mary sue in london

My profile is no longer accurate

2008-01-18T10:54:00.002Z

My novel is going to be published next year by Jonathan Cape. It's an old school heroes-and-villains romance called The Kilburn Social Club, and the very basic description runs: a medical student inherits a premiership football club she doesn't much want, but her sister really does. The club and its players are wish fulfilment fantasy written by a frustrated sports fan in the same way that West Wing is wish fulfilment fantasy written by a frustrated Democrat. It takes place in an alternate present in which things are recognisable without being identifiable - there are no real people, even in code. It's about how the club is threatened by the world, and whether it can survive, and my publisher described it to the press as 'Forsyte Saga meets Footballer's Wives.' It is aimed at people who hate football as much as at sports fans. As almost all of you know (if you don't, it's because you never emailed me) my name is literally Robert Hudson, which will be the name on the book. I am, as you can imagine, extremely excited by all of this.

AFTER THE END: WHAT? STILL COMING HERE?

2007-11-12T11:53:00.000Z

By which I mean, thank you very much for reading. Those who have indicated an interest, I will keep you posted as to future developments. Stay strong.

Chapter 64: So It's the End

2007-11-09T10:51:00.000Z

‘Thank you, thank you, babe!’ said Victoria Beckham, jumping into David’s arms, wrapping her legs around him and kissing him with wild abandon. He tried desperately to push her off him, partly because he was gay, partly because he hated her, but mostly because he saw where I was moving. She said, ‘Why are you always rejecting me, babe, I know you…’ He finally freed one of his hands, and slapped her face. She crumpled off him in shock and he leapt towards me, but he was too late. I was already standing by the pipe-door gaping into the quasi-black hole. I glanced through it only quickly, but this was long enough for me to be dizzied. It was black in a way that made me understand how little I understood how black black can be. I thought of the dead Teacher, and the dead Rollo, and my destiny. I put my foot on the door’s lip.

‘Wait!’ said David Beckham. He held out his hands, gathered himself and put on his easy smile. ‘We can’t stop you if this is really your decision. You know a tranquilliser will probably send you over the ledge, so we can’t do that. There is no point in diving in without thinking about it, is there?’ Behind him were the bright eyes of Victoria, who had realised her mistake, and of Johnny Depp, David Tennant and Billie Piper, who were shackled to the pipe-doors.

‘Don’t listen, Mary Sue!’ called the red-haired angel. ‘Jump in, Mary Sue! I get it now – Rollo died giving you this chance to save us all!’

‘Really?’ said David Beckham. ‘I thought he died trying to kill me, almost certainly because he thought I was the Master.’

‘Aren’t you?’ I asked, edging another fraction closer to oblivion.

‘If you jump,’ he said gently, ‘we don’t open the Gates, but the Master is still alive. Eventually, however long it takes, there will be another Chosen One. Eventually, we will get another chance. And the next Chosen One might be more easily persuaded of our cause. You, with your irrational hatred of us, might therefore be humanity’s best long-term hope. For us, you jumping might be a good thing, in the long term.’

‘No!’ said Johnny Depp. ‘Don’t do what he says! Everything he says is lies. Or,’ and he gulped through the obvious pain of his shattered arm, desperately thinking aloud, ‘most of everything. Don’t be hasty. Think how he might be lying to you!’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I can’t believe…’

‘Oh!’ gasped Billie Piper. ‘Oh!’ and she looked at me, and then shook her head.

‘What is it?’

‘No. I’m… It’s only that I don’t want you to jump, I’m sure. I can’t bear to lose you again.’

‘But?’

‘I thought, well, this must be wrong but I thought that… I don’t know, but if the Master is, well, we don’t know who he is, but we also don’t know how the Gates of Hell are opened. And Rollo, who only the Teacher knew about, and we only have his word for that, or don’t we? Please tell me if I’m wrong?’ No one said anything. ‘Well, Rollo just went into the void, and he gave you a chance to join him, and maybe THAT’s what the prophecy means by the Chosen One joining the Master?’ She was hanging from her shackles with barely any support from her feet, but she was forcing her head erect so she could look at me. ‘I’m sure it isn’t, but what if it is? Are you sure, do you know that he isn’t the Master? If you say he isn’t, if you KNOW he isn’t, then I believe you, and you must do what is right.’ The effort of speaking brought her next breath out in a sobbing choke, and then she said, ‘I’m very proud of you.’

‘What do you think of that?’ I said to Johnny Depp, and the angels in the cage.

The red-haired angel said, ‘I'm sorry. I don't know. The only thing you can control is going through the door. If you don’t do that, you’re in their hands. There’s nothing anyone of us can do to save you, or stop them. And you know what Victoria will do to you.’

‘That is true,’ said Johnny Depp. The prophecy says you join the Master of your own volition, but if you refuse… There have been many different interpretations of free will over the millennia. A surprising number of them say that if you do something while you are being tortured, you are still acting out of free will because you made the free decision not keep on being tortured.’

‘That’s not very comforting.’

‘I know, Mary Sue. But you asked us, and we are tied up. There’s nothing we can do to help you now except tell you the truth.’

‘I wouldn’t torture you,’ smiled Victoria Beckham, acting as badly as usual. ‘I’d never do that.’

‘You know what real torture is, Victoria,’ I said. ‘In love with a man who hates you, and who is gay.’

‘That’s just media lies!’ she hissed.

‘No it isn’t. I’ve seen him have sex with Matt Damon.’

‘He never did!’ she spat. ‘You’re a filthy liar with a dirty sick mind.’ Her face was contorted, half with anger and half with denial.

‘He loved having sex with Matt Damon. They had both kinds, oral and normal-for-gays.’ And now, at long last, she finally took three enraged steps towards me and away from the pipe doors. I had done it. This was the opening I had been trying to create by taunting her, and it was my last desperate throw of the dice, and I hoped I understood everything I’d seen. My heart started beating even faster, and Victoria took another step towards me, still ranting, ‘It makes me so crazy. If you only knew…’ And that was that for her. Her face froze into a rictus of absolute surprise as David Tennant’s magic glittery sword swept through her tiny neck.

A moment later, I had moved away from the door, and David Tennant had disarmed David Beckham. They pair stood face to face. David Beckham smiled. ‘Tranquillise them both!’ he shouted to the rafters. ‘Quick, do it now!’ But nothing happened.

David Tennant shrugged ruefully. ‘Rollo and I dealt with them a while ago,’ he said. 'Are you alright, Mary Sue?’ I was gasping with relief. When Rollo had told me to move forward rather than slumbering in the tents of my fathers, and held a knife to my neck, and I had STILL trusted him, I had finally understood why. When, under the guise of pummelling David Tennant in a gesture of futile fury against a traitor, I had noticed him surreptitiously loosing David Tennant’s shackles, I’d realised for certain that he was going to sacrifice himself for me, and what that meant. David Tennant turned to David Beckham and watched David Beckham struggling to catch up. Eventually he did so, and David Tennant nodded. ‘Yup,’ he said. ‘Rollo was Mary Sue’s father. He’s always watched over her.’

‘But you!’ he said. ‘You and her!’ he added, gesturing to Billie Piper.

‘Oh that!’ said David Tennant casually. ‘That was just acting.’

‘But…’

Billie Piper was sobbing with relief. ‘Oh my God! Thank God! Thank you, Mary Sue, thank you. Let me go and we can…’

‘I rather think not,’ said David Tennant, and let the silence build before adding, ‘Master.’

‘What?!’ said Billie Piper. ‘It’s not true! It’s not true, Mary Sue! He’s the Master. He’s trying to trick you!’

David Tennant looked her straight in the eyes and said, ‘When Billie Piper, the real Billie, Mary Sue’s mother, was sixteen, the Teacher took Rollo and me to meet with her.’

‘No!' said Billie. 'The Teacher never met me. She never let me see her. I never even knew she was a woman!’

‘We told Billie that the Master was desperate to find her. We had discovered that the Master wanted to take over her identity, however much surgery that required, as a way of getting close to the Teacher, to Mary Sue and to Mary Sue’s father. We told her we could keep her identity secret if she wanted. But, if she was prepared to sacrifice herself, to let herself be taken, then we would always know where the Master was. We could control what the Master knew. And so it came to pass. For a decade, I have played the part of your father while the Master has pretended to be your mother. Rollo has protected you many times, and then today he sacrificed himself for you, and for this world we love, just like your mother, your unbelievably brave, real mother, sacrificed herself a decade ago. And now, all you have to do is press the button and she goes into the vortex.’

‘No!’ said Billie desperately. ‘You can’t possibly believe this! I’m your mother! If anyone is the Master here, it’s David Tennant. He was a demon, and he seduced me! Who would the Master trust to do that? No one, so it must have been the Master himself!’

‘The Teacher was ahead of you,’ said David Tennant. ‘She always has been. Why did you think this would be any different?’

‘They’re trying to make you kill me for no reason!’ shrieked Billie Piper. ‘The Teacher was never ahead of the Master, she was a stupid suicidal lunatic, and here is the proof, me, your poor mother, strung up like a chicken!’ She wasn’t sagging any more. She was straining against the shackles. She saw me take this in and said, ‘No way! This is the strength that comes from being on the edge of death. You cannot be misled by this man. This evil man. If you do this, the world ends.’

Johnny Depp said, ‘If David Tennant is the Master, then where is David Beckham?’ He was gone. Miss Smallbone, and David Tennant, and Rollo and Victoria and probably all the rest of them, could make use of any distraction to appear or disappear. I suppose it’s a very useful skill you can pick up if you have millennia to practice it in. David Tennant instantly formed a human shield between me and the direction David Beckham had presumably vanished into. He said, ‘He won’t try anything, he'll just run. In the end, Beckham's the kind of wordy coward who calls it pragmatism.'

'Then why are you...'

'Better safe than sorry, Mary Sue.’

And I thought of Sir Conn, who said he trusted me. And of the poor, brave Teacher, who said she trusted me. And of Rollo, who said he trusted me. And they had all three also said I would have to trust myself in the end. And I thought of the things I had seen, of who was dead and how they died, and which ones had died to save me. I thought of funny Jeremy Clarkson and valorous Vanessa Paradis, and the others I didn’t have time to know. And I felt David Tennant, his back against my back, who wasn't my father any more, and I looked into the eyes of Billie Piper, and I didn’t see my mother, so I pressed the button, sent her into oblivion, and the world didn’t end.

Chapter 63: The World is Advancing

2007-11-08T09:31:00.000Z

Rollo’s left arm was over my shoulder and wrapped across my heart, and I could feel his calm steady breathing against my back. Absurdly, my body felt as if it was being protected rather than threatened. I had looked into Rollo’s eyes and, trusting myself to know what I saw, I had trusted him absolutely. But his knife was at my throat! How could I still feel this trust? And then, in a flash of realisation, I understood. I trusted Rollo more than I trusted myself, because I knew he would do the right thing, whatever the cost, whatever he himself wanted, because it was right, and sometimes that would mean he could be strong when other people were weak.

I am writing this, of course, but how do you know when? Or what I am now? Or who?
***

‘Thank God you’re there, whoever you really are,’ said the red-haired angel, her palms white against the transparent wall of her cage. ‘I’m sorry, Mary Sue, but we’ve lost. It’s all we can do.’

‘There’s always hope,’ said Rollo.

‘YOU are the hope,’ said the angel. ‘You’re the insurance policy. Don’t worry about us, just kill her and run.’

‘No!’ shouted Johnny Depp. ‘Don’t kill her! The Teacher never told me to kill her, that was one of Beckham’s lies. Mary Sue hasn’t agreed to join them!’

‘That’s true,’ said Billie Piper, growing paler with every passing moment, as if all the blood was being drained out of her, ragged in my father’s arms. ‘She hasn’t joined them. Don’t kill her. I… All I want is you not to kill my little girl. But I am lost and gone, and was a long time ago. I…’ and her head drooped, too heavy for her neck.

‘Do you want me to deal with him?’ said Victoria Beckham.

‘Don’t be a moron,’ said David Beckham.

‘You can be so hurtful sometimes, even though I know you don’t mean it.’

‘Shut up, Victoria. You couldn’t touch him without killing her. We couldn’t even tranquillise him fast enough.’ He looked at Rollo, hands on hips. ‘It seems we are at an impasse, whoever you are, Rollo is it?, unless you really do want to murder the Chosen One. But I don’t think that’s it. If you did, she’d be dead by now. You gain nothing by playing for time. Surely you realise that you’re never getting out of here alive?’

‘I don’t know. I’m pretty good.’

‘Big words, Rollo, but what is it that you want?’

‘There’s more to life than staying alive,’ said Rollo past my ear as he started to move forward, pushing me in front of him like a shield. ‘Don’t do anything stupid. And I want you to shackle Tennant and Piper.’

‘But…’

‘This isn’t a negotiation. The Teacher was the Teacher because she didn’t take risks, but she grew tired, and the mantle passed to me.’ The two grey-jacketed goons tied up David and Billie, and the Rollo said, ‘I presume you have a tranquilliser gun yourself?’ David Beckham nodded. ‘Shoot both the henchmen.’ He did. ‘Now your wife.’ Victoria crumpled with a dart in her chest. All the time, we were slowly edging towards them.

‘Stop it!’ cried the red-haired angel. ‘What are you trying to do? Kill her! It’s all there is!’

‘No, Red,’ said Johnny Depp. ‘The Teacher didn’t want her dead. The Teacher wanted her to kill the Master, because this was our chance. With no Master, the Gates to Hell will NEVER be opened. It’s a prize worth winning.’

‘You’re a lunatic!’ spat the red-haired angel. ‘You’ve all gone mad! This is a war! We don’t even know who the Master is. We do know the Teacher was deceived. We know that Mary Sue can’t kill the Master anyway unless her parents sacrifice themselves, which they haven’t done. I don’t like it any more than you do, but we’ve lost this one. All we can hope is that tomorrow will not be worse than today, and you can make that happen. The world is fine, and you can keep it fine. Or you can make a mistake, and everything is destroyed. That’s all the options you have, so what are you doing, who are you?’ She was no longer looking at Rollo, she was looking at me. ‘Think about what I’m saying, Mary Sue. Think about it! The only sane thing he can do is kill you, but if he doesn’t kill you, he is either insane, or he isn’t who he said he is. Don’t join them, whatever they say. I’m begging you this: keep tomorrow the same as today!’

‘Tomorrow will not be the same as today,’ said Rollo softly. ‘That’s already gone. The world knows who we are. And the Teacher is gone.’

David Beckham said, ‘Yes! That’s the hard truth, Mary Sue. The world knows us and we are different. They will envy and fear us, you must be able to see that? We will be hunted. We will not be suffered to live. We will be thrown, one by one, into this machine. It will be a genocide.’
‘And nothing so ghastly will happen to humanity if she falls for your lies, and we regain the powers we never had the strength of will to control?’ said Rollo.

‘Of course not,’ said David Beckham. ‘I’ve already made that clear. Once we are returned to our power, what incentive will there be? It would be like mankind conducting a genocide against cattle.’

‘There it is, exactly,’ said Rollo, shaking his head. ‘You will think of them as cattle. You do not seek a relationship of equals, or of mutual progress, or compassion. Those are the things we desire, that we owe this world which has become our home.’

‘This world is not our “home” and we owe it nothing, but I assure you that we will not be tyrannical overlords. We will simply be beyond this petty debate, and deep down you know it, Rollo, and so do you, Mary Sue. Your parents have already accepted the inevitable. And the prophecy is very clear. You join the Master, and the Gates of Hell open.’

‘Unless…’ began Rollo, and we were now ten feet from David Beckham.

‘No,’ said David Beckham. ‘There is no “unless”. There has been no parental sacrifice. Your Teacher was wrong, and the Master was right.’

‘The Teacher was right about one thing,’ said Rollo, gripping more tightly. ‘We must always be ready to move on, to leave things behind us. Slumber not in the tents of your fathers, Mary Sue, for the world is advancing.’ And he looked at me again, said that he loved me, and smiled as if he expected me to understand, and I did at last, and I knew why he needed to do what he was going to do. I nodded to him.

‘Where is the Master?’ I said to David Beckham. ‘If I have to join the Master, then surely I have to know who…’ Rollo swung me behind him and rolled across the floor past the comatose demon guards, sweeping his knife across their throats as he did so. He had almost reached a stunned and scrambling David Beckham when his legs were swept from under him by a bony foot in strappy heels.

‘Ha!’ said Victoria Beckham. ‘Because my David loves me, he shot me in the breast he knows is fake, so I have been pretending to be asleep. We planned this in advance because we are INTIMATE. And now, you will die.’ Rollo fought well, but everywhere he moved, Victoria was faster and more brutal. ‘The Chosen One has to join us, and she will. It’s been explained that it must be voluntary, but I can show her things that will help make her volunteer. You should have killed her when you had the chance. You are weak, like all the angels.’ Rollo stumbled sideways and her next kick landed him on the floor next to David Tennant and Billie Piper. Rollo struggled to his feet, gripping onto David Tennant’s shackled body. Rollo knew he had lost his fight, and he stared at David Tennant, who smiled back, raised his eyebrow and shrugged. In a pathetic gesture, Victoria standing behind him and smirking, Rollo pummelled the helpless David Tennant, landing five thudding blows with his raw right fist. Then he swung himself hopelessly back to face Victoria Beckham, and in the act of swinging, stumbled towards the door through which the Teacher had recently be sent to her awful final death. Victoria kicked out, but for once he was too fast for her, Instead of avoiding her foot, he clung to it as it crashed into his side, and as she strove to free herself, he fumbled at the door’s catch, looked at me once more, and wrenched himself backwards towards the void, Victoria with him. But at the very final moment, David Beckham kicked Rollo’s hands and he let go of Victoria. Rollo teetered one final time, looked at me, and toppled backwards, the echo of his agony as his self was stripped apart joining Miss Smallbone’s in the giant room’s eerie silence.

Chapter 63: The World is Advancing (teaser)

2007-11-07T22:28:00.000Z

Chapter 62: True Love Knows No Reason (Part 2)

2007-11-07T09:28:00.000Z

The Teacher was shackled to the pipe containing the quasi-black hole, one green button from oblivion. When she gave herself up, Johnny Depp shouted, ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it!’ which he would have had to do whether or not he was a traitor, to keep up the pretence. The other angels had pleaded. The red-haired angel cried, ‘Johnny’s a soldier, Teacher. We’re soldiers. We die for you, you don’t die for us. You’re too important.’ By the end of this, as the two large grey-suited men grabbed hold of Miss Smallbone, who looked lost and alone, the red-haired angels voice was despair.

‘But this is the end,’ the Teacher smiled. ‘No one lives forever, not even… Not even me. I’m proud of you. I’m proud of you especially, Mary Sue. Remember: this is the end, but that doesn’t mean we’ve lost, not while David is still out there. I will soon be gone, but I have trained my replacement well. I’m so tired, and this way, if… If we do not lose, David Beckham, then Johnny will survive to see Vanessa again, and they deserve that. And, after the things I have done, I deserve to… I am not proud of all the things I have done. Mary Sue will explain.’ She shook her head, and looked defiantly around her, her voice returning to its natural timbre – simple and utterly commanding. Even though she was cuffed immobile, all of the demons took a half step back and their hands went to their guns. ‘I am confident that Mary Sue will have the chance to explain what I have done, and I hope you will understand, and know that I am sorry. Remember this for then: I am doing this now because…’ She looked again at Johnny Depp. ‘Partly it is because it is the least I owe you, and partly it is because I love you, and I have always loved you.’

Johnny Depp’s eyes suddenly flickered in recognition. ‘You! It’s… I can’t believe it. You survived our expulsion to earth! It was you all this time! I presumed you had…’

‘It was better that way. I’m sorry.’ And she turned her face away from him.

‘Well,’ said David Beckham, ‘that was all very touching. And now I have a little surprise for everyone. You all see how your precious Teacher has given herself up for Johnny Depp, believing he is not a spy? I know, because I know these things, that deep down, you fear that she has made a terrible, catastrophic, final mistake. Well, let me put your mutual minds at rest. Johnny Depp is not our spy.’

‘Who is?’ said the red-haired girl.

‘I am,’ said David Tennant stepping onto a platform above us. ‘I am sorry, Teacher.’

I felt everything falling away. ‘Yes, indeed,' said David Beckham. 'Your precious, deceitful little David Tennant has led the other "rescue party" into its appointed trap. I wouldn’t want you to die thinking there was any hope. Teacher, I cannot understand why the Master was so worried about you.’

‘You’ll learn,’ said Miss Smallbone, quietly and impossibly sad. ‘In the very end, everyone learns. I’m ready.’

‘I doubt that very much. Now let’s see if this black hole works.’ David Beckham pressed the button, and Miss Smallbone swung into the pipe. Her short scream filled the room for a long time, more horrible than anything I and possibly begin to describe, as if someone was scraping a nail down a blackboard in every atom of my body. When I think of that moment, I can still hear and feel the echoes of it. David Beckham, trying to pretend he wasn’t shaken, held a device to the side of the pipe, and said, ‘It works.’
***

David Tennant climbed down the ladder into the main hall. He moved slowly, reluctantly, not as if he’d done something wrong, but as if he were embarrassed. He looked at me, and said, ‘I do love you, Mary Sue. The Teacher didn’t understand. This will be the best thing, in the end.’ I knew other things were happening and being said, but that was all I heard clearly, because my mind was almost filled with him, with wanting to trust him. Dimly I was aware of the vicious fury of the caged angels, and David Beckham’s sardonic replies that there was no help coming, that all their friends were sleeping, and that David Tennant was returning to his real people, the demons he had fought alongside for long millennia, and who he had never really turned away from. Then David Tennant said, ‘No, David Beckham. I turned away from you. I will not have my love for Guinevere belittled. I do love your mother, Mary Sue.’

‘Then why?’ I said.

‘Because I have her,’ said Victoria Beckham, dragging a battered and bleeding Billie Piper onto the platform alongside her husband. It looked as if she was using every piece of her strength simply to breath. ‘Pathetic creature that she is. And David Tennant, like a good dog, knows his master. Don’t you boy.’

‘His master!’ I said. ‘Are you the Master?’

David Beckham guffawed instinctively, and then said, ‘Sorry, Victoria, but that was funny. I mean, you are an idiot.’

