Our Tragic Universe Read Free Page A

on a bus to Mark’s, which would probably be the best thing.’
    ‘How would that work?’
    I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Then you could have walked round to mine and lost your keys and your phone like you said.’
    ‘But why would I have a weekend bag with me?’
    ‘Yeah. I don’t know.’
    ‘There must be a way. Let’s go back to basics. How do you tell a really good story? I mean, in a nutshell.’
    I looked at my watch. Christopher would be wondering where I was.
    ‘Isn’t Bob expecting you?’ I said.
    ‘I need to get this right, or there’ll be no Bob any more.’
    ‘OK. Just keep it simple. Base the story on cause and effect. Have three acts.’
    ‘Three acts?’
    ‘A beginning, a middle and an end. A problem, a climax and a solution. You link them. Put someone on the wrong ship.Then make it sink. Then rescue them. Not literally, obviously. You have to have a problem and make it get worse and then solve it. Unless it’s a tragedy.’
    ‘What if this is a tragedy?’
    ‘Lib …’
    ‘All right. So I was out with you and I lost my keys. That’s bad. Then to make it worse I got gang-raped while I was looking for them, and now I’ve lost my memory and the kidnappers took you away because you were a witness, and only Bess knows where you are, and she’s trying to tell Christopher, but …’
    ‘Too complicated. You need something simpler. You only need to explain the car. The story here is that we went out and you lost your keys, which was a bummer. Then maybe because you lost your keys you lost your car too, which is obviously a bigger bummer. Maybe someone found your keys and stole your car. Who knows? All you know is you lost your keys. The only glitch is you still have your car.’
    Yadda, yadda. I seemed to have become a plot-o-matic machine programmed to churn out this kind of thing. But when I was dispensing advice like this to the more junior Orb Books ghostwriters I always said they should believe in their project and not just follow a set of rules. Then again, if they got lost in the wilderness of originality I gently guided them back to the happy path of formula again.
    ‘OK. So how do me and Bob live happily ever after?’
    I thought about it for a second.
    ‘Well, obviously you’ll have to push your car in the river,’ I said, and laughed.
    Libby sat there for about ten seconds, her hands becoming paler and paler as she gripped the steering wheel. Then she gotout of the car and looked around. The North Embankment still seemed deserted. There were no kids trying to steal boats, no tourists, no other dog-walkers. No men looking for me. Libby made a noise a little like the one B had made before.
    ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘It’s the only thing to do.’
    ‘Lib,’ I said. ‘I was joking.’
    She got back into her car, did a haphazard three-point turn until it was facing the river and, finally, drove it up on the embankment. For a moment it looked as if she was going to drive her car into the river. I stood there, not knowing if she was messing around, not knowing whether to laugh or try to stop her. Then she got out and walked around to the back of the car. Libby was small but as her biceps tightened I realised how strong her arms were. The car moved; she must have left the handbrake off. She pushed it again, and then the front wheels were over the edge of the embankment.
    ‘Lib,’ I said again.
    ‘I must be mad. What am I doing?’ she said.
    ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Come on, don’t do this. It’s going to be very hard to explain.’
    Then she pushed her car into the river and threw the keys in after it.
    ‘I’ll say kids must have done it,’ she said, over the splashing, sucking sound. ‘They must have stolen my keys. Even if it does sound crazy, no one will think I was desperate enough to push my own car in the river, will they? Nothing would motivate me to do something as stupid as that. Holy shit. Thank you, Meg. That was a brilliant idea. I’ll call you