 books published. All on Kindle Unlimited. I’d love it if you’d try one.

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