‘I know you’re joking, babe,’ said Victoria, ‘but you can be really hurtful sometimes.’
David Tennant was in the middle of the hall. When Billie Piper managed to lift her head to see what was going on, she said, ‘Oh God, no David, no, don’t do it. Don’t do it for me! You should have left me! What have you done?’

‘It’s too late,’ David said rushing to her.

‘No!’ she said, trying to resist him. Then. ‘No, David!’ But her voice was not as emphatic as it might have been, and now she was holding her hands to him, trembling with the need to touch him. They looked into each others’ eyes in the way that should have given the game away long ago, but maybe cameras can’t capture it, in the final analysis, and anyway, there are none so blind as they that cannot see. I didn’t for one second feel like a daughter witnessing her parents in a moment of joy. I felt many other things, which included sadness, anger, rage and jealousy. I think I can be forgiven for having been conflicted. Then David Tennant turned and said to me, and the other angels, all the while keeping hold of my mother’s hand. ‘It’s over,’ he said. ‘They’ve won. Or, I mean, WE’ve won, our RACE has won. But that doesn’t mean the end of all you hold dear. It just means something new is starting. They haven’t killed you because they know that you will be powerful in the new world, the world after the Gate opens. They don’t expect you to agree with them then, they are not morally facile, and they know that life is always conflict, but the time has come for our restoration.’ He seemed to be speaking mostly to me. ‘The prophecy says that for you to kill the Master, your mother and I must sacrifice ourselves for you, Mary Sue, and we haven’t. You WILL join the Master, and it will not be the catastrophe you have been told. Great power can do great good. But you have to agree willingly. That is why you are not caged. That is why everyone is talking to you. We will not use coercion.’ Billie Piper next to him was shaking her head that this was wrong, wrong, wrong, but she couldn’t let him go, and her flank leant towards his. When their hips touched, David Tennant’s eyes closed momentarily, as if his heart had been run though with an invisible sword. His face had a maniacal gleam throughout this speech, a desperate air, as if he knew I wasn’t convinced. I was trying to persuade myself that this was shame at what he had done, but the gleam might just have been the tears in my eyes.

‘What will happen to everyone?’ I said weakly. ‘To us, I mean, to human people?’

‘You will have great influence, Mary Sue,’ he said. ‘You are the Chosen One. All you have to do is to join us, freely.’

‘Mother?’ I asked.

Billie Piper crumpled then and David Tennant had to hold her up. She looked up and said, ‘I don’t know.’ She looked at David and added, ‘They said I would die soon unless you… No. Don’t do it, my daughter, who I love.’ Her knees went again, and she hung in David’s arms, and said, ‘I don’t know anything any more.’

‘We cannot coerce you,’ David repeated. I thought there was almost a note of desperation creeping into his voice.

‘I can, though,’ said Rollo Price, stepping suddenly out of the darkness, faster than anyone could react, and resting a cold blade against my hot neck.

Chapter 61: True Love Knows No Reason (Part 1)

2007-11-06T09:46:00.000Z

I’d been certain we were being followed, and now I knew who by. Miss Smallbone stood still and quiet, looking at David Beckham, who was trying to pretend he wasn’t disconcerted by her sudden appearance and struggling to remember where he knew her from. ‘Who are you?’ said the red-haired girl, her foot shifting on Johnny Depp’s neck. ‘They were waiting for us. Only Johnny knew enough about our plans to tell him enough in advance.’

‘You have to believe her!’ I said.

‘What? Why, who is she?’ demanded the red-haired girl and her fellow angels. I wanted to tell her that Miss Smallbone was the Teacher, who they worshipped and who had saved their lives and millions of others many times over, and that whatever she said was to be trusted, but I also knew that Miss Smallbone was crazy with love for Johnny Depp, which might have forced her into the terrible mistake of coming into the open too early, just to save him, and if she had made that mistake then I wasn’t going to compound it by revealing her super-secret true identity, because that would be an inevitable total disaster.

‘I’m the Teacher,’ said Miss Smallbone.

There was a disbelieving moment, and four thocks as a collection of tranquilliser darts peppered the ground near her feet, bouncing off the transparent neopropylene walls of the cage. ‘Mary Sue knows who I am, and so do you, deep down, Mr Beckham. Who else would be standing so precisely out of the firing lines of your clumsily concealed sharpshooters, and who else would be aware that… Wait a moment.’ In a single, flowing movement, she whipped a pistol from under her jacket, stepped to the right, crouched and shot into the darkness over my shoulder. A body plummeted sixty feet to the ground. ‘Pardon me, he was moving.’

‘She IS the Teacher,’ I said. The red-haired girl began to lift her foot. ‘She saved me when I was in Los Angeles.’

‘You were one of the maids at Harrison Ford’s mansion!’ said David Beckham, his face clearing. ‘I knew I’d seen you before. You’re good. I wonder if you wouldn’t mind telling me…’

‘Nice try, Mr Beckham,’ said Miss Smallbone. She tumbled to her left, shot again, and another body fell from the shadows. Everyone was looking at it as it tumbled, and by the time they turned back to Miss Smallbone, she was gone.
***

‘I cannot believe the Teacher’s a woman,’ said Johnny Depp, rubbing his neck.

‘Why?’ said the red-haired angel.

‘Don’t be angry with me, Red. You were just as surprised as I was.’

‘Fascinating as this is, to be sure,’ said David Beckham, ‘I have things to do. Johnny, the fact that you managed to fool the Teacher as well is interesting to me.’

‘Nice try, Mr Beckham,’ I said. ‘They don’t believe you now.’

‘Nice try, Miss Park,’ he replied smoothly. ‘You hate the thought your precious Teacher might have been wrong, but everyone makes mistakes, even the Teacher. I really do think I want Depp out of there unhurt, so stand away from him.’ One of the angels stepped in front of Johnny and immediately collapsed with a little red dart in his neck. ‘This will be much easier if you cooperate, don’t you think? Stand away from the door.’ David Beckham came to the door as if I was nothing to be afraid of, and opened it. At first Johnny stayed with the others. David nodded and another angel fell. ‘The next time,’ he said, ‘it won’t be a tranquilliser.’ Johnny emerged. David was careful to remain at a distance from him, ignoring me again as he ordered Depp over to the largest of the pipes. A row of crude but effective looking shackles had been freshly welded along the pipe’s side. The shackles were each attached to sort of doors which looked as if they opened into the pipe. Two huge, silent, grey-suited men emerged to bind Depp to one of the doors. David Beckham said something to him, and he replied furiously, and they hissed an angry exchange, but they were too far for us to catch what they were saying. It ended when David Beckham took a foot-long metal stanchion from the floor and swung it into Johnny Depp’s side with a sickening thud. Then he brought it down on Depp’s forearm, which cracked like a dry branch and hung at an appalling angle. David Beckham looked at us with a horrifying light in his face that I hadn’t seen before, and he said, ‘Well, do you know, I think I’ve had an idea.’

‘Don’t listen to him,’ pleaded Johnny, his voice coming in ragged gasps. ‘Don’t listen to anything he says.’

‘Since I KNOW Depp is a traitor, and since the Teacher is so blind to it that she foolishly revealed herself – and a certain kudos attaches for playing on our sexist assumptions that you were a man, Teacher – I can’t help but think she has been blinded by Depp in the same way that some of you, Mary Sue for one,’ and here David Beckham smirked coldly, ‘have always been. It’s pathetic. I myself am immune to love, now.’ He patted the huge pipe. ‘In here, top scientists controlled by us have produced a stable entity extremely like a black hole. Since the only way of killing demons or angels permanently is to put us in a black hole or cut off their heads with your father’s magic sword, this is a very useful thing, don’t you think? But we really do have to test it. We THINK it will kill by ripping the brain apart strand by strand in a way that is objectively fairly instantaneous but will feel like a subjective eternity of slow pain. But who knows? We should certainly test it, and since no one likes a traitor, maybe we will use Johnny. Unless anyone else wants to step forward. Anyone?’ He moved to a control panel. ‘Well then,’ he said, ‘all I have to do is press this big green button, and…’

‘No!’ said Miss Smallbone, standing next to me again. ‘Don’t do it. You can have me.’

Chapter 60: Best Laid Plans

2007-11-05T10:02:00.000Z

Before David Beckham had finished his smug little speech, the small red-haired angel was firing at him and the bullets were spattering back off a transparent wall. ‘Bulletproof neopropylene,’ he said. ‘I’m not a complete idiot. Now, as you can imagine, you are covered by a variety of my men who are out of your sight but who will kill you as soon as I ask them to, so please put down your weapons.’ One of the other angels took another shot at the clear plastic wall and crumpled instantly, riddled with bullets. That left eight of us. ‘Please don’t do that again,’ said David Beckham. ‘Honestly, we’d rather not kill you.’

‘Why?’

‘We’re not barbarians, Miss Park, whatever your so-called-friends have tried to make you believe. We do not enjoy killing, and we do not, or most of us do not, think if humans as irrelevant or worthless. All we wish is to return, after long millions of years, to our birthright. If you remembered seeing, and walking, but you had been paralysed and blinded for fifty years, would you not yearn for you sight and your legs? Is it not natural? It would not mean you hate the blind. Now, put down your weapons.’

‘What if we refuse?’

‘We will shoot you all,' and here he raised his voice to speak to his unseen companions, 'WITH TRANQUILLISERS.’

‘But…’

David Beckham nodded, a dull shot barked, and another angel fell, this time with less in the way of sickening finality. ‘I really do not want to do it,’ he said. ‘It’s messy, undignified and unnecessary. So, please?’ We put down our guns. ‘Knives too, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Especially you, Red. Now walk away from them, and round there, and towards me, and you see that door in the neopolypropylene, yes there, come through that and join me.’ When she was ten feet from him, the red-haired girl leapt at David only to thud off another invisible wall. David smiled, ‘It really is incredible stuff,’ he said, ‘Non-glare. The French have some outstandingly good scientists, and some of them are even human.’ I was at the back of the group, and as I walked forward, an almost invisible door was swung shut behind the others but in front of me by a grey-jacketed man who had suddenly appeared. The door was the only relatively visible piece of the cage.

‘How did you know we were here?’ said the red-haired girl, staring at Johnny. ‘How were you waiting for us?’

David laughed. ‘Isn’t it obvious? I’m sorry, precious angels, but you surely knew from very early on that we had spies in your camp? You surely knew as soon as Centrepoint? Well done, Johnny. You’ve done a sterling job.’

Johnny Depp stood with a stunned expression, open-mouthed, but also not quite part of the group, who were all close enough to touch each other, but none of whom was close enough, quite, to touch him. I sensed the angels tense, instinctively preparing to tear him apart. Johnny said,

‘He’s lying. It’s a lie.’

‘But why would I lie, Johnny? You can join us now, can’t you, because we said that’s what would happen at this point! Because we are your true friends, aren’t we? All you need to do is, oh, wait, I see, I’ve clumsily mentioned this just AFTER I put you in the bullet-proof box where we can’t protect you. What a mistake! I could get that door opened, but how would you get to it in time with Red in the way!’ David Beckham smiled and walked to the clear wall where he stood face to face with Johnny Depp, and said, ‘I suppose I must have subconsciously have been thinking that your usefulness to the Master is over now, and that…’ He tailed off, and shrugged. There was a violent flurry, a set of movements I couldn’t follow, at the end of which two angels were nursing themselves while two others held down Johnny and the red-haired girl had her foot pressed on his throat.

‘This isn’t true, Red,’ he gargled. ‘None of this is true!’

‘None of it?’ said David Beckham. ‘Not even the part where we contacted you and Vanessa and told you that if you joined us you would finally be able to be together for all time, rather than being constantly separated by death? And you both officially scorned us, but our people saw you weaken, because you are weak, and so we met up with you privately and explained that as soon as the Gates of Hell are open, all this fighting will be over, and it will be just you and Vanessa forever, and all we asked you to do was get as close to the Chosen One as you possibly could, and tell us of the Teacher’s plans for thwarting us. And here you are, and we were waiting.’
Johnny Depp turned his eyes to me and he said, ‘This is a lie, Mary Sue. You know it is. He’s trying to divide us.’

‘Hmm,’ said David Beckham. ‘But didn’t he get very close to you? Didn’t he?’

He had done, but he said there was nothing in it, really, except it had been hard to… And there had been… I looked at him lying there, and how had David Beckham known about this? Johnny saw what I was thinking, and he looked at me with a betrayed face, then he twisted his eyes back up: ‘You know me, Red!’ he said. He was trying to speak calmly, but there was desperation in his eyes. ‘Think! Why would he be saying this while I’m in here? It would have been easy for me to go in last and stay outside the box.’

‘Well, yes, I suppose so,’ said David Beckham. ‘If we’d told you as much about our plans as you told us about theirs. You’re a traitor, and although we’ve used you because we didn’t want to risk any action that might have harmed Mary Sue, we really don’t like traitors. So you stay in the box.’

‘It’s not true. Think, Mary Sue! You were in their house, you know what they’re like! They’re liars, don’t sink to their level! You know they’re liars! They're trying to divide us!’

‘I have no reason to lie any more, Johnny. We’ve won. We’ve got the Chosen One, and she’s safe at last, safe from your precious Teacher. Although she always was safe once the Teacher decided you were the one he could trust to kill her if it became necessary.’ It took a moment for this to register, and then I looked at Johnny on the floor, and then I looked at David Beckham. ‘Oh, come now,’ said David. ‘Surely you realised that the Teacher would have ordered someone to kill you if everything went wrong? To stop the Gate opening? Surely you didn’t think he would take any risk? Johnny was the man, but I dare say that when he didn’t do it, one of the other bright sparks, Red maybe, would have taken matters into their own hands. Wouldn’t you, Red? Just like she’s taken control of the situation now. She’s a warrior. Warriors kill their enemies, and Johnny is most assuredly that, my dears.’ He flicked his eyes upwards, and ran his hands through his hair with a gentle smile. ‘He has led you to the end of all your hopes. It’s time for him to die.’

‘No!’ said a calm, high voice behind me, and Miss Smallbone stepped out from behind a gleaming console, and felled my grey-jacketed guard with a touch of her hand to his side that left him writhing in pain. ‘You are lying. Johnny Depp is not a traitor!’ Her voice was calm, but I was close enough to see that her hands were trembling and her knuckles were white.

WEEKEND TWELVE

2007-11-04T12:03:00.001Z

Well, well, well. It's literally been a journey. I have done Monday's chapter. It does not resolve everything. That is all I am prepared to reveal at this point.

Now, some housekeeping: I have really enjoyed doing this, ludicrous impracticality aside. I have a strong sense that there will be a sort-of-sequel, by which I mean another story of this type, rather than a continuation of the same story. The likelihood is that this will not happen immediately, but will happen soon. Because you do not want to be checking an unchanging website all the time, waiting, waiting, waiting, be still your beating heart, etc., I will be creating a Mary Sue distribution list, and sending out an email when things start moving again. For you to be on this list, you will have to email me. I promise I will not try to sell you viagra, whatever that is.

It's been a while since I rounded up information from Google Analytics: Japan looks set to beat Canada in what has been a very even battle. It is hard to fully grasp America's place in the grand scheme of things, since I was there for a while and going onto the site, but even if I remove New York, the States definitely have moved into second place. Australia has been respectable, I finally got some South American visitors (who took one look and ran for the hills), but Africa has been utterly absent. Utterly. This might not bother you, but Africa is the land of my fathers.

For no easily explicable reason, I had a visitor-spike on Friday 26th October. These visitors did not come from a new referrer or anything. Or maybe it was one visitor reading everything but doing so late and over the course of a day, from a computer that seemed like a different computer to Analytics every time it logged on. That is the best explanation I can come up with.

Traffic sources - mainly returners, and lots via sites of frequent-commenter-Marie. Of the interesting search terms that brought people, here are some:
"french are crazy"
'i had sex with you"
"blast furnace expression anglaise"
david beckham+maid
david tennant swimming
demon hierarchy
does ewan mcgregor wear a wig?
rich prostitute
nuclear bomb head in paper bag
there is nothing special about me
shagging
what dont you get from meat

Stay strong, people.

Chapter 59: It's Time for the Denouement

2007-11-02T09:05:00.001Z

I won’t bore you with the details of how we all stumbled out of bed, hung over and dreadful, stinking and smelling of spent or frustrated lust. Or of how Kylie had been up for two hours making the most amazing breakfast ever served to condemned men, which I took one look at and knew I couldn’t touch. Or of how Freddie Flintoff wandered through the house finding the designated soldiers and expeditionaries and giving us all a little black pill, and how we swallowed them and suddenly felt completely fine, and how we then ate, drank coffee and laughed about last night, and how Katharine and David-Mitchell-the-novelist thought no one could see what they were doing under the table. I won’t bother you with the tedious business of getting suited up with hi-tech weapons, of how we dressed our look-alikes and sent them in blacked-out cars to a meeting at Whitehall which we hoped would fool the enemy, at least for a bit, or of how the incursion team took a tunnel to three streets away where we emerging from a manhole and straight through the floors of three specially-adapted white vans which took us to a small facility in the flats to the east of London’s East End. I won’t explain how we circumvented air traffic control in our pair of stealth-adapted helicopters, or how Miss Smallbone told us to enter French airspace through a gap in their radar coverage that was invisible to their maps and computer systems, and which Miss Smallbone had prepared many years ago, just in case, because you never know what might come in useful further down the line. I will also not go through all the things David Tennant said on the flight, recapitulating exactly what it was we were doing and why. It was pretty complicated, and there’s no point in bothering with you with precisely how the Teacher finally realised that the demons’ plan in taking military control of France was nothing to do with expansionism – that was all just a distraction while they gained control of the whizzo new European particle supercollider, which they were sure could produce, if properly managed, a small black hole. I don’t understand the science, so there would be no point in even beginning to describe why that would be a bad thing, and that there is no such thing, really, as a ‘small’ black hole, and that it would still be the end of everything we know. But, according to one reading of the prophecies, it might also open the Gate to Hell (a bad thing), so long as the Master and the Chosen One were present to manage it. I will not repeat all my arguments, which were vigorous, that I should absolutely not be there, for this very reason, or the counter-arguments, which ran along the lines of: the Chosen One, says another reading of the prophecy, won’t help the Master, but will destroy both him and the Gate to Hell, and thus save the world forever. I won’t go on about how I resisted, even now, when the others asked me to tell them about the Teacher, or how I felt when David Tennant looked at me approvingly when I did so. I won’t describe how we did have plans for blasting our way into the supercollider facility if it was necessary, but how we didn’t have to use those plans because we managed to land unseen in a forest. Or how we trekked for an hour to the perimeter and we disabled the guards, how some of us took their uniforms and how we broke into the main building, which looked like one of those cool new tube stations on the Jubilee Line extension, which seemed rather small for such an apocalyptic showdown, but then when we went inside I gasped because it was just the pimple on the surface, and the underground halls of the supercollider seemed to go on forever with lots of white-suited scientists in little golf-carts. I won’t go on about the strange sense I had all the time that we were being followed. I won’t describe how we wasted twenty minutes walking the wrong direction because Jeremy Clarkson held the map the wrong way, or how Jeremy’s wife laughed at him, or how a guard heard her and there was a fight during which the guard was killed, but so was Jeremy Clarkson, with his wife crying and Jeremy saying, ‘Oh no! Ow, no, don’t try and help me, I’m definitely dying. No, darling, don’t worry about me dying to save your life after you just, no!, don’t cry, I’m joking!, it’s a funny story really, think of it like that and look after the kids and tell them how brave I was, yes!, laugh, that’s better!, ow, it’s got cold, hasn’t it?, and why is everyone talking so quietly, and, oh, I love you and… Oh…’ Or how we eventually found our way to the holy of holies, although by this time, as per our plan, we had split up into two groups, and I was in a group with Johnny Depp and David Tennant was in the other group. I won’t describe any of these things because they are basically irrelevant compared to the fact that, as we peered around the corner into the last deep hole, with huge pipes gleaming in the background, David Beckham was standing there waiting for us, saying, ‘Hello, Mary Sue. We have been waiting for you and your little friends. You really didn’t have to do all that skulking. It was inevitable you’d arrive here, that’s the thing about prophecies. And now, it’s time for the denouement.’

Chapter 58: In the Orchard II: (Silver)

2007-11-01T10:07:00.001Z

My friend Morgan is chubby and not unpleasant to look at. He’s averagely funny, but he doesn’t worry about it or try hard, and he laughs with genuine enjoyment at people who care more about things like that. He’s a banker, and he does fine. He has sandy hair, which has always been thin, so I don’t think it’s getting thinner. Girls like him, but they don’t really fancy him unless they are drunk. But for some reason, if they are drunk, Morgan becomes irresistible. No one can explain why this is, it just is, and whenever he’s with us on a night out, one of the most enjoyable bits of the evening is the moment where strange girls start coming over and throwing themselves at him. (We, his close friends, have been mainly inoculated by years and years of contact, but we all had our moments.) Sometimes Morgan has a girlfriend, but usually he doesn’t because it’s hard to have a girlfriend if wherever you go the most beautiful girls in the room start stroking your arm and slipping their numbers into your pocket as if you are film star taking a break from the movies to be a Formula One driver and qualify as a paediatrician.

I sat in the front of the minivan-taxi from Pin Head to Mayfair. Johnny Depp was in the back row with Jeremy Clarkson’s wife, and in the middle row Morgan was sandwiched between Kylie Minogue and the little red-haired angel who drove me to Luton airport what seemed like a lifetime ago. Kylie mumbled, so she had to practically touch Morgan’s ear with her mouth, ‘I can’t believe I normally date larrikins like dancers and models, etc., if bankers are all like you. You are so much more bonza than all those raw prawns, don’t you agree?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Morgan. ‘I’m pretty boring when you get to know me.’

‘You’re so funny,’ said Kylie.

‘I’m really not. I can’t believe you are millions of years old.’

‘That’s not very gallant, you dingo.’

‘I’m sorry, I just meant…’

‘I don’t mind, you pelican. I was just kidding. You learn a lot of things in a million years, especially if you spend a lot of time down under, if you understand what I’m saying?’

‘I do,’ said Morgan. ‘That’s a really funny joke.’

