The Girl on Paper Read online

  ‘It’s the blood-sugar level that’s out, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Mortimer agreed. ‘We’re looking at a severe form of hypoglycaemia, to an unheard of degree.’

  ‘How can it be “unheard of”?’ Billie asked anxiously.

  ‘Hypoglycaemia occurs when the level of sugar in the blood is too low,’ the doctor explained in simple terms. ‘When the brain is unable to obtain sufficient amounts of glucose, it leads to dizzy spells and fatigue. But your glucose level is off the scale.’

  ‘Which means what?’

  ‘Which means that while I’m talking to you right now, you should in fact be dead, or at least in a deep coma.’

  Milo and I spoke in unison. ‘That can’t be right!’

  Philipson shook his head. ‘We’ve repeated the tests three times. It’s incomprehensible, and yet there’s something even more mysterious going on here.’

  He took the lid off his pen again and held it in mid-air.

  ‘Last night, one of my interns had the idea of doing a spectrograph. It’s a technique which allows you to identify molecules by mass and to characterise their chemical stru—’

  I cut him off. ‘Could you just get to the point?’

  ‘It showed the presence of abnormal carbohydrates. To be clear, you have cellulose in your blood.’

  He wrote the word ‘cellulose’ on his board.

  ‘As you are no doubt aware,’ he went on, ‘cellulose is the main component of wood. Cotton and paper also contain a substantial amount of it.’

  I couldn’t see where he was going with all this. It became clearer when he asked us a question.

  ‘Imagine you swallowed a bunch of cotton swabs. What do you think would happen?’

  ‘Not much,’ said Milo. ‘They’d pass right through you when you did a number two.’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed Philipson. ‘Cellulose is indigestible to humans. It’s what marks us out from herbivores like cows and goats.’

  ‘So if I understand this right,’ said Billie, ‘the human body doesn’t normally contain cellulose, and so—’

  ‘And so,’ the doctor finished her sentence, ‘your biological composition is not consistent with that of a human being. It’s as though a part of you were becoming “vegetal”.’

  *

  There was a long silence, as though Philipson himself were struggling to accept the conclusions of his tests.

  There was still one more piece of paper in his folder: the results of the analysis of the girl’s white hair.

  ‘Your hair contains a very high concentration of sodium dithionite and hydrogen peroxide, a substance naturally secreted by the human body. When we get old, it’s hydrogen peroxide that causes our hair to go white, by inhibiting the synthesis of the pigments that give it its colour. But this is usually a very gradual process; I’ve never seen a girl of twenty-six whose hair turned white overnight before.’

  ‘Is it permanent?’ asked Billie.

  ‘Um,’ mumbled Mortimer, ‘colour can sometimes be partially regained when certain diseases are cured or aggressive treatments are stopped, but I’m afraid that’s only happened in a few isolated cases.’

  He gave Billie a look of genuine compassion before admitting, ‘Your condition falls well outside the bounds of my expertise and those of this little clinic. We’ll keep you under observation here today, but I can’t recommend strongly enough that you be taken back home.’

  *

  An hour later

  The three of us remained in the room. Having wept until she had no more tears to cry, Billie had eventually fallen asleep. Slumped on a chair, Milo was polishing off the meal tray that Billie hadn’t touched, all the while keeping his eye on the board the doctor had left behind:

  COLOUR PIGMENTS

  SOLVENT ADDITIVES

  ANAEMIA

  CELLULOSE

  HYDROGEN PEROXIDE

  SODIUM DITHIONITE

  ‘I think I might have something,’ he said, leaping to his feet. He took up position in front of the board, grabbed hold of the felt pen and put a curly bracket around the first two lines.

  ‘This greasy, sticky ink stuff that your girlfriend threw up, that’s what goes on printing presses, like the ones they use for your books.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘And cellulose, it’s the main ingredient of wood, right? And wood’s used to make—’

  ‘Er, furniture?’

  ‘Paper pulp,’ he corrected me, fleshing out Dr Philipson’s notes. ‘As for the hydrogen peroxide and sodium dithionite, well, both of those are used to bleach—’

  ‘Paper, right?’

  After every answer, he turned the board to me:

  COLOUR PIGMENTS > INK

  SOLVENT ADDITIVES

  ANAEMIA > PAPER

  CELLULOSE

  HYDROGEN PEROXIDE > BLEACHING AGENTS

  SODIUM DITHIONITE

  ‘I didn’t believe it at first, Tom, the whole story of the heroine falling out of the book, but the facts are staring us right in the face. Your girlfriend is turning back into a character on paper.’

  He stood staring into space for a moment, then finished his scribblings:

  COLOUR PIGMENTS > INK

  SOLVENT ADDITIVES

  ANAEMIA > PAPER BOOK!!!

  CELLULOS

  HYDROGEN PEROXIDE > BLEACHING AGENTS

  SODIUM DITHIONITE

  ‘The fictional world is taking back what it rightfully owns,’ he concluded.

  He was wandering around the room, waving his arms about wildly. I’d never seen him so worked up.

  ‘Calm down!’ I urged him. ‘What exactly are you trying to say?’

