Page 16 of A Slow Fire Burning

“Not yet.”

“Okay.” There was a long pause, another crackle, Laura heard her mother sigh, and in that moment, something cracked; she felt her disappointment wrap like a fist around her heart.

“Laura, are you crying? Oh, Laura, don’t.Please.Don’t do this. You know I can’t bear it when people try to emotionally manipulate me.”

“I’m not,” Laura said, but she was sobbing now. “I’m not.”

“Listen to me,” her mother said, her tone brisk, businesslike. “You have a good cry, and then you ring me back, all right? I’ll talk to Richard about the money, okay? Laura? You take care now.”

Laura cried for a little while, and when she was done, all emotion spent, she called her father, who didn’t pick up. She left a message. “Dad, hi. Yeah, so I got arrested yesterday, accused of murder, they’ve let me go without a charge but I got fired ’cos I missed work due to being in police custody and all the food I bought went off and I’ve got fuck all money left so could you give me a call back? Cheers. It’s Laura, by the way.”

The One Who Got Away

When he wakes that morning, he can’t imagine how the day is going to go, can’t imagine how it’s going to end up, all the highs and lows. Doesn’t imagine, while he’s shaving in the dirty mirror in the back bathroom, rusty water in the sink, stink of shit everywhere, doesn’t imagine that he’ll meet such a lovely girl.

How could he imagine how it’d go? How she’d tease him and flirt with him and hurt his feelings and then come running back, thumb stuck out, asking for help, asking for his company, for his hand on her lovely soft thigh in the front seat of the car.

When he wakes that morning, he can’t imagine the rough-and-tumble later on, the excitement of it, the anticipation.

NINE

Four days a week, Miriam worked at Books on a Boat, a floating bookshop on the canal, just beyond Broadway Market. The shop, a mix of new and used, had been circling the plughole of bankruptcy for years. Nicholas, its owner, had in recent times been forced to rely on—in his words—the kindness of hipsters (crowdfunding) to keep the place afloat. (This was literally true: they’d recently crowdfunded to repair damage to the boat’s hull when it started to take on water.)

Miriam’s function was, to a large degree, back office—she did the accounts, kept on top of most of the admin, stacked shelves, and kept the place tidy. She was no longer permitted to serve customers (too rude), nor was she allowed to write the shelf talkers—the little blurbs where bookshop staff gave their views on the latest releases (too brutal). Plus, she was off-putting. Nicholas never said so, but he didn’t need to. Miriam knew very well that she was not an appealing person to look at, that she did not draw people to her, that whatever the opposite of magnetism was, she had it in spades. Shewas conscious of these things and was prepared to face them. Why not, after all? What would be the alternative? There was little point in pretending that things were other than they were, thatshewas other than what she was.

Wednesdays, Nicholas went to see his therapist, so Miriam opened up the shop. Always on time, never late, not by a minute; she couldn’t afford to be. This morning, she ducked under the Cat and Mutton Bridge at exactly quarter to nine and so was surprised to see that, already, there was a customer standing outside the shop, hands cupped around his face, trying to peer through a window. A tourist, she thought, and then the man stepped back and looked her way and Miriam froze, adrenaline spiking. Theo Myerson.

Recovering, she reminded herself: this worm was turning. She took a deep breath, drew herself up to her full five feet two inches, and marched confidently toward him. “Can I help you?” she called out.

His face darkening, he hopped off the boat and came to meet her. “You can, actually,” he said.

As luck would have it, there was a momentary lull in foot traffic and the pair found themselves alone on the path. The bridge behind her, the boat before, Theo Myerson was in her way. “We’re not open yet,” she said, and she stepped out, toward the water, trying to edge past him. “We open at nine. You’ll have to come back.”

Myerson shifted in the same direction, blocking her path once more. “I’m not here to browse,” he said. “I’m here to warn you to stay out of my business. To leave my family alone.”

Miriam shoved her trembling hands into her pockets. “I haven’t been anywhere near your family,” she said. “Unless... do you mean your nephew?” She looked him dead in the eye. “Horrible business.” Retrieving the bookshop key from her bag, she elbowed her way past him at last. “I’m a witness, did they tell you that? Thepolice came to see me, asked me a whole lot of questions, and I answered them.”

She turned to look at Theo, a tight smile on her face. “Would you have had me do otherwise? I tell you what”—she reached into her handbag and took out her mobile phone—“shall I give them a ring? I have the detective’s number in my phone; he said I should call if I remembered anything, or if I noticed anything untoward. Shall I ring him now, shall I tell him that you’ve come here to see me?” Miriam watched the consternation pass over his face like a shadow, and the rush of pleasure she felt was intense and quite unexpected. “Mr. Myerson?”

So this, Miriam thought to herself, is what power feels like.

When Miriam got home from work that evening, before she’d even made herself a cup of tea or washed her hands, she took her wooden box, the one in which she kept her trinkets, from the shelf above the wood burner and placed it on her kitchen table. She opened it up and sorted through its contents, a ritual she engaged in from time to time to soothe her anxiety, a way of calming herself, ordering her thoughts, focusing on what it really was that was important to her.

She was an odd fish and she knew it; she knew what she was and she knew how people saw her. People looked at Miriam and they saw a fat, middle-aged woman with no money and no husband and no power. They saw an outsider, living in a houseboat, clothes from the charity shop, cutting her own hair. Some people looked at her and dismissed her, some people looked at her and thought they could take whatever they liked, imagined she was powerless and couldn’t do a thing about it.

From the box in front of her, Miriam took out a piece of paper,a sheet of A4, folded in half and into quarters; she unfolded it, spread it out in front of her. She ran the heel of her hand over the letterhead, she read the words again, words she had read so often she felt she might be able to recite them, or at least the most offensive parts of them, by heart.

Dear Mrs. Lewis,

I write as in-house counsel for Harris Mackey, Theo Myerson’s publishers, in response to your letter of February 4. I write on behalf of both the company and Mr. Myerson, who has approved the contents of this letter. We wish to make it clear from the outset that Mr. Myerson completely denies the allegations of copyright infringement made in your letter; your claim is entirely without merit.

Your claim thatThe One Who Got Away,the novel penned by Mr. Myerson and published under the pseudonym “Caroline MacFarlane,” copies “themes and significant portions of the plot” of your memoir is flawed for a number of reasons.

In order to establish a valid copyright infringement claim, there needs to be a causal connection between the claimant’s work and the allegedly infringing work; you must demonstrate that your memoir was used by Mr. Myerson in writingThe One Who Got Away.

Mr. Myerson acknowledges that you asked him to read your manuscript and, despite his extremely busy schedule and considerable demands on his time, he agreed to do so. As Mr. Myerson explained to you when you went to his house on December 2, he placed the manuscript into his luggage when he flew to Buenos Aires for a literary festival; unfortunately, his luggage was lost by British Airways and was not recovered. Mr. Myerson was therefore unable to read your manuscript.

The similarities you claim betweenThe One Who Got Awayand your own memoir are nothing more than generic themes and ideas...

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