‘Geez, Morgo, none of the drongoes I’ve been ever get my jokes. They don’t think women can be funny. You’re a fair dinkum beaut, etc.’ All this time, the red-haired angel was pressing her futile knee into Morgan’s, unable to resist him but knowing in her heart that she was hopelessly outmatched. But I’d been watching Morgan dance with the red-haired girl all evening, and now I saw him find her hand. Kylie saw her too, and she said, ‘Good decision, mate, I don’t blame you. Red’s the real thing. She’s going with Mary Sue when… I shouldn’t say. She’s amazing, mate.’ In the end, when we got to the house, Morgan and the red-haired girl said Kylie could join them upstairs if she wanted, and Kylie said, ‘Really, mate! That’s totally bonza! You sure you don’t mind? I know I’m just the third, don’t worry. I’ll just help out any way I can.’

I went into the garden, past David-Mitchell-the-novelist and Katharine, who were half-undressed barely out of sight of the kitchen window, and went to the back wall, where I waited for where I knew Johnny Depp would come to join me. He did, and we leaned back against the dry brick looking at the silver trees and held hands. We knew that nothing more than this would happen, and that we should go inside and sleep. But also, with out hands, we acknowledged how much we both wanted to do the things we weren’t going to do. I knew some reasons, and he knew some reasons, and they had to be enough reasons, however drunk we were. Then Johnny said, ‘We might die tomorrow.’ I said nothing, just pressed my side against him. ‘I love Vanessa, Mary Sue. I love her forever. And I know you don’t love me.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘It would just be lust if it happened. Which it won’t.’

My voice was husky because I could remember what it was like with him, which was, well. You either know what I mean or you don’t, and if you don’t I can’t describe it for you, because I’d heard it described enough times but I didn’t understand until Johnny. He said, ‘Yes, it would be wrong. Let’s go inside.’ But I didn’t move, and nor did he. And then he said, ‘I’ve lost her thousands of times, Mary Sue. Don’t think it’s ever easy, but when it happens, I deal with it like I deal with death in war, by denying it until there’s time to cope privately. But that only works when I’m with someone who doesn’t understand what’s happening, because then I don’t have to think about it or pretend, and they can assume they have all of me. But with you, I know you understand, and I also know you’re only doing it because you also can’t have who you want. So we should go inside now. I wouldn’t even be standing here if I wasn’t drunk and if there was no danger that tomorrow would be the end of everything.’ He sounded like he was trying to persuade himself. ‘It’ll be fine,’ he went on, ‘because we’re strong, and we know it would be wrong.’ His hand tightened on mine, but I felt the tightening somewhere else, and I shivered with the force of how hard it was to resist. He was right: we might die tomorrow. What harm could it do? What harm really? Miss Smallbone was jealous, but she could hardly blame… I mean, if this was just about Miss Smallbone being jealous, and not me being in more specific danger then… But Miss Smallbone had fought so hard for so long, and how could I make things worse for her, because if there was one thing I knew, it was that she would know, so… And she’d gone mental a couple of times in the past she said, and the last thing we would need tomorrow was a mental Miss Smallbone… And if Johnny didn’t know about that, and he was just worried about me, then I was the one who really knew where the most pain and danger would be caused, even if it was a thing no one could really help in the long run, and so it was up to me to be strong… But how strong could I be when… But, but, but. I was going to resist him. I knew I was going to resist him. I was almost certainly probably just about to say that we had to go inside when David Tennant called out, ‘Are you alright, Mary Sue?’

‘Yes,’ I called. I’m just coming in.’ I supposed I should have felt like a naughty girl called by her father from her dangerous older boyfriend’s car, but when I saw David, concerned and beautiful, that is not how I felt.

Chapter 57: 'Big Deep Breaths, Please, ...

2007-10-31T09:35:00.000Z

… Johnny Depp. I’m not here to hurt anyone,’ said Rollo, lowering the point of his knife towards the floor, keeping his eyes fixed on Johnny’s. The music had stopped next door. ‘How could I do anything? Look around, there’s only one of me.’

‘Assassins don’t care what happens afterwards.’

‘If I wanted that, Johnny, then I’ve had plenty of chances.’

‘None of us knows anything about you, mate,’ said Johnny. ‘Pardon us for being careful. Pardon us for trying to protect her.’ I was pushing through the others towards them, and Johnny said, ‘Get back Mary Sue. No risks.’

‘I trust him,’ I said. You will think that some piece of me must surely have been thinking, ‘Please, oh please, let me be right about what I saw in Rollo’s eyes. Let me not have been bamboozled by them, because trustworthy eyes are hardly something I can take to the bank, so how can they possibly be something I will risk the world on?’ You will think that, but you will be wrong. I walked to Rollo, took his knife, then his hand, and then I pulled him over to a seat in the corner of the bar. Everyone was staring but I didn’t react to that. If Rollo was here, I reasoned, where he would know what kind of reaction he would get, it must be important. ‘What is it?’

He smiled, and squeezed my hand. His palms were dry, ever so slightly rough and completely comforting. Rollo looked like an ex-public school rugby player, with shiny brown shoes, neat jeans and crisp-collared short poking out from a blue and white round-neck sweater. This is not something I would usually find appealing, but it made Rollo look – it’s hard to put this in a way that doesn’t seem like faint praise, but you have to remember what a nightmare these two weeks had been in terms of trust and upheaval, and how this meant that certain things were unusually important to me – it made him look reliable. And then he said, ‘I’m here to say goodbye, Mary Sue.’

‘But…’

‘I’m sorry it has to be like this.’

‘But you said you were going to protect me.’

‘I will do everything I can, but we both know what’s happening tomorrow, and…’

‘How do you know? We only planned it today. Who are you?’

‘I’m someone you can trust,’ he said.

‘So,’ I said. ‘You think I won’t be coming back?’

‘I’m sure you will.’

‘But…’

‘We don’t have to go on about this conversation. I am not, well, I do not normally talk about these things, but I love you Mary Sue. I have to say it, in case I never get the chance again. I want you to remember that whatever happens, or however you come to think of me in the future, if, well. Just if. We will see each other again before the end, but the circumstances will be difficult, and when that happens, you have to know that I have always loved you as well as I could, after my fashion, and everything I have done in all this has been because you are incredibly important to me. Does that make sense to you?’

‘Not much.’

‘No, I suppose it wouldn’t.’ The music had started again, but there was still a critical mass of people watching us intently. The mood of the room was changed. ‘When that moment comes, very soon, when you see me, you may have some choices to make. At that point, you must remember that I love you, and would do anything for you, and if I tell you to do something, you have to do it, even if it seems, well, whatever it seems might be the result. Do you think you will be able to do that?’

‘Yes,’ I said, and I knew I would, and I didn’t know why. Again, I know, I know, if I were reading this, alarm bells would be going off in my head. Don’t think I don’t realise it now. Don’t think I didn’t realise it then, on some very deep level. Rollo smiled at me, stood up, kissed me gently on the cheek, said goodbye and walked away without looking back. Sir Conn hurried over to replace him, Johnny Depp and Freddie Flintoff at his shoulder, and asked if I was alright, and what Rollo had said, and whether anyone needed to go after and detain him. Sir Conn was holding a gin and tonic. I took it from him, drained it and said, ‘He was saying goodbye, Sir Conn. Let’s go home. Tomorrow’s going to be a big day.’
***

Johnny Depp muttered something in the taxi home that came back to me later with particular vividness. He said, intending me to hear, I’m sure, ‘When that bastard broke in, and pulled the knife, where was David Tennant then? If he’s supposed to care about you so much?’

Chapter 56: They Can Because They Think They Can

2007-10-30T09:35:00.000Z

At midnight, Kylie took her turn on the decks and the dancefloor began to fill. By the time she started her second set at two, everyone was doing the sort of dancing where they think they are dancing brilliantly, and they might as well be because they are all as drunk as each other and who is made happier by the thought that everyone looks an idiot? I’d stopped hugging my friends by this point. At the start of the evening I did it every five minutes, and they hugged me back, holding me four-drinks-tight because knew that something serious was happening, even if they didn’t know what it was. But now, none of us wanted to be thinking of that, and we were all dancing with celebrities, except Katharine who’d been snogging David-Mitchell-the-novelist since soon after we arrived. ‘I thought he was married,’ I said worriedly to England cricket hero Freddie Flintoff at one point. ‘I hope she doesn’t…’

‘Don’t worry, love. Most angel marriages are best-mate-style long-term partnerships. David-Mitchell-the-novelist’s wife is actually a lesbian at the moment, but when they got married, civil partnerships didn’t properly exist, and it was better for tax.’

‘That was a very full answer, Freddie.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t want you to tell anyone this story later for some reason, and have people not understand that we angels are very moral, but that our situation with all the eternal regenerating means that sometimes, if you describe what we do, it sounds as if we are cheating on wives and partners and everything. That totally isn’t the case. Look, that’s David-Mitchell-the-novelist’s wife over there, dancing with brainy Mariella Frostrup.’

‘But brainy Mariella Frostrup surely isn’t…’

‘Hey, pet,’ said Freddie. ‘When you’ve been around forever, everyone’s a little bit everything.’

‘Okay,’ I said. A bit later, I was being twirled around the dancefloor by Sir Connaught Sampson-Samson, my surprisingly light-footed Head of Chambers. He was mouthing along to that Gilbert O’Sullivan song which keeps saying, ‘I’m a bad dog, baby,’ and I had a sudden, clear vision of how surreal all this was and, just like that, I had my first flash of proper terror about tomorrow, and Sir Conn saw it in my eyes and without saying another word, he whisked me off the back of the dancefloor and through a door which I had been assuming was a cupboard, but which was actually the entrance to a quiet little sub-bar called Pin Head Too.

‘Mary Sue,’ slurred Jeremy Clarkson lumbering into us clumsily. ‘Have you been told not to judge us? Have you? Have you been told that your puny earth morals do not bind us, because we are superbeings.’ Then he broke down giggling.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Freddie told me.’

‘Freddie Flintoff,’ said Jeremy Clarkson, ‘is the best bloke in the world. Best. Bloke. Inthe. World.’

‘He certainly…’

‘Don’t patronise me. You know all my being an arse stuff is just an act. This is my wife,’ he said, waving over a woman who was rolling her eyes. ‘You know that genuinely none of us would ever sleep with anyone except our wives if our wives didn’t allow it?’

‘Or vice versa,’ said Jeremy Clarkson’s wife.

‘You wouldn’t sleep with anyone else because I’ve got such a huge…’

‘Stop it, Jeremy!’

‘I can’t help it. I love being Jeremy Clarkson. He is the funnest person I’ve ever got to be! I was a mediaeval scribe once, not even one who got to do the pictures; and someone who counted weeds in an African lake; and an industrial spy in a pharmaceutical company in Germany, but during a boring bit of German history. I always play whatever part the Teacher needs, but God those ones were boring. I don’t think I’ve ever really got over the weed-counting. And do you know, the thing is now being Jeremy Clarkson is that I’ve genuinely got so I hate speed cameras! At the start, I couldn’t believe people were so touchy, because the cameras can only catch people who are breaking the law, etc., but now I really think there must be something bad going on with them if people agree with all my ranting so much.’ Then his drunk face went serious again. ‘But the key thing to remember is that none of us are love rats, not even David-Mitchell-the-novelist. He’s a great bloke, even though if you’re having a dinner party and need to invite a David Mitchell, I’d invite the other one, because he probably doesn’t spend the whole time crapping on about how he should be the main David Mitchell. But he’s not a love rat, ok?’

‘Why does everyone keep saying this,’ I asked. ‘It’s not as if I’m telling anyone else what you’re getting up to. It’s all so wild and fantastic that everyone would treat it as a joke, and if it’s legal issues we’re worrying about here, then surely that problem would already have been made as bad as it could be, since by now I’d have revealed about David Beckham being gay and a murderer.’

‘Oh,’ said Jeremy Clarkson. ‘Yeah. Totally.’ And then he looked at Sir Conn, and smiled like someone much, much older than he was supposed to be, and also much younger. He said, ‘You know what this is like tonight, don’t you?’ Sir Conn nodded. ‘You know what we need?’ Sir Conn nodded again, without saying anything, and Jeremy dived off to the bar. I thought he might be humouring Jeremy Clarkson, but then I saw that Sir Conn’s eyes were glistening, and so were Jeremy’s, as if they he were about to cry.

‘What is it, Sir Conn? What is this like?’

‘Near death, Mary Sue. When you’re near death, there’s no point in holding back, so you dance. But us, we regenerate. We dance, and some of us are brave, and that’s all very well, but when humans dance on the edge of their void, it really is a void. Jeremy and I once fought alongside some very brave men, and there were parties like this every night because… Well, humans are very inspiring, Mary Sue.’ Jeremy returned with two huge glasses of port. He handed one solemnly to Sir Conn, and the pair of them stood opposite each other, and the intensity with which the looked into each other’s eyes somehow created a bubble of quiet, and they straightened themselves tall, and they intoned together, ‘Aeberhardt, Blake, Boswell, Brinsdon, Burgoyne, Couston, Coward, Cox, Cunningham, Dolezal, Fulford, Haines, Howard-Williams, Jones, Lane, Lawson, MacGregor, Marek, Parrott, Pinkham, Plzak, Roden, Scott, Steere, Sutherland, Unwin, Vokes, Whelan. Nineteen Squadron, friends and brothers, fewest of the few, Possunt quia posse videntur.’ Then they slowly saluted, and they drank their huge glasses of port in great gulps with tears streaming down their faces, and tears were streaming down my face as well.

As my vision cleared, I saw Rollo Price at the door to the little sub-bar, looking at me. I barely had time to register his presence before he was knocked to the ground by Johnny Depp, and the two bounced back to their feet, knives held instinctively and suddenly in front of them.

Chapter 55: Eat, Drink and Be Merry, for Tomorrow...

2007-10-29T09:20:00.000Z

‘Are you okay, Mary Sue?’ called Johnny Depp, and I could hear that he was now running through the trees. I was stunned into silence staring in his direction, because I didn’t know how he would react to Miss Smallbone, or how I would explain her presence. I needn’t have worried. It can only have been a couple of seconds seconds, but when I turned back to the wall, she was gone. Johnny burst into view, gun in his hand.

‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘There’s no one else.’

‘I thought I heard…’ He looked around and said angrily, ‘Why didn’t you reply? You know how important you are! You cannot wander off on your own, is that clear? You said you were going to the restroom.’

I’d almost forgotten my excuse for leaving the endless meeting. All the decisions were made in the first twenty minutes, and after that it was finicking over tiny details for hours and hours, mostly to do with what weapons we would take, and whether we should wear black or dark green. Although I would be a member of the party, I lack military experience on an extreme scale, and I couldn’t see what I was contributing. And also, Johnny Depp was in the room, looking at me, and I thought I might die tomorrow. (And also (II), part of the reason I was thinking of him like that was that it helped me put the twisted feelings I had for David Tennant out of my mind, and why I keep going on about these twisted feelings is beyond me, because I’m not twisted, and I would never do anything about them. Perhaps it’s the same reason that Miss Smallbone told me about Johnny Depp. Against the bright light of oblivion, it’s hard to resist baring your soul.) ‘Is the meeting over?’ I asked.

‘Er…’

‘Just some final details?’ I said. Johnny grinned. It would have been easier if he didn’t get my jokes.

‘Come on, Mary Sue. We’re almost done, I promise, and tomorrow we go to war, so…’

‘Yeah, yeah. We have to get a good night’s sleep.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, we might all be about to die! Tonight we party!’
***

Once, on a work trip to New York, I learned that the cool bars there are ones you have to know about to find, because they look as if they are the toilets of crappy Japanese restaurants or they are through a bead curtain behind the counter of second-hand bookshops. It never even crossed my mind that London was full of similar places, and maybe it isn’t, but there’s one at least. After wolfing down the delicious barbecue Kylie Minogue had been preparing all afternoon, and drinking a beaker each of a drink called Admiral’s Flip with which Freddie Flintoff seemed to be obsessed and I could see why, the mood was festive. We jumped into taxis, and headed to Kilburn. I couldn’t believe there was somewhere to go out that I’d never heard of this close to my home, but Freddie just laughed. He was clearly the leader of the gang. Even Johnny Depp and David Tennant, who were alpha as they come, deferred to him without a second thought in the matter of having a good time.

Because it was, well, because this might be the last time, and the end of everything, and all that jazz, I’d been allowed to call my mates. Jen and the others were waiting outside Cookies & Cream, looking bewildered. I started introducing them to the angels, many of whom they recognised, of course. It was surreal, presenting Jeremy Clarkson and saying things like, ‘Morgan, Jeremy, Jeremy, Morgan,’ or hearing the words over my shoulder, ‘Sorry, we haven’t met, my name’s Kylie.’

The best moment was when I said to Jen and Katharine, ‘Jen and Katharine, this is David-Mitchell-the-novelist,’ and Jen went, ‘What?’ and David-Mitchell-the-novelist said, ‘Yes, I know. I cannot believe the bloody BBC! Even when we gave them the list of angels with it very clearly in stated in brackets that there were TWO Davids Mitchell, they STILL put a picture of David-Mitchell-the-comedian on the screen when they said my name. It drives me up the absolute bloody wall. I mean, I was…’

‘I agree,’ butted in Katharine. ‘It’s ridiculous. I mean, you were famous long before him! I LOVED Gostwritten. And you’re much better looking than he is…’ Jen and I looked at each other and edged away.

Opposite C & C was a furniture shop I must have walked past a hundred times over the years, piled high with ramshackle sofas with bad gilding. The shop entrance was obviously closed, but next to it was an inconspicuous door, with three buzzers. Freddie held his right index finger in the air with great ceremony (I think he might have had two Admiral’s Flips), and pressed the middle one, which was labelled ‘Pin Head’. The bar was not as tiny as I expected, and the dance floor was also perfectly respectable, which boded well. For now, though, the music was at a level we could talk over, and there were eight barmen crowded along the counter, so there was hardly any waiting. ‘This is amazing!’ said Jen, next to me. ‘Daiquiris? I literally do not care how much they cost!’

‘Don’t worry about that, old thing,’ said Sir Connaught Sampson-Samson. ‘I’ve put a million pounds behind the bar.’

WEEKEND ELEVEN

2007-10-27T18:06:00.000+01:00

Well, I estimate that next weekend will be the last break, and the story will be finished sometime in the week after that. I think I know how to get us to the denouement, and I have liked the end of this week, and the start of next week has got some really nice things in it, but I don't think I will have time to make them work as well as they might, since I have a busy day singing tomorrow. Still, there's that free extra hour stolen from summer, so never say die.

I know how to get us to the denouement - certain aspects of it are still up in the air. But, like I say, I have a WHOLE WEEK, so...

My top moment of this week was witnessing my two top readers (measured in the only available units: comments) meeting each other in a hot busy pub from which, to my certain knowledge, it is easy to have your computer stolen. My other top moment was the small collection of emails from more reticent top readers who didn't want to put their names in public or anything and were very nice about things. Big up them.

(I said at the start that it would be in the region of sixty chapters; it might be. It is a sign of my growing maturity that I will not force it to be sixty, if it needs to be sixty-one. I write to length and deadline. It is like a disease.)

Chapter 54: Don't Go Breaking My Heart

2007-10-26T09:30:00.000+01:00

I sat down next to the Teacher. The soft grass still held some of the day’s heat, but the brick wall against my back was starting to cool. Only the top of my head was warmed by the sun, and the garden was painted by Seurat. After what seemed like a long while, Miss Smallbone said quietly, ‘Please don’t tell anyone.’

I looked at her in surprise, hurt that she thought I might betray her confidence, and her eyes were pleading. I was struck suddenly by how young she looked, and although I knew her youth was illusory, the illusion gave me a moment of perspective. ‘You don’t have any friends, do you?’

‘I’m…’ she began. Then she said, ‘It’s too dangerous.’

‘How long have you loved, er, I don’t know what to call him.’

‘Call him Johnny. And I’ve loved him forever. Or as near as makes no difference.’

‘Does he know?’

‘Of course not,’ the Teacher said fiercely. ‘It wouldn’t, I mean, he’s in love with Vanessa. I’ve always known it.’

‘Always?’

‘Always. There have been… No. No, he has always loved her, and I have always known it.’
She hung her head, hands folded again in her lap. Sometimes, you know somebody doesn’t want to speak to you, but sometimes you know they are desperate to be forced. I said, ‘Really? Over thousands of generation, you’ve never tried, or said anything? Not at all?’ The flush rose up her neck, stronger this time, and I carried on, ‘Now is your chance to talk to a friend you can trust. You might not get another one.’ So she told me her story.
***

‘I have tried,’ said Miss Smallbone, in a voice that in a normal person would not have sounded emotional, but which I knew by now was the highest pitch of drama she would let herself express. ‘And I knew it was madness, I always knew. It’s just, oh!’ Instead of thudding her hands into the grass by her side, she held them still for a moment and then smoothed a non-existent crease from the front of her skirt. ‘It’s been so long! When I was very young, and we were still on our home planet, I fell in love with who you call Johnny Depp. But he loved Vanessa, who is wonderful. I wanted to kill myself then, and many times after, but it was only when got here that I…’

‘What?’

‘No. I didn’t kill myself because there was a war, and it would have been selfish to waste a life that our side could use somehow, and so I entered the military and found, I was surprised, that I possessed certain aptitudes. Perhaps my aptitude was not caring about death. Later, only a very few of us survived the destruction and exile, and fewer still who had been trained as I had been. I watched unseen at the beginning, wary of traitors, thinking it would be the easiest time for the enemy to infiltrate us. When I discovered that Johnny was another I was elated, but then I knew she had survived also, and I realised I could not bear the proximity of being known. The details of how I became the Teacher, and how I have maintained the illusion of continuity through the changing generations, need not concern us here. I thought it would pass, but it never did.’

‘You said you tried?’

‘Sixty million years is a long time, Miss Park. There were periods of less activity from the demons, and there were periods when I was weak. There are episodes of which I am ashamed.’

‘You don’t have to…’

‘I know.’ Miss Smallbone’s voice was small and clear, nothing so fragile or ringing as crystal, and certainly not dull. It was metal, sharp not jagged. ‘As you well know, Johnny is not continent when he and Vanessa are not of an age. For thousands of years I did nothing about this, although it was difficult.’

‘But?’

‘Tens of thousands of years, Miss Park. I am not proud of the things I did, but I understand myself. And I have paid for it, many times.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I, there were times when, more than that was necessary, I put Vanessa in the way of danger.’ She said it so calmly that it barely registered until I realised she was looking for my look of horror, and then I was horrified.