  ‘It’s obvious, Tom. If Billie is a fictional character, there’s just no way she can thrive in the real world!’

  ‘Like a fish out of water…’

  ‘Exactly! Think of the films we watched when we were kids. Why does ET get ill?’

  ‘Because he needs to get back to his planet.’

  ‘Why can’t the mermaid in Splash stay on dry land, and the guy live underwater? Because every creature is different and can’t just adapt to every environment.’

  His argument held water, with just one exception.

  ‘I’ve just spent three days with Billie and she was a total riot. Real life seemed to suit her pretty damn well. So how come she went downhill so fast?’

  ‘It’s true, that doesn’t make a lot of sense,’ he admitted. Milo liked things to be logical and rational. He sat back down, frowning, and crossed his legs before carrying on with his train of thought.

  ‘We have to think of the “doorway in”,’ he muttered, ‘the hole the fictional character came through to wind up in our reality.’

  ‘How many times do I have to tell you? Billie “fell from a line, in the middle of an unfinished sentence”,’ I explained, using the very same words she had spoken when we first met.

  ‘Ah, of course! The hundred thousand books with half the pages left blank. That’s it, that’s the “doorway in”. Speaking of which, I’d better check that they’ve all been—’

  He stopped halfway through the sentence, his mouth hanging open, before pouncing on his cell phone. I saw him scroll through dozens of emails before finding the one he was looking for.

  ‘What time did Billie’s symptoms start?’ he asked without lifting his eyes from the screen.

  ‘I’d say some time around midnight, when I went back to the room.’

  ‘So that would be 2 a.m., New York time, right?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Then I know what set it all off,’ he declared, handing me his iPhone.

  I scanned over the email my publisher had sent Milo.

  From: [email protected]

  Subject: Confirmation of destruction of defective stock

  Date: September 9, 2010 02:03

  To: [email protected]

  Dear Mr Lombardo,

  Please accept this as confirmation of the
destruction by pulping of the entire defective stock of the special edition of the second volume of the Angel Trilogy by Tom Boyd.

  Number of books destroyed: 99,999.

  Operation carried out under official supervision today, between the hours of 8 p.m. and 2 a.m., at the pulping station in the Shepard factory, Brooklyn, NY.

  Kindest regards,

  R. Brown

  ‘Did you see what time the email came through?’

  ‘Yes,’ I nodded, ‘exactly the same time she became ill.’

  ‘Billie is physically linked to the defective copies,’ he hammered out.

  ‘And by getting rid of them, we’re killing her!’

  We were both overexcited and terrified at the implications of what we had discovered. Above all, we felt helpless, faced with a situation that was way beyond us.

  ‘If we do nothing, she’s going to die.’

  ‘But what can we do?’ he asked. ‘They’ve already destroyed all the stock!’

  ‘No, if that were true, she’d already be dead. There’s at least one book left that they didn’t manage to pulp.’

  ‘The copy the publishers sent me and I gave to you!’ he cried. ‘But what did you do with it?’

  I had to rack my brains. I remembered looking at it the night Billie had turned up, soaked to the skin, in my kitchen. Then again the next morning, just before she showed me her tattoo. And then…

  I couldn’t concentrate. Images were flashing through my head. And then… and then… we’d argued and, in my anger, I’d thrown the book into the kitchen trash.

  ‘We’re really in the shit now!’ whistled Milo when I told him where the last copy was. I rubbed my eyes. I had a fever too. It was my sprained ankle, which was becoming unbearably sore; it was the army of Mexicans who had laid into me at the bar near the motel; it was my medication-starved body; that crazy bastard’s surprise right hook; and that unexpected kiss that changed everything.

  My head ached so much I imagined it filled with bubbling lava. Out of the tangle of my thoughts a sudden realisation came to me.

  ‘I need to call my cleaner and make sure she doesn’t throw out the book,’ I told Milo.

  He held out his phone and I managed to get through to Tereza, only to learn that she had put the trash out two days earlier.

  Milo read the look on my face and winced. Where was the book now? Had it wound up in landfill? Was it about to be incinerated or recycled? Might someone have picked it up in the street? We needed to get on its trail, but we knew it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

  One thing was certain: we didn’t have any time to lose.

  Because Billie’s life depended on finding that book.

  27

  Always on my mind

  Loving someone means cherishing their happiness

  Françoise Sagan

  Billie was still asleep. Milo had gone to tell Carole what was going on. We had agreed to meet again in two hours at the hotel library to do some research and settle on a plan of action. Walking through the lobby, I came across Aurore checking out.

  Her hair was artfully messy, with the obligatory celeb sunglasses. Her outfit was a lesson in boho retro chic: mini-dress, biker jacket, high-heeled ankle boots and a vintage travel bag. Most women would have had trouble carrying off the look, but on her it was faultless.

  ‘You’re leaving?’

  ‘I’ve got a concert in Tokyo tomorrow night.’

  ‘At Kioi Hall?’ I asked, surprising even myself at remembering the name of the place she had played when I accompanied her on her tour of Japan.

  Her face lit up. ‘Do you remember that old Plymouth Fury you hired? We had such a hard time finding the concert hall I only got there three minutes before the recital was due to start. I was totally out of breath by the time I ran onstage!’