‘You…’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I knew she would regenerate, of course, but more than once, I split her from her one true love for my selfish purposes.’ Now I was close enough to the metal to hear its jagged edges. Nothing is ever smooth close up. Her neck was dark and her eyes shone. ‘I understand what you must think, and it was shameful, but… I can’t apologise to him, and so I’m apologising to you.’

‘What happened?’

‘I pretended to be… I can barely say this Miss Park,’ and now the metal was both jagged and brittle. ‘I know Johnny’s tastes. I waited until I looked like … what he would like, and then I, well. Then I was with him.’

‘What was it like?’

‘You know what it was like. I’d watched him often enough, seen the effect. It is not experience, your husband had as much experience, I don’t know what it is that he has. It made it worse, because I knew he didn’t care.’

‘Really?’

‘I knew he cared something for the person I was pretending to be, but I knew also what he was holding back, and that he would hate me if he knew what I truly was. I would have known if he ever forgot Vanessa, ever stopped waiting for her, and he never did or will.’

I stood up, and looked through the trees towards the house. ‘How often did you kill yourself?’ I asked.

She looked into my face, saw there was no point. ‘Many times. I am weak, Mary Sue, self-indulgent like a teenager, throwing myself off a cliff so it can be a few more years before the ache is strong again. Is that what you want me to say?’

‘No. It’s just…’

‘It’s true.’

‘And Johnny never knew?’ I asked. ‘I know he never knew WHO you were, but did he never even knew WHAT you were?’

‘I am very good at hiding the eternal part of myself, Miss Park. I have to be.’ I reached to hold her hand but she shook me off. A tear was in the corner of her eye. ‘Millions of years, Miss Park. Of course I TRIED. I tried everything. ‘She couldn’t stop herself, but she wouldn’t look at me. ‘There were other times, when Vanessa was waiting for him to be of an age, when I went to her, with her. I tried to learn what she did, what kept him so enthralled, and I tried to remember, and then later I tried the things she did, but of course I was not… And don’t think I didn’t know that this would never work. Of course I knew, but I had to try because it was either try or go mad. Though of course, it was madness anyway, and it harmed our cause. You cannot understand the humiliation that this was, or how humiliating it is to tell you.’

‘Why are you telling me?’

‘Like you said, there may not be another chance. And also, it pertains. I said you and Johnny would be a disaster because I know he likes it more with you than he liked it with me, and I was jealous. It was not because he is the Master.’ She was withdrawing, and her voice was smooth again. ‘I was jealous, that’s all. You see, Mary Sue, there really are very few stories, and mine is one of the most banal.’

‘No, Teacher …’

‘No, Mary Sue. Time does not dignify it, or excuse the things I’ve done. But I have paid. They have been together almost all this time, and the fractions I have stolen have only made things worse. I wish you will not sleep with him again, because he is not the one for you, but I know how hard he can be to resist.’

‘Mary Sue!’ shouted Johnny Depp from near the house. ‘Who are you talking to?’

Chapter 53: The Orchard: Gold

2007-10-25T09:56:00.000+01:00

I wandered through the orchard in the golden dusk. Sun dappled through the leaves but it was too low to reach over the buildings and down as far as the grass, which was mown but not freshly or obsessively, the tree trunks ringed with deeper grasses and some white flowers which my mum would be embarrassed I can’t name. The angels’ replacement London headquarters were in a mansion in one of those Mayfair terraces where, because you only walk up and down the streets, you don’t realise some of the houses back onto significant pieces of land. The front of the house was grand enough, though it was thinly camouflaged by a row of buzzers that made it look like flats, but inside and out the back, it was amazing. The orchard had officially been planted in an attempt to defeat prying eyes in the overlooking houses and flats, but really it was because everyone likes fruit.

I’d slipped out of the interminable conference indoors on the pretext of needing the loo, and I stepped outside for a moment, and I suddenly felt a million miles from the chaos I had sparked. The French government was enraged, obviously, but the French people were ominously sullen. Britain was more or less convinced, which wasn’t surprising given that le Pen tried to obliterate London. Around the world, the angelic revelations had been met with either incredulity or outright disbelief. But any huge mental shift takes time, and at least we’d convinced the jury and David Tennant was free. David Tennant, who hugged me at the verdict, and who I hugged back tight, and who looked at me with his crooked smile and shook his head ruefully. David Tennant, who felt like the other half of me, because he was half of me. David Tennant, my father, who was inside the house volunteering for a suicide mission so he could protect me. And Johnny Depp was in there too, who was, well, who was who he was. Johnny was why I came outside, really. Every time he spoke or looked at me, I forced my face into a mask, but I don’t suppose it worked. My feelings about him were very mixed, and when I say that I don’t mean it: my feelings about him weren’t serious, in the final analysis, but they were powerful, clear and simple, and I felt them whenever I saw him, even though I knew it wasn’t right or couldn’t last, but my head would overcome my feelings. I knew this was important because the Teacher had said…

‘Hello, Mary Sue,’ said Miss Smallbone. She was sitting quietly against the rude red-brick wall at the back of the orchard, her legs straight in front of her in a long, light lilac skirt that reached almost to her sensible, anonymous trainers. Her round face was tilted sideways, and just caught the lowest edge of bright sun as she looked up at me.

‘Teacher,’ I said.

‘You did well, I think. Or at least, David is free. And now we can get to the end of this.’

‘You look tired.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It wasn’t a criticism, Teacher.’ I moved to stand beside her, leaning against the wall. It was hot late summer, and I wearing my small olive shorts and black vest. My friends say this makes me look like a commando, I say I wear it because it’s so comfortable, and we all know I actually where it because I’m half-Korean and slim, and it’s a really good look for me that also makes it look as if I’m not trying. The brick was warm and rough against the skin of my shoulders and arms, and I pressed my neck back into it, wanting the roughness against the bones of my spine, all the way to the skull. To get that, I had to tilt my chin into my chest, pushing till I had felt each vertebra touch against the brick. It took me some time, and then I sat down in front of Miss Smallbone. ‘Can we save my mother?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘What about me? Will I survive?’

‘I don’t know. It took me too long to realise what the Master was planning. Forgive me. But all we can do is try.’ I nodded. ‘Tomorrow night, Mary Sue, as soon as the shadows fall. Are you sure you’re ready?’

‘Of course I’m not ready.’

‘Of course.’ She wasn’t chastened.

‘Why would it be so bad, me and Johnny Depp?’

‘I’ve told you it would be bad.’

‘Please, Teacher. If he isn’t the Master, and you swear he isn’t, then I can’t understand why it would be so dangerous? I know he doesn’t love me, but, I mean, I don’t love him either, it’s just… I mean, this is the end of the world! Surely there’s no harm in, I mean, I might die, and everything is basically a nightmare, and this was one thing which was amazing, even if, well, it’s just sex obviously, but…’ and I was looking at the Teacher’s face while I was saying this, and she was looking at her hands, and I understood. ‘You love Johnny Depp,’ I said.

She didn’t move, but the skin of her neck darkened.

Chapter 52: High Wire

2007-10-24T09:41:00.000+01:00

At the very moment David Tennant revealed his magic sword to the courtroom, revealing to the demons that he and I were about to reveal the hidden truth that angels and demons walk amongst us, a crack team of undercover secret commando angels were breaking into the demons’ Paris headquarters, the address of which I’d found when I was scurrying furtively around their Master’s mansion trying not to be shot by R Kelly, David Beckham, et al. When it became clear to the Teacher that I was definitely going to reveal all in the courtroom, she had snapped into her usual brisk efficiency. ‘You will need proof, Miss Park. It will seem like madness. What proof do you propose to give?’

‘I expected you to be able to think of something.’

‘How rash of you.’

‘And yet I see you have an idea.’

‘Touche, Miss Park,’ and she gave a wintry smile. ‘The demons cleared out their London office in preparation for the bomb, but Paris will be occupied. To extract anything will be costly. Some will die, maybe many, but it is the last days, and I can see no other way.’

‘If…’

‘No, Miss Park. You are the Chosen One. This strategy of yours is naturally uncomfortable to me, after these millennia of secrecy, but it is what we have, for good or ill. You do your part, and I will do mine.’
***

Of the sixteen angels that broke into the Paris headquarters, only seven survived, but they escaped with plans, details, lists and more.

The world’s press had treated the previous day’s revelations as more or less a joke – an extraordinary claim in a soap opera celebrity trial that was distracting the world, ludicrously, from the sabre-rattling between military-law France and the rest of Europe. But then we started giving evidence on le Pen’s career, and the careers of other demons in the French armed forces. The prosecution said, ‘France is not on trial! This is irrelevant. All that is relevant is whether David Tennant killed Gavin Wishton.’

‘My client killed Gavin Wishton. I thought you had established that clearly?’

‘But…’

‘Your honour, as we established, Mr Tennant’s innocence rests on his claim that murder is a crime committed by humans. We must be allowed to prove to the court that no such crime was committed.’

‘This trial is a farce…’ began the judge.

‘Yes!’ said the prosecuting counsel. ‘The defence is…’

‘Hear me out! The evidence submitted for my consideration this morning should be seen and will be seen. I have been informed by the defence that the newspapers will be presented with it, but I have also been assured that this will not happen until it is seen in court. In light of this…’

‘We object most strongly! The jurisdiction of this court…’

‘You will not interrupt me again and remain in the room, counsel, is that clear?’ The prosecuting counsel sat mutinous. ‘This is my courtroom. Extraordinary times make certain demands, and while I am yet to be convinced, I am impressed by the defence’s restraint in not having forced my hand by feeding their tales to the press, and the defence’s clear desire to allow the jury to decide on the basis of evidence unmediated by public hysteria. I am perfectly sanguine about the possibility that what happens today may be overruled, but I will not stop the defence from presenting its case.’

The atmosphere was electric. The evidence we had gathered was absolutely convincing proof that le Pen was the product of a conspiracy which had also placed France under his military control. It also demonstrated that Vladimir Putin was part of the same conspiracy, which underpinned his shock decision to sign a non-aggression pact with France. But as the prosecution kept pointing out, it did NOT prove that the conspirators were timeless regenerating demons. ‘How can you stand here denying the humanity of David Tennant, who has been examined by a variety of medical experts over the course of his professional career, for insurance purposes, as we can demonstrate, and who has never once been told he cannot be insured because he is not human.’ My witnesses repeated what David had said about the sword. The science that allowed the angels and demons to blend with the world was sufficiently advanced that from our human perspective, it seemed like magic. The judge emphasised that the jury were only debating the merits of this case. If they thought David Tennant and Gavin Wishton were human, it must be murder. The jury nodded wisely.

We showed a video of the battle for Centrepoint, which claimed five lives, including brave Davina McCall. The jury were duly horrified. And then I called Boris Johnson to the stand. After all, our defence was all about theatre. ‘Are you an angel?’ I asked.

‘Of course I am, old thing. Always have been, always will be. Fight the good fight.’

‘Can you prove it?’

‘Afraid not. We lost access to the science of our ancestors when we arrived on this planet. This is not about proof. This is about reasonable doubt.’

‘Objection! It’s not Mr Johnson’s job to tell…’

‘Objection sustained.’

‘Your honour,’ I said. ‘All I have is enormous volumes of circumstantial evidence. I am convinced the jury will believe it, and I will keep presenting it as long as you allow me. May I please ask Mr Johnson some questions which will allow us to explain more quickly?’

‘On the condition that he does not try to do my job for me.’

Boris was funny, eloquent and charming. He gave details of his life as Churchill, including where to find a graffito in one of the toilets at Blenheim that showed a scratched picture of a black dog widdling on Hitler. He also handed over a key to a safe-deposit box where, as Churchill, he had deposited a diary of every crucial decision in World War II which had been based on work done secretly by the angels. It was a story of heroic sacrifice which paralleled rather than diminished the heroism of the known story. ‘We should perhaps have revealed ourselves many years ago, but secrecy became a habit, and we feared prejudice. We are so few, and we are the last of our kind. We only reveal ourselves now because le Pen and his monsters want to start a new war, and the world must know what it faces.’

As we knew when we started, fine points of law were nothing to do with the jury’s eventual decision. When Boris revealed that no nuclear weapons would work any more because the angels had disarmed them for fear that they might end up under demon control, as indeed had now happened, there was almost a cheer. From that moment, we knew we had won.

Of course, victory was only the beginning.

Chapter 51: Trial By Jury

2007-10-23T17:16:00.000+01:00

On the first day of the trial, witness after witness attested to seeing David Tennant cut off my husband’s head. I cross-examined none of them. There was a sense of anti-climax the first time, but since David Tennant had pleaded not guilty, the anti-climax quickly translated itself into tension as to what trickery we must have up our sleeve. The prosecution lawyers were clearly disconcerted. They started pontificating, ‘Of course, the defence will try to say your eyewitness testimony doesn’t matter,’ or, ‘Some clever expert will appear to explain how this was a group delusion, simply because we can’t find the weapon.’ Everyone had expected a duel, but they were getting a phony war. That first evening, various legal pundits on the telly blustered to imagine what rabbit we would pull out of what hat.

Rabbit-and-hat is appropriate, actually. On day two, the prosecution introduced a couple of stage magicians to explain how they could have given the impression of holding a sword and then, five minutes later, ta-da!, no sword. Thus, they hoped, any defence which rested on such trickery would be doomed.

I knew, as did the demons on the prosecution team, that David Tennant’s sword had disappeared because it was literally magic (or born of powers beyond our technology’s ability to comprehend, powers lost by the demons and angels aeons ago, and so the difference between these powers and magic, as far as present purposes were concerned, was semantic). You couldn’t tell the jury that, of course.
***

‘So, Mr Tennant,’ I asked, ‘the so-called sword. Would you say it was impossible for it to have disappeared?’

‘Objection!’ said the dutiful prosecution counsel. ‘We have clearly established several methods by which the sword could have appeared to disappear.’

‘My question, your honour, is as to whether the sword could ACTUALLY have disappeared. It is central to the defence case.’

‘Carry on, Miss Park,’ said the judge. Like all judges unless television is lying, he was a very dignified black man.

‘So, Mr Tennant, could that sword have literally disappeared?’

‘Yes.’

‘Objection!’

‘Dismissed. Carry on, Miss Park.’

‘How would that be possible, Mr Tennant? Would you explain to the court, please? It flies in the face of our understanding of science.’

‘I’m afraid,’ said David Tennant, ‘you must rethink some of your fundamental beliefs about science.’

‘Objection!’ said my opposite number, panic and disbelief mingling in his voice. He understood now. ‘This is completely outside the remit of the courtroom.’

‘Your honour,’ I said, ‘I must be allowed to defend my client.’

‘Well, Miss Park,’ said the judge gravely, ‘I don’t know where this going, but you may continue for now.’

I thanked him, and asked David Tennant what he meant. He delivered his answer straight to the jury. ‘I’m sorry to be doing this. It’s only because I have been forced to. The world is full of crackpots pretending that evolution didn’t happen, or that dried camel’s brain and honey will cure epilepsy. They are deluded, of course. There are other crackpots who see conspiracies everywhere. Most of these conspiracists are lunatics screaming into the void, hungry to blame shadowy forces for their own inadequacies, but some of them, a tiny few, have been right all along. Humans are not the only intelligent life on this planet. Another race of humanoids have existed alongside you for millennia. I am one of them. We once possessed science of extraordinary power, but we warred and were exiled from our own planet. We are not more powerful than you – one thing about our exile was that we resemble you in every measurable way – and our former power and knowledge survives only as fragment and prophecy.’ The room was stunned into silence by this obvious speech, which they all knew was insane. But it was thrilling to be listening to David Tennant say it in a courtroom, like being in a story, and they had all heard things very like it from David Tennant’s lips when he was playing the Doctor. The unreality of his speech combined with his fictional persona to give him, while his momentum was unbroken, a fragile credibility. It would fall apart as soon as he stopped, surely, except he now said, ‘One of the few artefacts that remains to us is this! ‘And suddenly he was holding the sword, three-feet long and glittering in the courtroom sun. The policeman behind him seized him round the waist and grabbed for his arm, very bravely I thought, but the sword was gone.

The room erupted. Courtroom artists were feverishly trying to sketch what they were sure they had seen, the prosecution was objecting to anything it could think of, and the judge fixed me with a steely glare. ‘I very much hope you can explain this trickery, Miss Park, because I do not like trickery in my courtroom.’

‘Mr Tennant,’ I said. ‘Was that a trick?’

David Tennant smiled. ‘According to Sherlock Holmes,’ he began, ‘Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, has to be true. That is fair enough, so far as it goes, but it is unimaginative. Very, very often in their history, humans have been wrong about what is or isn’t possible, so their initial assumptions can make them believe things which they know for a fact are incredibly improbable. In those cases, the probability of them being wrong about what is impossible is much higher than the probability of the thing they are trying to persuade themselves to believe is the only possibility. For instance, in this case, it is much more probable that I have an artefact so advanced as to seem like magic than that you have all had the same collective delusion about me holding a sword – the same collective delusion that took hold of all yesterday’s witnesses.’

‘Miss Park,’ interrupted the judge, ‘Is the root of your case going to be that your client is not human?’ I nodded. ‘In which case, I am going to order a recess until tomorrow to prepare myself for the implications. I will not have this room turned into a circus. Good afternoon.’

Chapter 50: Duty-bound

2007-10-22T10:06:00.000+01:00

‘You have to tell me about Rollo Price,’ I repeated. David Tennant still said nothing. ‘I’ve asked over and again, and the Teacher, and every time, you tell me not to worry, and Miss Smallbone has told the others that there’s nothing to worry about, but the time is coming and Rollo is part of it, and I don’t know what part. I need to understand what he’s doing in my story.’

‘I can imagine that,’ said David. ‘If I were in your position, it’s something that I would really want to know.’ And then he stopped.

‘Nice try!’ I said. ‘The Teacher tried to turn me against him, and now she says I don’t have to worry about him, but she gives me no reason, and neither do you. It’s ridiculous. It’s like he’s this shadowy figure in the background, obviously important, but no one’s ever bothered to explain him properly.’

David Tennant picked up the Evening Standard I’d brought in with me, and folded it so the only thing showing was the main headline: BARMY BORIS SLAMS FRANCE-RUSSIA PACT. HOUSE PRICE CRASH AHEAD? He wasn’t looking at it, just fiddling. He smoothed the paper, and I watched his hands, wanting to hold them. I had some faint memory about prisoners not getting nail scissors because they might turn them into those knives made out of toothbrushes (I’ve never been clear on the details) but David was perfectly neat. Eventually, he tapped his right knuckles twice gently on the table and asked me, ‘What do you know about the Unattached?’ Nothing. ‘I thought so. After our people were cast upon this planet in the giant explosion that killed the dinosaurs, etc., we divided more or less down the middle, and we have fought ever since. The angels try to save the earth, the demons seek to destroy it. But there were some who refused to pick sides, and over the millennia, others have joined them. They are the Unattached. We do not know precisely who or how many they are, a few score perhaps. Some of them, concentrating on very long-term investments, are incredibly wealthy and powerful; some are more monastic; some have gone what you might call crazy – like missionaries left too long alone. The Teacher is certain that at least some of the Unattached collaborate to maintain the status quo. They are, therefore, loosely on the side of the angels. Rollo is a part of your story, very clearly. The Master has watched him because he has been around you too often for it to be a coincidence. Perhaps the simplest reading of the Rollo situation is that he is one of the Unattached who has assigned himself to you as a Guardian, or been assigned. If he were an assassin, you would be long dead.’

‘How could he have found out about me?’

‘The Unattached have great resources, as I said.’

‘Could he have told the Master? Is that how the Master found me?’

‘I doubt it. The Unattached have joined us several times, but they have never fought on the side of the demons. They are like Switzerland. They engage only to protect themselves, and if the fate of the world is in the balance, they would join those trying to save it. Almost certainly.’

‘You are telling me half truths.’

David grinned and said, ‘You’re beautiful when you’re angry, and you learn very fast, but know this, I have told you nothing untrue.’ And he leaned forward, folded my hands in his, and said, ‘I would do anything to protect you. Anything. I…’ He exhaled. ‘I look forward to the end. You understand that I must do what the Teacher thinks is best? She has always done the right thing. It is very hard to be a leader. She loves you very much, Mary Sue. And she loves this planet very much. It’s been her whole life.’
***

I knew he thought he was doing the right thing, but I had had enough. Without another word I strode from the interview room to where I knew Rollo would be standing like a woolly-suited sentinel. I grabbed him by the arm and said, ‘Enough, Rollo. I’ve been told not to have this conversation, and I think you have too, but we’re going to have it. Come with me.’

Half an hour later, in a greasy spoon round the corner from the station, Rollo looked at me with his disconcerting eyes and said, ‘Ok. What do you want to know? I’ll tell you anything.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Tricky. May I start by saying that I’m here to protect you? That’s my job. I’m…’

‘No, Rollo. That’s all the Teacher ever says, and David Tennant, and then it’s just guff about Unattacheds, complications and prophecies no one understands. You need to tell me something that I can get to grips with, because at the moment, I don’t trust you, and I’m finding it increasingly difficult to trust anyone. You are the key to this whole story in some mysterious way, and I need to know how.’

‘The Teacher told you I was an Unattached?’ he asked.

‘Don’t!’ I said. ‘Don’t repeat what they say. I want to know the truth.’

‘No you don’t. What you want is to look into my eyes, and to know for certain that you can trust me.’

‘No, I don’t. I want to…’

‘This is me, Mary Sue. No one knows you better than I do. Look into my eyes.’ He said it with such, I don’t know exactly, but depth might be part of how to explain it, that I instantly locked my eyes on his, and I looked through him almost, and I knew I would trust him with my life, absolutely, without any question.

I worry that I’ve made him sound creepy, like some circus mesmerist, but I can’t help that because I have never been very good at describing. Believe me when I say that I had, from that moment on, no doubt that Rollo would do anything to protect me. I said, ‘I trust you,’ and he squeezed my hand, and it was not like when David Tennant squeezed it. I didn’t feel any confusion – I just knew he was the best friend I’d ever have. I know I’ve said this badly. I really do know it. You’ll be thinking, ‘How could she possibly trust him after THIS. He has said literally NOTHING that I would regard as trustworthy!’ All I can say is that you didn’t look in his eyes, so you don’t understand. Those were eyes that loved me, absolutely, without exception, without consideration of time or pain. I bet no one has ever looked at you like that.

WEEKEND TEN

2007-10-21T10:59:00.000+01:00

People, my people,

1. It was obvious, when I thought about it, but I only worked out about making BP into Mary Sue's mum at the start of last week, during the feverish period of writing about giant fish which means I am now doing a chapter today so that I will be two days ahead at the start of next week, which is still a nerve-wrackingly small amount.
2. I want to say it is nerve-wracking because it leaves me no time for quality control, but actually I have not really got any time for quality control anyway. MSIL only works (in terms of not ruining my life in areas like rent) if I severely limit the amount of time I spend on it to 'the amount of time it takes to check the chapter I am publishing for spelling mistakes + the amount of time it takes to write 1000 words'. And even then, I had really hoped to be all but done by next week, which is the first time in ages I will be able to sit down to write something someone might one day buy (If you can imagine such a thing) and I suspect I will be resenting still doing this. Partly, I think, because both the projects I expected it to have run neatly alongside over the past two months fluttered around in the near distance before disappearing into the ether, which has made it feel like a less efficient use of time than I envisaged it being.
3. But don't for a second think this means I regret writing MSIL. It has been / is still being excellent mental floss, and you (I mean 'I') never write anything without getting better at it. MSIL has been a wasteful use of time and energy, I suppose, in terms of what we economists call opportunity cost (if that is what we economists call it - my knowledge of econo-jargon is based on having read half a textbook towards the end of 1991), but maybe it has also been what we in the world where everyone uses the same expressions as my mother, 'a time of gathering.' I think and hope so.
4. I have not got the details of the ending worked out, but I have a rough idea. There are still some things that could go either way.

Stay strong.

Chapter 49: Obvious, When You Think About It

2007-10-19T10:34:00.000+01:00

My mother was clearly captive but she looked unharmed. Her eyes flicked between the camera and whatever card or screen she was supposed to be reading from. ‘We were wrong, all of us,’ she intoned mechanically. ‘We have pretended to be meat. We have denied our true nature. We must free ourselves from the cold shackles of this prison planet. We,’ and here she coughed and stumbled, looking sharp at the camera, and shook her head saying, ‘This is all true, they’re not forcing me, I understand now, we must ascend, I don’t know what…’ At this a jolt ran through her, and her face twisted in pain. She gathered herself, turned angrily to her left and said with what looked like the last of her strength. ‘Can’t you see I understand? I agree with…’ Another jolt, and her voice when she spoke again was on the verge of tears. She went back to reading the script. ‘You must join us, Mary Sue. I love you, and it is our destiny to be together. Ask your precious Teacher. Forget your past, and think of your destiny. Nothing compares to destiny.’

The recording came to a halt. My hand was over my mouth. The stone that started dropping through my insides when I saw her face was still plummeting. Maybe being the Chosen One gave me infinitely deep metaphorical innards. I’d have preferred laservision. Or a brain. As soon as I knew David Tennant was my reincarnating father, I should have realised that my mother was… ‘But wait,’ I said to the Teacher. ‘You said she died giving birth to me, and then reincarnated! That I was the last of her strength. That doesn’t work because…’

‘She died again in a car crash, aged five. We are not immune from casual tragedy.’

I rewound the disc and froze the picture, trying to find anything of myself in her face. I knew there would be nothing – I’d already been told how I’d grown to resemble the couple who brought me up – but I desperately wanted to catch some flash of familiarity. I stared and stared. Eventually, the Teacher said gently, ‘There is nothing, Mary Sue. That’s not how it works.’

‘So,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what this means. What do we have to do now?’

‘She told us she is really your mother. She told us she is not some surgical creation.’

‘How?’

‘She said, “We must ascend”. It was the agreed signal, should this ever happen to her, or to David. It means she will do everything she can to stall them.’

‘What did she mean about the prophecy?’

Miss Smallbone bent forward, plump little hands holding each other. Her knuckles didn’t whiten the way a normal person’s would have done. ‘The prophecy is confused, and a dangerous guide. No, Mary Sue, don’t interrupt. I am going to tell you, but it is important you do not let what I say bear too heavily on you. From the prophecy, it is unclear whether or not you join the Master or kill him, that remains your choice, but it does say you join your mother, and it does say that your father sacrifices himself for you. They do not survive, and they go to a place from where they will not return. And also, they…’ She stopped.

‘You cannot…’

‘I know. It is just very difficult to explain. Our language has a much more complicated verb structure than English, as bad as Russian or something, and the conditional tense is particularly tortuous-slash-ambiguous. The Master will use an obscure section of the prophecy to confuse you: it says something along the lines of your mother being both your saviour and also the great betrayer. It is not clear who she betrays, or how, or even whether this is a good or bad thing. The phrase has so many meanings that it is fundamentally meaningless, which is why it is so dangerous. You must not trust anything the Master says about your mother. She was the purest and best of us, and I will not believe she is anything but that now. When she said, “We must ascend,” she meant we must do what we are doing. She will fight to the last, and she loves your father beyond the death she cannot avoid.’

‘When did you last speak to her?’

‘I know her, but she doesn’t know me. Only you know me, and David. And only David knows her. Her identity must be protected from the Master.’

‘And yet.’

‘And yet what?’

‘And yet there she is, Miss Smallbone. On the screen, captured. They found out who she was, and it’s obvious how they did it, if they knew about David Tennant.’ The Teacher said nothing. ‘Rose and the Doctor? Don’t you think that was a bit stupid? In retrospect? The way they looked at each other every week?’

‘They are both good actors, Mary Sue.’

‘And yet.’

‘Yes. And yet. I’m sorry.’
***

If you are a billionaire twenty-five year-old and your father marries someone old enough to be your little sister, no one expects you to think of this new step-mother as your mother. That was not exactly the problem I had thinking about my new relationship to Billie Piper, but it wasn’t exactly not what at least one of the problems was. But there was nothing to be done about that. I had a trial to prepare for, and even if The Teacher didn’t like my strategy, I couldn’t think of anything else. Sir Connaught Sampson-Samson thought it would be fun, but even he was scared. David Tennant looked proud when we discussed it. After learning that Billie was captured, his eyes locked themselves to the table for five minutes, during which he spoke in a dead monotone. After that, he was the most frightening, beautiful David Tennant, voice brittle with having to pretend. I loved every meeting with him despite it all, and our connection was unlike anything I had ever experienced. I thought, ‘So this is the connection you feel with your real father.’ I still loved the man who brought me up, but with David the bond was more utter and primal. I understood, a little, Electra and all those other tragic ones.

The trial got closer. But I still had something that needed clearing up. Once we went to court, things might happen too fast. ‘You have to tell me about Rollo Price,’ I asked him.

Chapter 48: Does She Not, To Put It In a Nutshell, Have Any Mates?

2007-10-18T09:52:00.000+01:00

So much has happened so fast that I have forgotten to mention some things. It’s because they haven’t felt germane, exactly, but I want to say them now because they might make me seem less of a freak.

For instance, I have talked about my excellent relationship with my ‘real’ parents – the ones who brought me up – and I have mentioned having friends, and generally hinted that my life seemed quite normal ten days ago (or at least up until my wedding, which was a week before that). Since things went haywire, I have periodically mentioned that I wanted to get in touch with the people I knew, but have been stopped from doing so by the Teacher, Johnny Depp, et al. I was stopped because I was in the middle of crises, or my friends hadn’t been re-vetted, or various other good reasons, given that the people stopping me were operating under a war-footing. But of course, in these last ten days, at quieter moments, I have been allowed to speak to my family and friends. If I hadn’t, they would have assumed I was kidnapped and called the police, and made a fuss in the news, etc., and generally done what they could to counter the ludicrous pictures of me shopping with Victoria Beckham and snogging poor evil Matt Damon. I couldn’t tell my friends the details, but I said that there was something crazy going on which needed me to play a role, and that I would explain it all as soon as I could. Then, I said… Look. I’ll stop there. Suffice to say that I spoke to them, and at the end of the conversation they were reassured – not completely, but enough to let me be for the short time this whole nightmare was going to take. Talking to them made me feel better. My parents took it better than my friends and also worse. They took it better because they are much wiser than my friends, and more sensible, and they had also always known there was something curious about how I appeared in their lives, so deep down they were less surprised. But they took it worse for the same reason: it was something they had always feared.

What I am saying is that, in spite of the impression you might have got from this story, I was a normal sort of youngish person living in London. I went to work every day. I went skiing every Christmas. I had some great friends I saw most weekends, and some less good friends I met up with for drinks during the week. Because of all what has happened since my wedding, I’ve ended up telling all the most colourful bits of my history, as if it was all leading up to now. But that’s not how any of it seemed at the time. Take the archenemy period with Cathy Calloway: I used to think it was just a good way of telling an anecdote about my student days. Also, there is nothing the faintest bit unusual about the crush I had on my work-neighbour which I never did anything about. I dare say the night I spent with lovely Will, which was our secret, was unusual, but everyone who is thirty has done some things that sound colourful if you write them down – we all have baggage and mine is nothing to write home about. It’s not like I was a happily married soap-starlet’s lesbian mistress, and even if I were, it is totally possible to be one of those and have a very ordinary boring life, I happen to know, because, well, we’ll not go into that.

I don’t know why I’m saying this. It’s protesting too much, since my life has turned unusual to a world-changing degree. But put it this way: I bet it’s normal for normal people to go on and on about how normal they are when they are put in a situation where other people might think they are abnormal. I wasn’t a different person, in spite of what had happened. I wasn’t cleverer, braver or more beautiful. I had been forced to make certain decisions, and I was convinced that I was somehow important in spite of my intrinsic ordinariness, but I was the same person to look at, with the same worries and uncertainties. Thus, in need of comfort, the most comforting person I could think of was my mother. Thus, when told I couldn’t get in touch with her, and in such a way as to indicate that something terrible had happened, I flipped out. I can’t remember what I shouted at Miss Smallbone, but I do know that the next thing I knew she was standing with two fingers pressed to my elbow while I was frozen, every nerve and muscle locked helplessly. ‘No, Mary Sue,’ she said. ‘We cannot afford this. Your mother cannot afford it. Time is a luxury we do not have. So is rage. We must keep moving forward. I will release you now, and you will then be calm.’

She released me, and my body rebooted in sections. My tongue was clumsy as I stammered, ‘Is she safe? Where is she?’

‘The Master has her, and…’ Miss Smallbone’s face went white and her hand covered her little round mouth. ‘Oh Mary Sue, I am so sorry. Of course. I am not… I mean… You do not mean your…’ I was as terrified by Miss Smallbone’s stumbling as I had been by anything else she had said, and I started to realise how much I has subconsciously come to depend on her calm omniscience. ‘The mother who raised you is fine. She is untouched. I mean… The Master has your birth mother.’

Chapter 47: Back of the Class

2007-10-17T09:47:00.000+01:00

‘No!’ said the Teacher. ‘There has to be another way.’

‘I can’t think of one.’

‘You have two weeks, Mary Sue.’

‘Have you thought of anything better?’

‘It’s not,’ Miss Smallbone began primly, and then she stopped. The silence built, and she looked at me, her moon face considering what I had just said. Then she shook her head. ‘There must be something else, but I don’t know what it is. It’s not my place.’

I was still suffused with the strange new clarity I’d found in the courtroom earlier, and so, to Miss Smallbone, the super-competent leader of the forces of good, I said, ‘That sounds like evasion, Teacher.’ Her eyes snapped to mine, pale blue, glittering. I’d never seen her in anything other than complete control, and it was frightening, but not very. She wasn’t angry with me. She was unused to any feeling of doubt, and she was trying to understand my plan, which would involve an upheaval of all she had known for so long. ‘The prophecy says that I find a way to cut my father out of a metaphorical coiled snake, as if with a sword. That sounds like I do it by changing the rules, doesn’t it? By not accepting the snake’s terms? Isn’t that what this plan does? Can you think of another way to get David Tennant off this murder charge?’

‘But…’ began Miss Smallbone. She wanted to say something, but she stopped. ‘You will find the way.’

‘What aren’t you telling me?’

‘You will find the way, Mary Sue, but in this case, I want you to think very hard about alternatives.’

‘Stop treating me like a child. Since this started, all you’ve told me is little bits of the story.’

‘It’s for your own safety.’

‘I’ve had enough of it.’

‘I dare say,’ said Miss Smallbone.

I was enraged. I’d been kidnapped, drugged and flown around the world. I’d nearly been killed, I’d killed and I’d been told I would save the world, and still the Teacher didn’t trust me. My calm deserted me, and I said, ‘You can’t send someone into battle without telling them everything.’

‘Of course you can. That is exactly what you do. You send people into battle knowing only the things they need to know.’

‘Get out of my house,’ I said, but I didn’t mean it.

‘I’m sorry, but you know that I’m right. Sit down, and let me make you some tea.’
***

Never underestimate the power of cliché. Tea made me feel better, as it always has. When I first graduated from tea-at-teatime and the odd hot chocolate onto regular-hot-drinks-through-the-day as a sixteen year old (I wasn’t very precocious), the drink I graduated to was instant coffee, because that was what my mother drank. Then, when I got to university, it seemed as if everyone drank coffee, with tea as the periodic other-option, usually to be drunk at teatime. And yet, by the time a graduated three years later, everyone was drinking tea. I don’t know why this was, since the period coincided with the Starbucks revolution. Oh, of course, I suddenly think, maybe that is precisely it: maybe Starbucks gave everyone certain expectations of coffee, which meant that instant coffee was no longer acceptable, while tea made at home was almost always decent? With insights like this I could write lazy columns for the national press. Whatever, the tea I had with friends at the time I was graduating was no more mystical than the coffee I had with them when I arrived, but it is the drink we still have whenever we meet up, and so tea means comfort, and periods of stillness and relaxation with people who are demanding nothing.

What I am groping ever so clumsily towards is that doing something which you almost always do when you are in a certain mood – such as wearing flip-flops and a sundress when you are on holiday for instance – can bring on that mood. So that, even if you are working on a grim Sunday in your flat and you turn up the heating high and put on flip-flops and a sundress, you can trick your body into feeling that it must be having fun, because all the physical signals are there that you are on holiday. Or maybe my body is just particularly suggestible. Whatever, if I started always having tea in moments of stress with murderers or something, or with deceptive supposed-leaders sending me to my death without telling me that it’s all part of some big plan, then I suppose tea would have different associations, and it would lose its power to induce calm, but that was not the case here. Instead, the action of drinking tea in my kitchen was so strongly associated with certain things that it brought on the usual calm, which was a mood I don’t think I’d felt properly since watching the decapitation. Just like Miss Smallbone knew it would.

‘I am sorry there are still secrets, Mary Sue. I really am.’

‘I understand,’ I said. ‘You are not my comforter. I’ll call my mother.’

Miss Smallbone’s white face went white. ‘I’m afraid you can’t do that,’ she said. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

Chapter 46: I'd Almost Forgotten About Her

2007-10-16T09:39:00.000+01:00

I shouldn’t have been surprised to see my archenemy at David Tennant’s arraignment. The process took twenty minutes because of all the media fuss. I’d spent all morning answering police questions, including some from a tall LAPD detective called Landseer who’d flown to England to question me about the Vanessa Paradis/Ewan McGregor shootings. For some reason, blind panic, probably, I located within me a hitherto never-suspected zen-like focus. I needed every bit of it when I walked out of the courtroom into the flashlights, which I expected, and into Cathy Calloway, who I did not.
Cathy was dressed as the mourning wife in a mafia movie – black pill-box hat and a little veil, black suit with short skirt, patent leather stilettos, white face, mouth a red slash, nails like talons. ‘You murdered the love of my life!’ she hissed.

‘I beg your pardon.’

‘You killed him!’

‘That’s an extremely bold accusation to be making in public, Miss Calloway,’ I said.

‘You know what I mean, you dumpy bitch!’

‘I’m accused of nothing, and my client denies the charge.’

‘He killed Gavin, because you told him to.’

I raised my voice, ever so slightly, and said, ‘Gavin, the love of your life?’

‘Yes. Of course he was! You know…’

‘Gavin, my husband? My husband was the love of your life?’

‘Shut up! You know exactly what I am saying!’

She was saying was that the demon Gavin was her partner through the millennia, but of course she couldn’t say that to the press. I saw precisely what I had to say to wind her up. ‘You are saying you and my husband were the love of each other’s lives?’

‘Of course we were. Anyone could see it.’

‘I have to say, Miss Calloway, that if I were the police, I would look at the situation and think that this Gavin had clearly chosen one of these two women, and he’d done so in a very public way, with a ring, and given that one of the two women is now completely hysterical as a result, it seems that we should maybe be looking at how she reacted when she was scorned by this Gavin. Maybe she was so upset she wanted to kill him?’

‘You know that’s not true. You know why he married you!’

‘Yes, or I presume so. I presume he married me because he loved me. It can’t have been money, or status, since you have more of those things than I have. So it must have been because he loved me more than you. I’m sorry you can’t accept that.’

‘He chose me at the wedding!’

‘You seduced him when he was drunk, and we had a fight. Look, Cathy, none of this is decorous. I’m sure you didn’t kill him, and nor did I.’

‘David Tennant killed him, and you told him to!’

‘If you repeat what you just said, you will be in court for slander. Surely you shouldn’t be making an exhibition of all this. Cathy dear. It’s so vulgar.’ And I swept out. I’d never swept out of anywhere in my life before. I’d tried a few times, but I’d usually just knocked something over. Maybe being doomed really does make you cooler. Although, on the being doomed front, Cathy Calloway had given me the glimmering of an idea.
***

I told David Tennant my idea, and he liked it. I want to say, ‘I felt like a clever girl trying to impress her dad, and basking in the glow of his approval,’ but this was not what I felt like. I wanted to impress him, and was excited when he was impressed, but… Well. The thing about this is that I’ve never been a kinky person in any way. I’m not a kinky person, I don’t think.
***

Miss Smallbone was in my flat when I got home. How she got past the reporters was just one of the many mysteries. She must have been able to teleport, basically, though when I accused her of doing so, she denied it with a faint smile. ‘Do you have an idea, Mary Sue?’ I told her my idea, and her face fell.

WEEKEND NINE

2007-10-15T09:11:00.000+01:00

Hi, hi, hi,

Late with weekend round-up. Lateness merely the result of nightmarish panic (blah, blah, blah), and a weekendly round-up not being part of the original commitment, and etc. Have only written a couple of things since getting back from NY because computer has gone West to join the phone, and, wait a second, you really don't need to hear about the many tedious ways in which I am sometimes forced to pay my rent.

Whatever. From tomorrow, I will be writing the day before I post, which is slightly nervewracking. It certainly doesn't leave me any leeway to get ill. It is what it is.

Chapter 45: Not Appropriate

2007-10-15T09:09:00.000+01:00

‘Mary Sue,’ said David Tennant. ‘I thought you’d abandoned me!’

‘No, I’d never! I was… Oh, wait, you’re joking, right?’ Of course he was. He knew all about my death defying adventures. And that wasn’t all. Before we began working out how to extricate him from this murder charge, there was something incredibly important that I had to say. ‘I know who you are,’ I said. ‘The Teacher told me.’

‘Oh,’ he said, looking at the table. ‘I… Well.’ I can see why he hadn’t told me before. Knowing that David Tennant was an evil reincarnating demon who had fathered me and then turned good for the love of my angel mother, who had stayed lost for thousands of years when she learned who he was, definitely made things weird. But it was something we had to get through. He looked down at his hands with the face he wears on television when he is doing something that hurts him but is the right thing to do. And then he gave me the sparkling grin he does next, and said, ‘Well, yes. There it is! Been remiss at birthdays. Not much of a dad, am I?’

He didn’t feel like my dad. I had a dad, who had been my dad all my life. David Tennant felt like… Well, he felt like David Tennant. Except that now, when I looked at him, I finally understood what it was about his face that made him so mesmeric. His eyes were old. I can’t explain it, and maybe I just saw things because I knew them, but they seemed like eyes-like-fathomless-wells in bad romantic novels. He said, ‘You’ve cut it pretty fine, haven’t you. The arraignment is tomorrow. The Teacher must be doing his nut.’

‘I haven’t spoken to Miss…’

‘Mary Sue, Mary Sue, I cannot imagine what you are going to say, but before you say it: walls have ears.’ Of course. I’d been going to mention Miss Smallbone’s name. David Tennant and I were the only people who knew who she was. Miss S had called to tell me Sir Connaught Sampson-Samson was picking me up to bring me here, but by the time I let him into my house, she was off the phone, and I had no way to get back in touch with her.

In the car, I had asked Sir Conn, my head of chambers, why he couldn’t take over from me as David Tennant’s counsel. He said, ‘Won’t work, old fish, I’m all out of ideas. The prophecy says that your father will be beyond hope, coiled in a snake or some such metaphor, and you will cut through the metaphorical coiled snake with a sword. Specifically, says the prophecy, you will prove his innocence, which could hardly be more apposite, no? It will be like a miracle, because you will see something no one else sees, and do something no one else could have done. There is also something about him sacrificing himself for you and your mother, but that comes later. The language in the original is more ornate, but that’s the gist. Looking forward to it – seen a lot of hopeless cases, but this one beats the band. So, every faith in you, but we probably best get off to see Tennant, since time’s winged chariot.’ Like most of the angels, Sir Conn’s lip crinkled when he said David Tennant’s name. They couldn’t forgive him his millennia of evil. He looked back at the road, having not done so for the duration of the above speech, slammed on the brakes, and shouted, ‘GET OUT OF MY WAY, FOXTONS-MINI-TOERAG! Ha ha. Parp parp.’

Sergeant Rollo Price followed behind, in his own car, not a police one. I asked Sir Conn if Rollo was an angel or a demon, and why the Master had photographs of him in his LA mansion. Sir Conn said he knew nothing about Rollo, and I believed him. But Sir Conn also agreed that it was suspicious. ‘Speak to the Teacher about it,’ he said.

The case certainly seemed like a hopeless metaphorical coiled snake. Thirty lawyers had witnessed David Tennant decapitating my husband. Even if his weapon had mysteriously disappeared, it was the definition of an unwinnable case. I asked David what he thought, and whether he might consider insanity as a plea, and he said, ‘The prophecy says you’ll prove me innocent. You’re my girl,’ he said, something wrenching at his face again from inside, ‘No idea how you’ll do it, but I can’t see what can possibly go wrong.’