  ‘Even so, you played really well.’

  ‘And then after the concert we drove for hours to go see the Hells of Beppu, those incredible hot springs!’

  Talking about that night made us both nostalgic. Yes, we’d had moments of happiness together, when we had truly felt carefree – and they weren’t so long ago.

  Aurore broke the silence, charming, but a little embarrassed, to apologise for the way Rafael Barros had behaved. She had tried to call me that night to check I was OK, but I wasn’t in my room. While a bellboy took care of her bags, I briefly explained what had happened to Billie. She listened intently. I knew that her mother had died at the age of thirty-nine from breast cancer that had been discovered too late. This sudden loss had turned her into a bit of a hypochondriac, or at least very mindful of her health and that of her loved ones.

  ‘That sounds very serious. You should take her to see a specialist right away. I can recommend someone if you like.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Professor Jean-Baptiste Clouseau. He’s the best there is, like a French version of Dr House. He’s the top cardiologist in Paris and spends most of his time putting the finishing touches to a completely man-made heart. But he’ll fit you in if you tell him I sent you.’

  ‘Old flame of yours, is he?’

  She rolled her eyes.

  ‘He’s a great lover… of music. He often comes to my concerts when I play in Paris. And, if you meet him, you’ll see he’s no Hugh Laurie to look at. But the man’s a genius.’

  While she was talking, she had turned on her BlackBerry and was looking for the doctor’s number in her phone book.

  ‘I’ll send you his details,’ she said, getting into her car.

  The car door was closed for her and I watched the sedan drive off toward the massive gate at the entrance to the complex. But after about fifty yards the taxi came to a stop in the middle of the road and Aurore came running toward me to snatch a kiss from my lips. Before she left again, she took her MP3 player out of her pocket, put the headphones in my ears and left it with me.

  I had the taste of her tongue on my lips and my head was filled with the music and lyrics she had lined up for me: my favourite Elvis number, which I’d shared with her back when we loved each other enough to play each other songs.

  Maybe I didn’t treat you

  Quite as good as I should have

  Maybe I didn’t love you

  Quite as often as I could have …

  You were always on my mind

  You were always on my mind

  28

  Under pressure

  The reader may be considered the main character in a novel, on a par with the author, since without him, nothing can happen

  Elsa Triolet

  How could a hotel have such a magnificent library?

  Clearly it wasn’t only the clinic that had benefited from the rich sheikh’s generosity. The most striking thing about the place was its old-fashioned rarefied feel. You’d have thought you were in the reading room of a prestigious university. Thousands of beautifully bound tomes filled shelves held up by Corinthian columns. The atmosphere was hushed and intimate, the heavy carved doors, marble busts and antique panelling taking you back several centuries. The only concessions to the modern age were the latest computers built into burr walnut cases.

  I would have loved to work somewhere like this when I was young. There was no study at home. If I couldn’t go to Tereza’s apartment, I would shut myself in the bathroom to do my homework, with a board on my lap for a desk and earplugs to block out the neighbours’ shouting.

  Even the librarian, with her little round glasses, mohair jumper and tartan skirt, seemed to have been teleported in from another universe. When I handed her the list of books I wanted to look at, she confessed I was her first reader of the day.

  ‘Most hotel guests would rather hit the beach than sit down to a bit of Hegel.’

  I smiled as she handed me a pile of books, along with a mug of spiced Mexican hot chocolate.

  I took them over to a seat beside a Coronelli celestial globe next to one of the large windows, so that I could read in natural light. I got straight t
o work.

  *

  The atmosphere was conducive to study. The only thing to disturb the silence was the rustling of pages being turned and the soft sound of my pen gliding over a piece of paper. Several reference books I had dissected in my student days lay open on the table in front of me, including What is Literature? by Jean-Paul Sartre, Umberto Eco’s Lector in fabula and Voltaire’s Dictionnaire philosophique. In the space of two hours, I had written ten pages of notes. I was in my element, surrounded by books, in a world of quiet reflection. I felt like an English teacher again.

  ‘Whoa, it’s like we’re college boys!’ Milo exclaimed, barging into the august room.

  He plonked his bag down on one of the Charleston armchairs and leaned over my shoulder.

  ‘So, have you found anything?’

  ‘I may have a plan of attack, but I’ll need your help.’

  ‘Sure I’ll help.’

  ‘OK, we need to split up,’ I said, putting the lid back on my pen. ‘You go back to Los Angeles and try to track down that last faulty copy. I know it’s mission impossible, but if that book’s destroyed there’s no question: Billie’s going to die.’

  ‘And how about you?’

  ‘I’m going to take Billie to Paris to see the doctor Aurore recommended. Hopefully we can at least slow the illness down. But most of all…’

  I gathered up my notes so I could explain myself as clearly as possible.

  ‘Most of all?’

  ‘It’s vital that I write the third volume of the trilogy, to send Billie back to the imaginary world.’

  Milo frowned.

  ‘I don’t exactly see how writing a book is going to literally send her back to her world.’

  I picked up my notebook and, in the style of Dr Philipson, tried to bring together the key points I had arrived at.