I asked more questions, but he was unhelpful. He said, ‘Doesn’t really matter yet, tomorrow’s the arraignment, I’m pleading “Not Guilty” whatever, and then you’ll have a couple of weeks. Plenty of time. What’s le Pen up to?’

‘He’s still saying it was an accident. Everyone believes him except Mayor Boris.’

‘I’ve always liked Boris.’

‘Yes. Who is my mother, David? Do you have any idea who…’

‘No. You will have to ask the Teacher.’ And right at that moment, I remembered that when he puts on his brave face on the telly, it always means that he’s lying to his companion because he thinks it’s for the best. Technically, it was irritating now it involved me, but it has always been my very favourite expression of his, the doomed sense of self-denial, the thing I love most about the Doctor. What I felt about him at that moment, as a ray of sun flashed across his face, was very inappropriate indeed. God help me, I thought, because it looked like no one else could.

Chapter 44: Masterful

2007-10-12T09:38:00.000+01:00

Omigod. Johnny Depp’s eyes were heavy and glowing above my face, like two jewels I knew were cursed but which were so beautiful that my hand was drawn to them anyway. Omigod, omigod, omigod.

The Teacher told me not to have sex with Johnny Depp because it would be a disaster in ways I couldn’t imagine. And the Master was supposed to have some unstoppable way of making me forget myself and join his evil plans. And sex with Johnny Depp was so amazing that I was prepared to do it even though the Teacher, who was trying to save the world, told me not to. And no one knew who the Master was, because he was the cleverest of the demons, just like the Teacher, Miss Smallbone, was the cleverest of the angels. But if she was the cleverest of the angels, how could she risk this if she knew or even suspected that Johnny Depp was the Master? And if Johnny Depp was the Master, what did that make Rollo Price, who had turned up in Los Angeles when the Master was supposed to. What I can tell you is what all this made me: completely paranoid. Johnny said, ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ I said.

‘We shouldn’t do this,’ he said, and kissed me, and it felt as if every bone in my body went soft. The phone rang. ‘Leave it,’ he said. I left it. If he was the Master, then what harm did this do? I knew who he was, and so I was forewarned, and it was as if, basically, I was using him to gratify myself. I was completely using Johnny Depp. And then I would have this memory forever, and no one could take it away from me, and all of those things. And my bones were even softer, and it felt as if he was melting into me.

And then my answerphone kicked in, and the disguised voice of the Teacher said, ‘Stop it, Mary Sue! I can see what you’re doing. I told you not to, and I have very good reasons that I do not, at this moment, have time to explain, because I am trying to save the world. Suffice for the moment to say that your doorbell is going to ring at any moment, and you have work to do, and both of you need to get this hormonal nonsense out of your heads. Get off her, Johnny. I know you’re upset, and thinking about Vanessa, but she was a brave soldier, and you must be brave too.’

The phone clicked, and the doorbell rang. Johnny said, ‘I wasn’t think about Vanessa,’ and he kissed me again, very gently, and my arms tightened around him, but he smiled ruefully and pushed himself up to the full length of his arms. Then he winked, and hopped up, and pulled me after him. I went to the door, smoothing my hair. I was so discombobulated that I hadn’t properly considered who might be waiting – I took it on trust that it would be someone good, since the Teacher hadn’t given me any specific warnings – so when I opened it and there stood Rollo Price, it felt like I had been punched in the stomach.

‘Mary Sue?’ he said, stepping towards me, as I instinctively moved away. ‘Are you ok? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost?’ Press cameras clittered in the background. I forgot to mention the cameras earlier. Since I had been photographed with David Tennant, Matt Damon, Victoria Beckham and the Depps, and then sort-of-disappeared while I was at the centre of a series of international crime investigations involving top celebrities, I had become a sort of celebrity myself, and there were paparazzi camped outside my door when I got back, but Johnny Depp whisked me in past them as if it was all in a day’s work, which for him it was. But now they were taking pictures of me and Rollo, and behind Rollo was Sir Connaught Sampson-Samson, my head of chambers.

‘Fun, isn’t it?’ said Sir Conn. ‘But still, maybe better inside?’ Sir Conn was an angel, and I definitely trusted him. But Rollo? Sir Conn saw me looking at him sceptically, and he said, ‘It’s ok, Mary Sue. I’m here.’ So we went in.

Because I have never said anything else to anyone visiting my flat ever, I asked if they wanted tea, and they said yes, so we all stood in the not very large kitchen while the kettle boiled. Johnny hovered protectively, which I liked, which made me nearly as terrified, deep down in my soul, as the fact that Rollo looked as if he was about to leap on Johnny and pull his head off. Sir Conn acted as if he were oblivious to all this, but if there was one thing I had learned about Sir Connaught Sampson-Samson it was that he was oblivious to nothing, ever. A couple of times, I caught his eyes flashing from beneath their hooded lids, gauging the situation, calculating the points of particular stress. Eventually, I could hold off no more, and I said, ‘So, Rollo, plain clothes today. Are you on holiday? Have you been anywhere nice?’ A pause while he gauged what I knew and conjured up some inoffensive lie, but before he could tell it, I said, ‘What are you up to, Rollo?’

‘I might ask you the same question.’

‘I might answer it, if you arrest me. But you’re in my house now.’

‘I’ve been looking for you. You’re a witness in a murder investigation. I know you, so I was the obvious person to send to LA to ask you to come back.’

‘So you could pretend to be my friend?’ He looked blank, so I added, ‘I heard you tell your partner that that’s what you were doing.’

‘Is that why you’re angry? I told her that because it’s best not to let on to your fellow policemen that a witness is your mate. Saying that was what kept me on the case. So I could protect you.’

‘What happened in LA?’

‘Nothing. We heard you were in Harrison Ford’s mansion. We arrived…’

‘Who’s “we”?’

‘Me and Detective Landseer, LAPD. But as soon as we arrived, there was a massive fuss, and some shooting.’ Oh. That had been me, escaping. ‘I wanted to go in, but we were blocked off and told to wait. Landseer said we were leaving. A couple of bodyguards told us we had to stay. Then Landseer called for back-up, and then Harrison Ford arrived, heard what was happening, and told his bodyguards that they couldn’t afford any trouble, and that we would have to go. Harrison Ford looked at me as if he knew who I was. It was freaky. What have you got yourself mixed up in, Mary Sue?’ If he was lying, he was a brilliant actor. But then, if he was the Master, then he WOULD be a brilliant actor. I still didn’t know who to trust.

‘Entertaining as all this is,’ said Sir Conn, ‘your client is going before a judge tomorrow, and he really needs to see you.’ In all the furore, I had (almost) forgotten about David Tennant.

Chapter 43: Does She Not, To Put It in a Nutshell, Fuck?

2007-10-11T16:22:00.000+01:00

Here are a collection of moments that I have not described in detail because I have had other things on my mind, but which I was mulling over during the two hours I spent on the sofa watching nuclear bomb news with Johnny Depp. They did not occur to me in this neat chronological order, but by the end of the two hours, that is how I had sifted them in my mind.
***

When Cathy Calloway revealed herself as my archenemy by shagging Rollo Price loudly in the room next to mine, and I sat drinking embarrassed tea with nice big Canadian Harley, I grew mortified and angry, but also frustrated. When Harley went to leave, I kissed him and asked him to stay. It was my first time, and Harley was not particularly gentle, but he was very sweet. I thought of making my own loud cries for Cathy and Rollo’s benefit, but even at the time I realised that would have been too ridiculously obvious for words. I was drunk and angry, and what I did, while maybe not particularly kind to Harley in the short-term, though I doubt he ever minded much, was a normal sort of thing to do, under the circumstances.
***

When I came upon my husband shagging Cathy Calloway, and she saw me and pretended to come, I knew she was faking it, because Gavin was not very good in bed. I had taught him enough about me that I didn’t have to take matters into my own hands, and it was often very nice, but it required him to be dutiful. He needed specific teaching. He had no instinct at all. There was not a way in hell he could have achieved success shagging someone standing up. Underneath my horror and betrayal, the knowledge that Cathy was faking it made things very slightly less awful. This is a completely normal reaction, on my part.
***

When I went back to work while Gavin took Cathy on my honeymoon, my gloomy neighbour who I’d always fancied came to see if I was alright. He brought a small latte with an extra shot, which was my regular, and an orange which he had cut up into cute little eighths. He sat in my clients’ chair, and a fantasy flashed into my head that he was about to say that he had also discovered his wife was unfaithful, and it was like fate, and was there any point waiting for a discreet amount of time to pass when this thing between us was so strong? This is absolutely not how I felt or what I wanted – I liked him and his wife, and what there was between us, if anything, was far in the past, but I had no viable dreams of a better personal life, and this one jumped into my mind fully-formed. This kind of thing happens to everyone all the time, and it’s perfectly normal.
***

When David Tennant came into my office a few hours after that, I had some very different instant fantasies. They were easily accessible and relocatable to my office, since they were part of the regular fantastical apparatus that anyone engaged to Gavin would need to have available to enhance that side of her life. It’s not that I haven’t had a normal amount in my life, with normal people, but I’ve always refused to regard it as the bedrock of a relationship or anything, since obviously no sex life will be great forever (people say), and if you built on that alone, you were building on sand, so you built on something solid (like I had with Gavin, ha ha ha). When I had sex with Gavin, which was fine, I thought of David Tennant, and other people I could never even possibly have sex with. I did NOT think of my gloomy neighbour. I didn’t think of Rollo, even. That would have been wishing for a different reality, whereas daydreaming about David Tennant had nothing to do with life. It was just for fun, and it didn’t feel unfaithful. When I had the momentary fantasies on seeing David Tennant in the flesh, they suddenly felt new. They didn’t feel unfaithful, exactly, because I didn’t have anyone to be unfaithful to, but they felt somehow sullied, like pornography or something. Embarrassing, actually, is what they felt. This was a man who was a figure of my joking fantasy life, and also my secret real fantasy life, but I could hardly tell him that, because it would objectify him, and he was a real person with real feelings, and… This was a ridiculous train of thought, obviously, but getting cold feet on encountering one’s fantasy: perfectly normal.
***

When I was standing with Rollo Price on the roof of the police station, I could not remove from myself how much and how desperately I had once wanted him. When he chose Cathy, I told myself and everyone who would listen that this proved how incompatible we were, which won’t have fooled anyone except me (I am very easy to fool). I even tried to pretend I was unmoved by Cathy going on and on about how amazing he was in bed. None of the men I ever slept with (eight, if you’re desperate to know) were amazing in bed. They were mostly perfectly ok – I mean, they had all read enough furtive copies of Cosmo, and ‘accidentally’ watched enough Sex and the City to know that orgasms are important and they would be judged harshly for not providing them – but I basically began to think that there was no such thing as ‘amazing in bed,’ and orgasms were all basically the same after all (even though I knew very well, deep down, that this was not so, so who was I trying to kid?). This kind of thought is perfectly normal when your sex life is in the doldrums.
***

When I found out David Tennant was my father, I was mortified. I could pretend that this was because I felt icky about having fantasised about my father, but it was really because he had entered my real life, and although you get cold feet when your fantasy enters your real life, you also reshape your fantasy to fit the new circumstances, and I couldn’t help myself from having wondered if, just possibly, I mean, here he was, asking me for help, and he was so gorgeous, and, etc. But if he was my father then that was that, and another fantasy bites the dust. This also feels like a normal and plausible reaction to this set of circumstances.
***

When I was having sex with Johnny Depp, therefore, and realising that there really IS such a thing as amazing sex, I was thinking to myself that, on the many occasions when I had given opinions about sex while I chatted with my friends, it must have been ludicrously obvious that I didn’t know what I had been talking about. This is why, a day and a continent later, when Johnny Depp rolled me off the sofa, it was a perfectly normal reaction that I pantingly ignored the fact that that the Teacher had told us in no uncertain terms that us having sex would be a disaster. Why was that? How could it be? I mean, Johnny was so masterful!

Chapter 42: Missile to Mayfair

2007-10-10T08:38:00.000+01:00

Johnny Depp piloted his jet down to the private airstrip, which was near Luton airport and piggy-backed off its air traffic control resources somehow. Luton was where all the celebrities surprisingly keep their planes. There was even, Johnny told me, a top secret branch of Soho House in this dull Hertforshire town. CRACKLE, and the disguised voice of the Master burst out of the radio. ‘Johnny! We are tracking you! We know you are landing in London! You have only two minutes to turn away. The nuclear missile is already at the south coast. Everyone in London is going to die, and you won’t be safe in Luton, if that’s what you think!’

‘When it’s your time, it’s your time,’ said Johnny Depp.

‘This isn’t a movie! There’s no deus ex machina. There’s just a pulverising holocaust and a city full of corpses.’

‘One of them will be mine,’ I said, calmly.

‘Yes! Stop him, Mary Sue. Turn him round. He’s doing it because we killed Vanessa. He’s not being rational.’

‘You sound very upset,’ I said.

‘I’m…’

‘It’s interesting for me, psychologically, how upset you seem. I’m new to all this, you see. I’m coming to it fresh, and I have to say that comparing you with the Teacher, who I’ve just been speaking to, it’s like chalk and cheese.’

‘I don’t care about the Teacher. I just want you to… What do you mean? Is he cooler than me?’

‘He’s way cooler.’

‘You’re just trying to… Oh. Wait. You’ve been speaking to the Teacher! He’s told you to fly into the flames.’

‘I am literally like a moth.'

‘Don’t be absurd. The Teacher wants you dead because he’s scared of what you and I could do together. He knows that if you were on his side, the pair of you could kill me, but he’s frightened that you will join me, and we will open the Gates of Hell together. He’s a coward because he knows, in his heart, that he is a traitor to his kind. To OUR kind, Mary Sue. But if you really do want to beat me, then you have to save yourself. You’re the only one who can kill me, says the prophecy. If you don’t do it, I carry on wreaking havoc, time out of mind. I might not be able to open the Gates of Hell, but does that really matter when I can destroy London like I am about to do RIGHT NOW? I will destroy every major city in the world tomorrow if you do not turn away. Every major centre of population. I don’t care if I turn the world into a desert. I reincarnate and reincarnate, and so do we all, and, in the end, another of my demons will procreate with an angel, and there will be another Chosen One, and this suicide of yours, this fit of childish pique, will have been for nothing. You are destroying the world you know. Let that be on your conscience, Mary Sue.’

The wheels touched down, and Johnny Depp held my hand. I said, ‘When it’s your time, it’s your time.’
***

Two hours later, back in my flat, we were watching the news. Pictures, of Green Park showed where the missile had landed, and failed to explode, but still caused massive devastation. It killed eighty people sitting in the sun, and wounded hundreds more. At the bottom of the screen, a banner marched leftwards proclaiming that the French President le Pen said this was a terrible accident, the actions of a rogue submarine captain over-reacting to the approach of a British destroyer attempting to break the blockade of the Channel Islands. Le Pen’s speech, which we’d watched several times by now, threw much blame onto this British destroyer, which had entered what he described as ‘French Territorial Waters.’ World leaders had lined up to condemn French aggression in the Channel, and le Pen’s mealy-mouthed evasions, but they all accepted that the missile was a tragic accident. Of course they did. Who could possibly believe that even le Pen would nuke London, since he would immediately face global reprisals? Everyone said it was a miracle that the missile hadn’t exploded. President Bush described it as a gift from God, and normally everyone would have laughed at him, and maybe they would tomorrow, but it’s how everyone was feeling. Johnny Depp and I knew the truth, of course, but we weren’t telling anyone that for now.

The other politician who’d been playing on a constant loop was Boris Johnson. He knew about the Teacher. He knew that le Pen had been trying, on his Master’s orders, to neutralise the angels. Of course he didn’t say all this. What he said was, ‘I know it is almost impossible to believe, but this wasn’t a mistake. Most of the Froggies, pardon my French, are innocent, but le Pen is a horror, a lunatic, and everything he says about British aggression is guff. This submarine captain is at the peak of his profession. He’s been trained NOT to fire nuclear missiles without extreme provocation or very clear orders. He has clearly received the latter. Londoners are lucky that the French can’t build proper bombs, but we will never forget this, and we know it was no mistake. We do not know what France is doing, but she is doing something, and when it becomes clear what that is, we will be ready. We have stood in her way before, and we will stand in her way again. We will use luck, and we will use steel, and she may think we will fail, but we never have, and we never will.’ Boris was being slated for his bombastic tone, and for not understanding the only possible rational explanation for what had happened. World leaders censured him. Gordon Brown cautiously supported London and Londoners, but warned against over-reaction until all the facts were known.

And then Vladimir Putin spoke. He said that Boris Johnson was the unacceptable face of British Imperialism, and France was right to take back her Channel Islands, and that Russia stood four-square behind le Pen. But I didn’t pay as much attention as I perhaps should have because I was on the sofa with Johnny Depp, and I hadn’t forgotten what happened in the batcave. However wrong it was supposed to have been, it was the first time in a week I had forgot myself, and been at peace, albeit in very unpeaceful way. But there’s no way Johnny could have been feeling the same way, so it wouldn’t matter if I let my feet sort of accidentally touch his side. The instant after I touched him he had rolled me off the sofa and onto the floor, somehow catching me so there was no fall, and we were kissing, and I was wrapping around him, and neither of us were thinking about the Teacher, as far as I could tell.

Chapter 41: Misplaced Trust

2007-10-09T19:01:00.001+01:00

‘You’re alive!’ said Johnny Depp.

‘So it would seem,’ said the Teacher.

‘But…’ I said.

‘You’re ALIVE!’ said Johnny Depp.

‘Yes. And annoyed, since my plan for discovering the Master’s identity was ruined when Mary Sue decided to go walkabout. Explain yourself, Mary Sue.’

‘I heard you’d been captured and tortured to death.’

‘That wasn’t me.’

‘Who was it?’

‘Grainne Sand.’

‘Grainne!’ said Johnny Depp.

‘Yes. A very brave angel prepared to go to her death if the demons realised they’d been infiltrated.’

‘A suicide mission!’ I said.

‘This is a war, Mary Sue.’ The Teacher almost sounded tired. ‘Sacrifices are necessary sometimes. Grainne was there to pay the final price, and allow us to escape, which she did, but her sacrifice was wasted.’

‘I’m so sorry. But maybe you should have told me the plan.’

‘Maybe so,’ said the Teacher.

‘It wasn’t completely wasted. I did escape.’

‘Yes,’ said the Teacher. ‘I was both surprised and impressed by that. How did you do it?’

‘Well,’ I said, flattered, ‘it was like this. I…’

‘Actually, there’s no time. The key thing is for you to now land in London.’ Johnny Depp asked the Teacher to repeat this, since London was about to be blown up by a nuclear missile. ‘Land in London, Johnny. Trust me.’

I had trusted Gavin, my recently murdered husband. I never REALLY loved him, but still I married him because he seemed to be good enough, and it was time. When I say that out loud, I want to stab myself in the hand with a knife for being so stupid, but there it is. Whatever. That’s all beside the point, because while I didn’t LOVE Gavin, I did trust him. I absolutely did. But he was a demon who had wormed his way into my affections (I did feel affection for him ((tinged with pity (listen to me! What was I doing?!))), and even in addition to that very fundamental deception about his whole nature and purpose, he had sex with someone else at our wedding reception. Ergo misplaced trust. Then, also, I trusted Rollo Price, my old friend from university who became a policeman and acted like a knight in shiny armour when I was being questioned after David Tennant killed Gavin to protect me. But then I heard Rollo say it was all his tactics to get me to confess, and then I found Rollo’s picture in the headquarters of the people trying to make me destroy the world, and Rollo turned up at these headquarters when the evil Master was supposed to. Ergo misplaced trust. Among other people I have trusted are Johnny Depp, who at various points said I should be killed and he’d do it himself; my parents, who never told me I was a foundling; my so-called best friend at school, Hetty Winglass, who thought I was boring; and there are bound to be others but I worry there is a danger of my sounding self-pitying if I carry on. But a pattern begins to emerge. I wanted desperately to trust the Teacher. She was the leader of the angels who were, I was almost certain, trying to protect me. But she was saying, through the voice-disguiser that made her sound like a man, that we had to land in London even though a nuclear bomb etc. And there had been a time very recently when she kept me drugged so I wouldn’t be able to mess up her plan to find out who the Master was (though that fell through, unless the Master was Rollo). So, while I trusted her to do what she though was the best thing for the world, I could tell she was a leader, and prepared to make the hard decisions, and one of those might be to sacrifice me, since if I was dead, the Master wouldn’t be able to open the Gates of Hell, which sounded like the all-time worst-case scenario.

‘Please repeat instructions,’ said Johnny Depp again.

‘I don’t have time for this, Johnny.’

‘But…’

‘Unless the physical missile hits your plane, you will be safe. The warhead will not explode.’

‘But…’

‘I’ll explain very quickly, so don’t interrupt: after the Cuban missile crisis, I decided that nuclear weapons were really dangerous.’

‘Ok.’

‘So I disarmed them.’

‘How did you do that? How come you…’

‘Did I not ask you not to interrupt? And do you not remember that I dropped out of circulation for ten years in the late sixties and early seventies?’

‘Yes.’

‘What I was doing, with a very small team of assistants, was going to all the world’s nuclear facilities, and injecting the weapon cores with a cocktail of ion pacifiers, rendering their reactive plasma inert.’

‘That’s incredible. But what about new weapons?’

‘We have an ongoing programme of factory-based inertification, combined with a load of scientists I have bribed to get the maths wrong so that basically all nuclear weapons are duff these days.’

‘That’s incredible.’

‘So you said. But what do you think I was doing all that time? Now I need you to land in London and get Mary Sue to David Tennant. He goes to trial the day after tomorrow, and he needs her. I don’t know what the strategy will be, but the End of Days is coming, and this whole mess is part of it, and I need her to be where she needs to be, and where we can have a team of angels looking after her. And, while I know you two enjoyed it, it would be better if you don’t have any more sex with each other.’

‘How did you know?’

‘Come on, Johnny. I’ve got cameras in that batcave.’

‘What harm could it do?’

‘You have no idea, Johnny. Trust me.’

Chapter 40: A Nuclear Bomb? How Bad Can That Be?

2007-10-08T14:39:00.000+01:00

It was ten minutes until we landed in London, which would be destroyed four minutes after that. ‘We have to warn someone!’ I said to Johnny Depp.

‘The others are all scattered. I doubt if I could even get in touch with…’

‘I don’t mean your friends, Johnny! I mean the government. Or the army or something!’

‘Who will believe you?’ said the Master’s evil electronic voice. ‘And what could they do? All you can do is turn away. If it makes you feel better, you can tell yourself that you’re choosing to live so you can fight with me another day.’ The Master, whoever he really was, wanted me alive so I could help him open the Gates of Hell. Maybe it would be better if I died.

‘Why are you doing this?’ I asked. ‘How is this helping?’

‘Suffice to say, Mary Sue, that the United Kingdom is a place I am rather to neutralise for historical reasons, because it is the headquarters of your so-called ‘angels’. Without them to oppose me, I am confident that the rest of my plans will run smoothly. So long as you survive. But as I say, and let me repeat this for Johnny’s benefit, you are also the angels’ only hope of defeating me, especially if their main force has been destroyed, so it is in everybody’s interest that you turn away from the holocaust, and that you do so right now. I cannot stress…’

‘I don’t believe you,’ said Johnny Depp, and clicked the radio off furiously, looking at me as if this were all my fault. The radio instantly returned to life, the Master calmly insisted that common sense must prevail, and Johnny turned him off again. This happened twice more before the radio fell silent. By this point, the Master’s mask of control was beginning to slip. I don’t think he was capable of pleading, whoever he was, but he came close. ‘He’s telling the truth,’ Johnny muttered. He started dialling numbers. ‘I’ve got to get the message out. Maybe some of them can reach a bunker.’ With his other hand, not looking, as if the act was being performed by a part of his body that was betraying him, he lifted the joystick and began turning the jet away from London. Since I had no idea where we were, I don’t know if he was turning north or south.

Moments later, Johnny was talking with someone on the ground who relayed information back to him with the languor of condemned man trying to put on a show. He said, ‘Obviously this is to do with le Pen – don’t spit when I say his name, Mary, it’s disgusting, and someone will have to clean up after you… Oh, you’re right, but don’t do it anyway – anyway, we haven’t got a clue. Mea culpa, I thought he was funny to start with, no idea what he was doing – no, Mary, hiding under the table won’t work however many 1950s information films you have watched – but I didn’t realise how many of military he had, none of us did. Andorra was funny too. That’s the problem, it seemed ridiculous and doomed, because this is modern world – the modern world, Mary, and still you are trying to find a paper bag to put over your head? Why don’t you go and make me a nice cup of tea? Anyway, Johnny, NO MARY, NOT DARJEELING, WE’RE ABOUT TO DIE – what was I saying? Yes, Andorra, then this whole – YES OF COURSE EARL GREY DO YOU THINK I’M SOME KIND OF A BARBARIAN? – thing was clearly, we see now, to give them the pretext for a once in a millennium nuclear “error”, but the end of the plan is unclear. They want rid of us, obviously – yes, Mary, it HAS worked, but bitterness never made anyone sweeter and, why are you crying, Mary? You’ve always what? Really? And now it’s almost too late and you might as well just go on and say it and there’s not enough time? There’s ten minutes, Mary, that’s plenty of time. Oh, gosh, sorry Johnny. Something’s come up here. It’s an important thing, er, to do with plutonium. I hate plutonium. I’ve got the message being relayed on the skunk wires, so anyone who can escape will escape, but, er, gosh, yes, I really must go. Good luck, and think of England.’ His voice clicked off.

Before Johnny could say anything, the insistent electronic voice returned the secret radio, cutting through Johnny’s conversation. ‘URGENT PRIORITY 1,’ it said. ‘REPEAT, PRIORITY 1. Respond immediately, over.’

‘You’ll never beat us,’ said Johnny Depp, ‘and I’m not telling you whether we’re landing or not.’

‘Johnny, what are you taking about? Thank God you’re safe! Do you have Mary Sue with you? This is the Teacher.’

WEEKEND EIGHT

2007-10-08T02:41:00.001+01:00

Ooh, only just in under the wire, and that's the wire from this end - at that end, the wire is in the past. Well, it is what it is, and the reason is that last night I was out dancing until this morning with a big Mary Sue fan who is currently sitting on sofa in this appartment complaining about terrible book whose advice on English tea-drinking is at best risible and at worst dangerously misleading.

After big few days, I am very little ahead of the curve, MS-wise. This will mean a stressful period since I also have a ton of work-for-money to be doing.

The big fact from New York, fashion fans: bedroom slippers. You think I am kidding, but I have seen them several times on the feet of Bright Young Things.

Chapter 39: Out of the Blast Furnace and Into the Volcano

2007-10-05T14:46:00.000+01:00

Johnny Depp piloted the future-jet into the enfolding Californian night, its engines howling like things you wouldn’t believe, the whole plane shaking. He pointed the nose, it seemed, at the stars, and my stomach was left on the ground. Not for the first or most enjoyable time that night, I felt a visceral sense of the power of someone or something else thrum through me, and my breathing deepened. I was trying to organise the mostly disturbing implications of this thought process when I fell asleep.

I mean, fair enough, right? I’d spent a day and a half drugged, and a day pretending to be drugged, I’d escaped rapists and murderers, killed my first bad guys and I’d had the best sex of my life (to that point). I was a long way past my limit, and even so I might have told my body to stay awake had my body interrogated me as to my preferences, so it didn’t.

Four hours later, Johnny shook me gently, and handed me a vacuum mug of coffee. On the way to America, it had been Vanessa Paradis who woke me like this. The future-jet thundered through the night, only it wasn’t really the night. We were in sunshine, but above the canopy, the sky was blue-black. Or rather, there was a thin wash of blue sky, if you were looking for it, but mainly there was the black of space. ‘How high are we?’ I asked.

‘High,’ Johnny replied, in the dull voice he’d spoken in since I told him that the Teacher was dead.

‘Where are we going?’

‘London. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes’

‘What are we going to do?’

‘I don’t know.’ The satiny sky was incredibly beautiful. At first sight, the cabin had seemed sparse and military, but it was actually surprisingly luxurious. If, and this is what I was assuming, this was one of the stealth planes that the Americans spend a billion on a time, or however absurd much it is, then I wasn’t surprised that they’d made it incredibly comfy, NOR that they’d done everything they could to pretend that this was not the case, in case it looked as if any of the billion dollars were being wasted. ‘The Teacher was our leader,’ said Johnny. ‘There wasn’t anyone else. He must have left us a plan.’

‘So? Can’t you find out what it is?’

‘I’m not telling the others that the Teacher is dead over a radio. You will tell them, face-to-face. And then, well, someone will have been told what to do next. The Teacher never leaves loose ends.’

‘Maybe David Tennant knows.’

‘Tennant,’ said Johnny Depp, and his lip curled in exactly the same way Vanessa Paradis’s had when she said David Tennant’s name. On one level, this was perfectly understandable, since David Tennant had been an evil demon for millions of reincarnations, but he came over to the right side when he fathered me. I opened my mouth to protest, but Johnny stopped me. ‘You don’t know about Tennant, whatever you think.’

‘The Teacher trusts him,’ I said.

I assumed this would be a clinching argument, given the relentless Teacher-reverence, but Johnny said, ‘You don’t know the Teacher. He sees things you couldn’t imagine, and he takes risks you’ll never believe. Vanessa and I, and we’re not the only ones, think that Tennant is still the Master’s pet. If he is, the Teacher will know it. We think the Teacher has let Tennant think he is one of us, year after year, and has let him report back to the Master, so that in the end, at the time of crisis, we can tell one perfect lie, and the Master will believe it, and it will have been worth every betrayal. You don’t want to hear this, because he is your father, but it is what we think.’

‘Presumably the Teacher will have included that in any instructions.’

‘Presumably.’

I had a sudden thought. ‘Will the Teacher have said where my mother is?’ I asked.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘But…’

‘The Teacher said she’d done enough, that she was spent. Guinevere was the best of us, before Grebulon got hold of her.’ Johnny Depp spat the real, ancient, demon name of Lancelot/David Tennant. Johnny carried on, ‘If it is right for the Teacher to have told us, then the Teacher will have told us, but I wouldn’t hold out much hope. Right. I have to prepare.’

‘Where are we landing?’

‘A private strip on one of our estates in North London. We’ll have been flying off radar till now, but we’ll be coming in over the suburbs. We’re going to have to abandon the plane and the estate. It’s been an expensive trip.’

Suddenly, the radio burst into life. ‘URGENT PRIORITY 1. REPEAT, PRIORITY 1. Calling Johnny Depp. Calling Johnny Depp. Please respond, over.’ Johnny’s face lit with joy, because only the Teacher knew how to contact this radio, and the voice was being disguised with an electronic device, just like the Teacher always did.

‘Yes!’ Johnny almost shouted. ‘Teacher, it’s me!’

‘Guess again,’ said the voice. There was a horrible silence. I got it before Johnny did.

‘Master?’ I said.

‘Oh hello, Miss Park. It is terrifically good to hear from you. I hope Mr Depp hasn’t caused you any harm?’ I said nothing.

Johnny Depp said, ‘How are you contacting us? How did you know how to…’

‘We really need not let that detain us, Mr Depp. Suffice to say, it has been no easy task. I am extremely pleased to have caught you before you land in London, and I really must insist that you turn away, right now.’ Through the voice-disguiser, there was something very urgent about the Master’s voice. If it weren’t so unexpected, I might almost have said he was desperate.

‘You’ve got to be joking.’

‘I am not a fool, Mr Depp, and I do not joke. I am not suggesting you return to my wicked clutches. All I am saying is that you must on no account land in London, which is where you are clearly heading.’

‘Why?’

‘I am afraid the reasons for that will soon become obvious. And when I say soon, I mean in fourteen minutes.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Very shortly, if things go according to my schedule, and they will, a French missile submarine stationed outside Jersey will pretend it has been attacked by a British destroyer, and its captain will launch on London. In fourteen minutes, the city will be swept from the face of the earth.’

Chapter 38: I Nearly Break Johnny Depp's Heart and Spirit

2007-10-04T14:39:00.001+01:00

In my experience, every time you get swept away in passionate lustful sex with a film star like Johnny Depp, you lose five hours during which you should have been running for your life. We were naked, sweat-soaked, staring into each other’s eyes, and realising this disaster in tandem. But the realisation that we should have been running for our lives was not the worst realisation we were realising, because Johnny Depp was realising that there was some problem with the Teacher, who he worshipped, and I was realising that the Teacher was the one who originally persuaded Johnny Depp not to kill me.

‘The Teacher didn’t help you escape?’ said Johnny. ‘What happened to him.’

‘I was supposed to be drugged,’ I said, ‘but the Teacher switched what was in the syringes so I could move around and find out about the London headquarters. And it was because I wasn’t drugged that I could escape, so the Teacher definitely DID help me escape.’

‘Don’t bullshit me, Mary Sue.’ Johnny Depp’s face was hardening, withdrawing. ‘How did you escape without the Teacher’s help?’

‘I’m pretty plucky,’ I said. Johnny didn’t appreciate it. I carried on, lying desperately. ‘The Teacher said for me to go ahead, and to tell you not to wait.’ For some reason, I still wasn’t saying that the Teacher was a woman. Miss Smallbone had never wanted anyone to know. She would be reincarnating, presumably, but it would be years before she was useful again, and by then the war for the world would be over. Unless Johnny Depp killed me, and stopped the enemy using me to open the Gates of Hell, which I was terrified he would do as soon as he found out the Teacher was dead.

‘No,’ said Johnny. ‘You’re lying.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘This is not a game, Mary Sue! Tell me what happened, tell me right now, and we might just survive. Do you have any idea of what is going on? This is about the fate of the world, and you are sitting there telling me lies for…’

‘The Teacher is dead.’ Johnny Depp sat back, stunned. ‘The Teacher is dead,’ I repeated.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I thought you would kill me.’ He looked even more stunned. ‘You and Ewan McGregor wanted to kill me.’

‘Ewan died trying to protect you,’ he hissed, suddenly cold. ‘And so did my wife.’

‘I saw a video. I saw you saying it was better if I were dead. It was only the Teacher who persuaded you to keep me alive.’

‘When was…’ he stopped. ‘But that was in London when… They were watching me then? We’d only just found out that you’d married a demon!’

‘I didn’t know!’

‘I know that now. But then, we didn’t know what to think. The Teacher is dead?’

‘Yes.’ I explained how I had been told that the demons had found an Angel who had wormed into the heart of their HQ, and how I knew that it was the Teacher, even though they didn’t, and how Victoria Beckham had tortured the intruder to death while I escaped by various pieces of luck and miracle. While I spoke Johnny Depp was dressing, so so was I. While I put on my shoes, I said quietly, ‘And I saw Rollo Price.’

‘Rollo who? Wait, what? The policeman? From London?’

‘He arrived at the mansion just before I escaped. And there was a picture of him in the Master’s safe. Do you know why?’ Johnny Depp shook his head slowly. ‘I had to escape before the Master arrived,’ I said. ‘I mean, that’s why I didn’t escape earlier, and I only ran because they captured the Teacher. But what if I didn’t escape before the Master arrived? What if… I mean. All along, what if Rollo has been…’ I couldn’t finish.

‘I don’t know,’ said Johnny Depp.

‘Would it be sensible for you to kill me?’ I asked.

‘We’re not going to kill you. We were scared when we found out about your husband. We thought it meant you were one of them. But unless you take their side, we’ll never turn on you. We are who we are. We can’t do what the enemy would do in our position, or what’s the point of all this?’ He sounded profoundly unconvinced by what he was saying. He handed me the gun I’d stolen while I was escaping, and only at that very moment did I realise how terrifyingly simple it had been to use. I didn’t want it, but Johnny wasn’t in a mood to brook argument. While I turned it over in my hand, he made a phone call. As soon as he connected, he said, ‘Code 4. We are executing Talisman. Forty minutes. Prepared? Good. Thank you. What? No, the Teacher will not be present. The Teacher … the Teacher has opted to remain undercover.’ Johnny looked at me and said, ‘It wouldn’t help to tell them. Hope is too important. Are you ready?’ I nodded, and he strode towards the bike. But I didn’t move. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘Don’t you have hope?’ I asked.

His eyes were blank. ‘What I’ve got,’ he said, ‘is a plan. For now, that’s what enough to focus on. The Teacher says that hope is not something that ever dies, whatever you think. When you think it’s gone, you keep moving, and eventually you find it again.’

For twenty minutes we thundered through the orange California night, half on-road, half off-road. The most exciting bit was going up a ramp and over a big barbed wire fence. We were in the grounds of some huge house with a private airport, with an aeroplane whose engines were already running. This was nothing like Johnny’s lovely private jet. It was black, and it had a surface like sandpaper. Its wings were all funny shapes. It looked like it came from the future. Inside, it was utilitarian. When we took off, the sensation of speed was unlike anything I had ever experienced. ‘We’re be safe in here,’ said Johnny Depp. ‘No one will know where we are. You can sleep. It’s impossible for anyone to contact us for the next six hours unless they know a secret code known only to me and the Teacher.’
***

Four hours later, on this supposedly super secret radio, I was listening to the Master say, ‘Turn back Mary Sue. Turn back right now. It’s your only hope.’

Chapter 37: I Firmly Believe that Sometimes It’s Better Not to Talk about Things, and Just Go with the Flow

2007-10-03T14:00:00.000+01:00

Three years ago, my friend Will’s wife was killed in a car crash. They had been going out with each other since the first week at university, and they had two beautiful children. A month later, I had dinner with Will, and when I was leaving, I hugged him. We stood hugging for the longest time, just good friends.

Will was one of those people who never seemed to be in any doubt of who he was and what he wanted to do. If that makes him sound arrogant, I’m doing him a disservice. He’d never do anything to make you uncomfortable, he’d always be there for you, he’d be the first at a party and the last to leave. He’d always talk to the quiet girl, and I know because that’s what I was when I started at uni, and he didn’t do it because he was kind, he did it because he was nice, and if you don’t know the difference, then shame on you. I never yearned for him, though. He had a girlfriend, but it wasn’t that – we were just never meant for each other in that way. Maybe it made our friendship easier, but he seemed to be a similarly easy a friend with everyone, some of whom definitely fancied him, so I dare say it was just Will.

All of this is a long way of saying that, when I was consoling him, it’s not as if I was his one special friend, or that either of us was ‘the one who got away,’ or anything like that. It’s just that I had gone round to see him with a tupperware of Bolognese so he didn’t have to cook for a few days, his kids went to sleep miraculously fast, and we had a lovely evening under the awful circumstances, and then it was time to go, and we hugged as usual. Except after ten minutes we hadn’t moved. A friend of mine once said that there is nothing ever simple about holding a beautiful girl, that in the end it takes on its own momentum. I nodded, but I never understood him until that night with Will. I think we both felt so comfortable that we tried not to move in ways that meant we were both moving constantly in infinitesimal ways to fit ourselves more closely to each other, and I grew hyper-aware of all his hard and soft places, and of where he was too warm, and of where I was. I knew when my hair brushed against his neck, and I knew he was replying when he touched his chin to the top of my head, and this is the most predictable story since time began.

We were young, and not very experienced with death (I’m getting more experienced fast). We had no etiquette to guide us, and that was either a good thing or it wasn’t, but I don’t care and I’m sure Will doesn’t either. We didn’t sleep that night, and it was as if we were in a bubble separated from any history or foreknowledge, and we were both funny, and breakfast was relaxed, and we’ve never spoken about it again, except with our eyes. It was the perfect one night stand, because it really was one night, with never hope or thought of another. I think it means that Will and I, who were good friends, are more than that. We have a private intimacy we don’t share with anyone else. This is going to make me sound a freak given the specifics, but it’s the kind of intimacy I imagine you share with a brother. I thought that it would be a unique event in my life, until now, holding Johnny Depp, my hair against his neck, his chin on the top of my head. I couldn’t help making comparisons.

The similarities were glaring. He’d lost his wife, he had two children, and there was no hope for us in the long run. The differences were equally stark. Will was one of my oldest friends, who I trusted absolutely. Johnny Depp was theoretically protecting me, but two days ago I watched a video in which he said it would be better for everyone if I were dead. The only reason he didn’t kill me was that his boss, the Teacher, told him not to. But earlier this evening, while I had been effecting my miraculous escape from the enemy, I heard that the Teacher had been captured and killed, so who knew what Johnny would do to me now? That’s why I’d not told him about the Teacher.

That and the fact that there is nothing ever simple about clinging to someone, and certainly not someone like Johnny Depp, alone in a luxurious cave, holding himself together from the death of his wife, his whole body humming with suppressed tension. Also, it was hot, and wherever skin touched skin, we were slick with hot sweat. Eventually, it was if we were melding into a single whole, and breathing so deeply that every inhalation took all the oxygen out of the cave.

‘I’m here to protect you,’ he forced himself to say, eventually, trying to break the spell, in case he was doing something wrong. The hot air cooled a fraction, but I didn’t reply, and we carried on holding each other. My cheek was pressed against his olive green singlet, and I watched as a bead of perspiration grew in the hollow where the muscles of his chest joined his neck. I shifted my head, and now my cheek was touched against his skin, and he shifted so his skin was pressed against my cheek, and I kissed him, and he kissed the top of my head, and the rest of the story is the oldest story ever again, except different to all the other times, obviously, because with all due respect to Will, and without doing anything in particular that I can put my finger on, Johnny Depp was better in bed than anyone I had ever been in bed with by a factor that might as well have been infinite. It could have been the situation, but I don’t think so. I knew, as clearly as I had known with Will, and I minded as little, that it would never happen again, but I wanted it never to end. But at four in the morning, he said, ‘We’d better get ready, Mary Sue. We’ve got to get the Teacher, and we have to be ready to run.’

‘The Teacher?’

‘Yes. I’m finally going to meet him, which means the climax is coming, and there won’t be a moment to waste. He’s the only one who knows what to do next.’ I said nothing. ‘He was supposed to escape with you at five in the morning, but I presume he got you out early for some reason and then stayed behind.’ I was frozen, silent. ‘He was supposed to bring you,’ Johnny Depp repeated, ‘but obviously he must have helped you escape early for some reason.’ I said nothing again. ‘Didn’t he, Mary Sue?’

Chapter 36: Having Miraculously Escaped

2007-10-02T14:20:00.000+01:00

In a hail of tranquillizer darts, I leapt from the fence surrounding Harrison Ford’s mansion, free at last. On landing, I twisted my ankle, and rolled three times before thudding to a halt against a tree. In the musky darkness, part of the tree trunk disengaged and bent over me. I bunched my fists, but then I recognised the soulful eyes burning behind the camouflage make-up, and I relaxed. ‘Hi,’ I said, as casually as I could, my heart thrashing.

‘Mary Sue?’ said Johnny Depp. ‘I can’t believe it’s you! How did you escape?

‘You don’t want to know,’ I replied, thinking of the brave dog who had died protecting me at one point, and the amazing way I had managed to pretend to be one of the demons in the darkness, knock out one guard and steal his gun, and then shoot three other guards, and that was only part of what had happened. Johnny Depp just nodded, and we rushed into the forest. He swept me onto the pillion of a big black motorbike, and we roared into the forest, helmetless. I’ve always never wanted to go on a motorbike, but I didn’t mind.

‘It’s lucky I was here,’ Johnny shouted as we raced away from two motorbikes who were now pursuing us. ‘I was expecting you tomorrow. I’m only here a day early because… Because I need to be alone at the moment.’

‘Oh God, yes,’ I yelled. ‘I’m so sorry about what happened to Vanessa.’

Johnny Depp grunted, shouted ‘Hold on tight,’ and skidded the bike sideways and to a halt between two trees. We watched the two other bikes roar past through the forest. I was clinging to Johnny, my breath coming in ragged gasps. He was not breathing more heavily than if he were sleeping, not that I would know. Through his camouflage shirt, he did not exactly feel hard, but there was no give anywhere on his body. He felt smooth. As I looked around him, straining to hear the bad guys, I saw that he’d cut a V into the back of his wrist. I touched it. I couldn’t help myself. He didn’t move his hand. ‘It is what it is,’ Johnny said tonelessly. ‘This is a war for the end of the world. There’ll be casualties.’

‘Johnny…’

‘Not now,’ he said, throttled the engine, and the bike reared out of its hiding place and back the way we came for a hundred yards before doing another scary-but-exciting skiddy turn and racing up the hill through a soft carpet of pine needles.

Fifteen minutes later, Johnny was handing me a cup of tea in a place he called the batcave. It was literally a cave, hidden behind a cascade of foliage, and the small low door was fitted flush to the rough stone wall. Even with Johnny’s torch, I hadn’t seen the edges until it opened in response to a voice command. ‘Sorry, Mary Sue,’ he said. ‘But my house obviously isn’t secure. I…’ he stopped.

‘You couldn’t have done anything.’

‘I should have been there.’ He spoke quietly, he wasn’t tearful, but he looked into his tea as if it were a thousand miles away. Then he noticed me staring, and smiled bleakly. ‘I’ll see her again, Mary Sue. I always see her again, but it doesn’t make losing her any easier.’

‘But you’re out of sync now. When she reincarnates, you’ll be forty years older than her. How does that work?’

‘Badly. But she’s my one true love, and there it is.’ Then he said, ‘Don’t worry about me, princess. I’ll be fine.’

‘But… Really? Do you really just wait until you align again? What if it takes a hundred years?’

‘A hundred years is just one day at a time.’

‘So you won’t have sex for a hundred years.’

‘Er… I imagine I will. Sex is just sex. It will be for fun, and it teaches you things about people you never learn any other way. If I survive, I’ll live with someone again. Vanessa wouldn’t want me to be alone, and she knows that the others. Whatever happens when we are out of alignment, it’s never the same.’

‘But if she’s the one…’

‘She’s dead, Mary Sue. I’ve got to move on. Just because something isn’t perfect, that doesn’t make it bad. I’ve nearly loved hundreds of girls who weren’t my one true love.’ I presume I was gaping at him. ‘I’ve had sixty million years to get my head round this. I’m not cold, I just know what I’m talking about. That’s why losing Vanessa isn’t so terrible for me. It isn’t so bad.’ He stood abruptly and walked to the back of the main room, where he stared at a picture I’d never seen of JFK and Marilyn on a bench together, holding hands. ‘It isn’t so bad,’ he repeated.

‘If that’s true,’ I said, ‘Why did you carve that V into your hand?’

‘I was drunk,’ he said. He didn’t face me, and he wasn’t convincing.

‘But…’

‘Stop it, princess. She’s dead,’ said Johnny, turning back with the grin he does when he’s acting like he’s not totally in control. ‘Vanessa’s dead, and life is about the next thing, so we don’t talk about her, ok. It’s better that way.’

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to…’

‘Hey, babe,’ said Johnny Depp, wiping a tear from my cheek. ‘Don’t feel guilty. That never did anybody any good.’ He took me in his arms and held me tightly, to comfort me, my face against the slab of muscle or whatever it is that joins the chest to the shoulder. From there, I could hear his heart beat, and it was beating a hundred miles faster than it had on the motorbike, and his arms and chest muscles were taught and hard, not fluid and smooth as they had been, as if he was making them into a cage, as if he were trying to keep something in. ‘Don’t worry, babe,’ he said. ‘It’ll be ok.’ As we stood there, I felt him relax, and I realised that he was the one who needed this, not me, but he hadn’t been able to ask. I held him tighter.

I really didn’t mean to kiss him.

Chapter 35: I've got to Get Out of This Place

2007-10-01T14:53:00.000+01:00

The clock struck ten. I could hardly believe that I’d managed to trick the guard outside my room and knock him out, nor that the piece of paper I had noticed sticking out of his chest pocket was a detailed schematic of the mansion’s security set-up, nor that I’d been able to duck behind the door at the last minute when Harrison Ford and his assistant Demeter had suddenly appeared, striding purposefully towards what my new map called the Conference Room, to speak to David and Victoria Beckham. I couldn’t believe my luck that all these demon leaders were distracted by the inquest into the deaths of Matt Damon and R Kelly on this particular night, or that for some reason dogs have always liked me (usually very annoying when they won’t leave me alone), which meant that the vicious huge animal that ran up to me with its teeth bared seemed to suddenly rolled over on its back and let me tickle its tummy. The dog then become my own personal guardian, and when the other two guards appeared, it silently leapt on them and I presume killed them, but I’m not sure because I was running away by that point and all I know is that they didn’t chase me. The dog was sitting contently on my feet now. I was in the alcove next to the front portico, looking out at the gravel driveway and wondering how I was ever going to get out past all the alarms, bright lights and guards. Or what the hell I was going to do then.

The demons had been keeping me drugged until the Master arrived, tomorrow morning they said. He would persuade me to open the Gates of Hell, which had to be bad. So bad, in fact, that the angels, such as Johnny Depp, had wanted to kill me, and they had only kept me alive because the Teacher persuaded them. But now the Teacher had been captured, and she was going to be tortured to death by Victoria Beckham. If I managed to escape, and the Angels found me, they would probably decide it was too dangerous to let me live. My only hope was somehow to free the Teacher. I looked longingly at the drive, then back at my map, and specifically at the square marked, ‘Torture Chamber / Secret Execution Room.’ That’s where I had to go. I took a deep breath, stood up, and almost instantly had to press myself back against the wall as two faceless figures in black walked past the alcove and stopped five feet away from me. I felt the dog tense, and I put a restraining hand on his neck.

‘I can’t believe the Angels infiltrated our headquarters,’ said one of these new people.

‘It’s incredible, yes. It makes you wonder how bad our security is in other respects. I almost want to check up on the Chosen One.’

‘Don’t worry about her. I’m sure she’s being guarded brilliantly. We would at least make sure of that!’

‘Yeah, of course we would,’ said the other, and they laughed. ‘Anyway, that was some really crappy torturing from Victoria Beckham.’

‘Wasn’t it? She’s totally lost her touch. She used to be amazing, but that angel died after only half an hour, and she never told us anything.’

‘Harrison Ford and David Beckham were annoyed with Victoria for that, weren’t they?’

‘They were massively annoyed. Still, the infiltrator is dead now.’

‘She is completely dead. No one could possibly have survived what Victoria did to her.

‘Do you want to go and find some tea?’

‘Yeah, actually, a cup of tea would totally hit the spot.’ They wandered off. I looked down and found my hand was clutching a heavy fold of the guard dog’s neck, and my knuckles were white. The dog was looking up at me with an expression of hurt enquiry. I let his neck go, and scratched him apologetically. I’d never had any hope since I got to the mansion, and then I hadn’t even had that, and now those levels of hopelessness were a blissful memory. All I could think to do was run. I didn’t know where I would run to, or why, or how far I could get, but the only alternative was not to run. I edged again to the window, and looked across the wide bright gravel to the tree-lined dark, measuring the time I’d take to cross it, and wondering how full I would be of bullets by the time I was halfway.

I was still wondering when a car appeared. It was a plain brown car of a not very exciting design. As it approached, several pairs of footsteps approached from inside the house, obviously warned. Maybe, I thought, while they’re focused on the front door, I could find an opportunity to exit from somewhere a bit down the side. I was just about to creep out and along the corridor when something made me stop. I thought, for some reason, that it might help me to know who was in the car. I do not know why I thought this, since every time I had learnt another thing since this whole story began, that new thing was awful. The car doors opened, and my heart instantly sang. Then my head got a grip of my heart as it made several realisations, and the heart sank, sank, sank full fathom five. One of the people was a tall, haggard man who’d had a five o’clock shadow when it was five o’clock. The other, fresh and golden, was my old friend Rollo Price.

Rollo Price, the policeman who had reappeared in my life last week when David Tennant decapitated my husband; who had pretended to be nice to me so I would tell him why David Tennant did it; whose photograph was in the evil Master’s private safe; who was here, smiling. Rollo couldn’t possibly see me, but he seemed to look straight at my window and my dog’s hackles rose, he bared his fangs, and he nudged me urgently. The dog sensed danger, and I had learnt to trust him. Rollo was at the door. Hardly knowing how I could possibly evade the demons, I ran the other way.

WEEKEND SEVEN

2007-09-30T16:24:00.000+01:00

Well, because I am unbelievably glamorous, as you only have to look at me to know, this weekend I have been in the Hamptons, but I have had to come back early to Manhattan to see my show. I can totally see why people go on about the Hamptons. The place I was staying was right next to Shinnecock - a few hundred yards from the clubhouse - and this will not be very exciting to many of you, but to some, well, let's just say that it looked in pretty decent shape, and I would happily have played there if I'd started arranging it six months ago and been a lot richer. Now I am back in the Upper West Side, really near Central Park. There are brunch queues at the popular places (looked to me like Sarabeth's (I think famous) and Good Enough To Eat) that go on for most of a block. NY fetishised Sunday brunch is delicious but also hilarious.

As for how this is going: well, as I have indicated, I am increasingly aware of all the loose ends that I have no concrete plan for tying up, and the ending which I do not have, and the number of major characters whose true identities remain a matter of some flexibility. Not all the major characters, but one or two.

And now I must go and find some coffee, because I had too much iffy Gewurtztraminer with my thai duck last night.

Chapter 34: Sympathy for the Devil

2007-09-28T13:58:00.001+01:00

David Beckham stood at the end of my bed crying. ‘It’s impossible for you to conceive how much pain I’m in,’ he said. I didn’t react, because I was pretending to be drugged. He continued, ‘There’s no way you could possibly conceive what I have been through in the last half hour. You can’t begin to conceive of what it’s like to spend an eternity reincarnating, and every time being made to be life-partners with someone who is massively annoying who you hate who is totally obsessed with you. It is impossible that you can possibly begin to conceive how much worse it is even than that if the whole time you are in love with someone else, who you think will never love you, because you are not worthy of him. Yes, Mary Sue! HIM! You probably didn’t think that demons could be sensitive, did you? That we would be loving and tolerant of homosexuality. It’s just that I have never been allowed to be officially gay by the Master because Victoria Beckham is our best fighter, and she insists on me being always with her. It’s a nightmare for me, but finally today, because the last battle is coming, I finally admitted to the man I have always loved that I love him – you don’t have to know his name and you wouldn’t believe it if I told you – and the amazing thing was this: he admitted that he loved me too, or would at least have both kinds of sex with me, oral and normal. It’s… Oh. You cannot possibly conceive.’

Actually I knew precisely who he was talking about, because I had been in the closet when he had this conversation with Matt Damon. Then R Kelly emerged from another closet and shot Matt Damon, and then Victoria burst in and killed R Kelly. Of course, David Beckham couldn’t possibly conceive of my knowing this, so he continued, ‘Your brain could not begin to conceive what it’s like for that person then to be killed in front of you, and… I’m not going on. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. The only reason I can possibly conceive is that I’m really distraught and my guard is down. It would be impossible for you to conceive anything like what I’ve been through. NO ONE ELSE has EVER had the experience fancying someone for ages, but not telling them, and everything therefore being crap.’

‘Good grief,’ I thought. Once upon a time, my main experience of this particularly tedious archetype was Rollo Price, who I said nothing to at university. But my feelings about Rollo were very complicated, because he was now a policeman who didn’t trust me, and because I’d seen his photograph in the evil Master’s secret safe. The best version of the story for me now, probably, was the barrister in the office next to mine at chambers, who was pontificating and doom-mongering but in a cute way. When I arrived at 11A South Square six years ago, he’d been there for two years already. I immediately had a crush on him, and I was sure he felt something for me too. I was nervous, though, and in a moment of madness I told him I fancied someone else. He then became my confidante, and the boy with whom I discussed relationships, always assuming that at some point he would finally see through me and sweep me up in his arms. He never seemed to get anywhere with women, even though plenty fancied him. I had a few ropey boyfriends, and I made sure my neighbour knew they were going nowhere. I was sure our feelings for each other were getting stronger. And then one day, after four years of me growing certainer with every passing day that things were on the verge of culminating in some drunken moment of mutual admission, he started gong out with someone else, got engaged after a year, and that was that. He probably did fancy me, maybe for a couple of years, but we’ll never know now. The thing is… Wait. Wait a moment. What a boring, pointless story this is. I suppose my point, if I have one, is that David Beckham’s story, for all the stuff about it lasting millions of years, was unebelievably banal. Which you already knew.

David Beckham dried his eyes and said, ‘Well, it can’t be helped. It’s important that you see that we demons have feelings just like you, because you are one of us, whether you like it or not, and you will be on our side as soon as the Master arrives to persuade you, which will be first thing tomorrow morning.’ I admit that this did worry me, even though I knew that Miss Smallbone, who had infiltrated the demon headquarters and undrugged me, must have a plan for getting me out as soon as we knew the Master’s identity.

The door opened. ‘Here you are, babe,’ said Victoria Beckham. ‘You look upset.’ She went to hold David Beckham’s hand, but he shook her off angrily. ‘You can’t keep pushing me away, babe. Not forever.’ She looked as forlorn as he did. I almost felt sorry for them. Then Victoria said, ‘Come on babe, we have a job to do.’

‘Oh yes,’ said David Beckham to me. ‘I forgot to say. We captured a traitor an hour ago. One of the angels inconceivably managed to get a job here. It’s worrying that our security was compromised, but we have her now. We’re going to torture her until she tells us everything she knows, and then Victoria will kill her.’

‘The way I’ll kill her is this,’ said Victoria Beckham, baring her teeth. Then she described what she would do to Miss Smallbone, which is something I am not going to pass on, and you should be grateful.

‘So,’ I thought. ‘This is how it feels when all hope is gone.’

Chapter 33: Out of the Incinerator and into the Blast Furnace

2007-09-27T14:06:00.000+01:00

I was standing in the office of the Master, who wanted me to help him and his demons destroy the world. He was arriving tomorrow, and he thought I was lying drugged on a bed next door, waiting for him to work his persuasive magic. I was not lying drugged on the bed because little, neat Miss Smallbone had managed to get a job as a maid in the Master’s American headquarters, and she had switched the drugs. She had sent me to the office to find out where the demons’ UK headquarters were, so… I didn’t know what exactly Miss Smallbone wanted to do about it, but she was the goodies, right? I was, through my panic, trying to be a brave soldier, rather than a terrified young barrister.

A terrified, nosy barrister. Because here I was, still riffling through the pages of the file. The demon headquarters, all along, had been in the chambers next door to my own in London’s South Square. We always wondered why 11B seemed to spend all its time having renovations done, and now I could see. The plans showed that the narrow staircase and twenty poky rooms were the tip of an underground iceberg, full of rooms called, ‘bunker,’ ‘shooting range,’ and ‘armoury.’ There was also a squash court. This shouldn’t have pleased me, but I hate squash and squash players for personal private reasons that I never reveal to anyone, which are that I once went out with a squash player for about a month, and he was really boring, and then, when I dumped him, I heard that he was telling other people that he’d dumped me because, ‘Things were never quite right in the bed department.’ Anyway, the plans were very interesting, even though the headquarters were ‘scheduled for demolition,' which I didn’t want to think about too hard. I memorised the address of the French headquarters also, in case it might prove useful, and the ones in New York and Madrid. The headquarters’ address was all Miss Smallbone had detailed me to find, but I was in the safe, so it seemed foolish not to find out what else I could.

Also, the second file was headed, MARY SUE PARK: CHOSEN ONE, and how could I possibly not read that? It was fat, and it was horrible. There were school reports, pictures of me at home as a child, pictures of me at uni, pictures of me in my current flat, pictures of me and Gavin, my murdered husband, and pictures of me lying drugged in my bed next door. There were constant banal little notes, of which the last was typical. ‘Target acquired,’ it read. ‘Target failed to succumb to reasoned argument. Master prohibited torture, for the time being. Master will subdue Target to his iron and icy will on Thursday evening. Master and Target to open Gates of Hell some time in next two days after that, presumably.’ It was not a reassuring document. I wanted to examine it more carefully, but there were others to get through, and it really wouldn’t do to be caught.

The next file was called ‘TARGETS.’ It listed and pictured the angels, as far as the demons knew who they were. Some, like Davina McCall and Ewan McGregor, had a large red stamp across their names saying, ‘DELETED.’ Some names had question marks indicating that the demons were unsure whether they were angels or not. Freddie Flintoff, who helped protect me in the firefight where Davina McCall was killed, had a question mark scrubbed out, and was now listed as ‘CONFIRMED.’ One thing which was sort-of-funny, in an awful way, was that there was a picture of David Mitchell the comedian next to a question mark. I had recently learnt that David Mitchell the comedian was a different person to David Mitchell the novelist, and it was David Mitchell the novelist who was an angel, and he really hated the fact that everyone confused him with David Mitchell the comedian. Still, this meant that maybe the demons would kill David Mitchell the comedian, who I’m sure is a nice person and everything, but he was not trying to save the world.
A special sub-section at the back of the file was devoted to David Tennant. It was sub-headed: OUR MOST DANGEROUS FOE! It was familiar stuff. I raced on to the next file, which was marked PLANS. A sheaf of paper fell out, entitled, PLAN FOR OPENING GATES OF HELL AND KILLING ALL THE ANGELS. But under the title was a red scribble saying, ‘Plans removed because of them being too secret. Order of the Master.’

I picked up the last two files, which had no titles, and just as I was about to open them, I heard footsteps outside in the corridor. Oh my God. What had I been doing? I immediately gathered all the files together, ready to stuff them back into the safe. But as I did so, from somewhere in the last two files, a photo slipped out and floated to the floor. It was such a surprising photo that I stared dumbly at it, stock still for a moment while the voices stopped at the door, and then some lifesaving instinct took over and I went into a zone of panicking efficiency. I rammed the files into the safe, sprinted through the window and along the balcony to my room, stuffed the plan of the building under my mattress and flung myself onto the bed at the very moment my door opened. As David Beckham entered, for whatever reason it was, I tried to control my heart and breathing, and wondered desperately why the Master’s safe might possibly contain a picture of Rollo Price, who I was once besotted with, who became a policeman, and who I didn’t think was in any way mixed up in this nightmare, except by the tangential accident of his being the first copper to have found me, David Tennant and my husband’s dead body. I still believed in coincidences? How stupid was I?

Chapter 32: True Love Never Runs Smooth

2007-09-26T15:33:00.001+01:00

David Beckham and Matt Damon, half-undressed in each other’s arms, lay nervously on the bed, at the foot of which the black American singer R Kelly was waving his gun as he raved at Matt Damon for betraying him with another man. I, ironically, was in the closet. R Kelly must have seen me when I came into the room, and I was therefore doomed, but he was raving about other things for the moment. ‘Ha, David Beckham!’ said R Kelly. ‘I bet yo sorry ass never expected THIS! Yo sorry English ass probably just thought I was this macho R&B guy and a superfly badass!’

‘No, I didn’t,’ said David Beckham. ‘I knew you were gay.’

‘No way! Yo sorry English ass is lying its sorry English butt-cheeks off!’

‘We all know you’re gay, R,’ said David. ‘Especially me, since I am the Master’s Head of Intelligence.’

‘This is bull, man,’ said R Kelly. ‘I keep it a secret by having sex with loads of chicks and sluts and hos, etc., which is really gross for me.’ He looked upset, paused, and then said, ‘Did you really know? How did yo sorry ass find out?’

‘I told him,’ said Matt Damon.

‘But you said you loved me!’

‘No, I didn’t,’ said Matt Damon. ‘You said YOU loved ME. It’s different.’

‘How so? It’s still love, right?’

‘It’s this kind of attitude that has got you in trouble with the law all your life, R,’ said David. ‘Even with the chicks you were having sex with to pretend to your fanbase that you were a superfly badass. Matt Damon showed me all the letters you sent him saying how much you loved him and wanted to be his boyfriend. He showed them to me and said that when he told you he didn’t want to be your boyfriend, you wouldn’t accept it, and kept hanging around him at movie premieres.’

‘I thought he was playing hard to get.’

‘I never play hard to get,’ said Matt Damon. ‘I’m really easy to get.’ He turned to David Beckham.

‘I’m sorry, but it’s true. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t really like to have sex with you more than almost anyone else except Tom Cruise, and he’s not gay.’

‘This is…’ said R Kelly, and stopped himself. ‘I’m totally mad, and normally I’d cuss and swear under these circumstances, but something about Matt Damon makes it impossible for me. He makes me a better person just by being there, don’t you find that?’

‘I do,’ said David Beckham.

‘I really love him. That’s what all my hundreds of letters were about, beneath the surface.’

‘On the surface, also,’ said David Beckham.

‘Yeah. I said I loved him and whenever he didn’t reply, I cut a new line into my skin with a razor. I am criss-crossed with lines.’

‘That’s really crazy!’ said Matt Damon. ‘I presumed you were just saying it for effect.’

‘No way, man!’ said R Kelly, lifting up his shirt. He was, indeed, criss-crossed with scars. ‘I love Matt Damon with all my heart and soul, man. That’s how I know he must love me, whatever you are making him say.’

‘I don’t love you, though,’ said Matt Damon.

‘Is it because I am gay?’ said R Kelly.

‘No,’ said Matt Damon. ‘Because I am also gay. You being gay is not a problem. But apart from that, I don’t like you at all. It’s just one of those things.’

‘I can’t accept that, man. It’s David Beckham, isn’t it? His sorry ass has lied about me and told you I’m not really gay. I’m gonna pop a cap in his sorry ass.’ He raised his gun.

‘Don’t shoot him!’ said Matt Damon.

‘He’s drugged you, hasn’t he?’ said R Kelly. ‘His sorry ass has drugged you to keep you from me and to stop us being happy? I was right, wasn’t I? You do love me.’

‘No, I don’t. I hate you!’

‘Be careful, Matt Damon,’ said David Beckham.

‘No!’ said Matt Damon. ‘I’m finally gong to let out all my feelings so no one is unclear about the situation. I totally hate R Kelly and everything about him, but he won’t take a hint like me saying that to him, and he comes across as if he’s some kind of a creepy stalker or somethi…’ BANG.
Matt Damon’s eyes were round in shock. The centre of his chest was a red wound. R Kelly’s face was tortured, tears streaming down his cheeks. ‘I loved him, man,’ he said. ‘And we’d have been happy, if it wasn’t for yo sorry ass, David Beckham. Now I gonna kill you, too.’ Then he stopped.

This was the moment I had been dreading. He gestured his gun at my closet and said. ‘Oh, except there’s one thing. Before you came in, while I was waiting in the closet, I saw a girl…’ CRASH.
The door exploded in splinters, and Victoria Beckham leapt through. ‘Babe!’ she said. ‘I heard a shot! Are you safe? What are you doing R Kelly? Why are you pointing that gun at my David?’ And then, quicker than I could follow, she whirled across the room, kicked the gun from R Kelly’s hand and karate chopped him in the neck in such a way that when he collapsed, it seemed like his head was hanging from a string. ‘Don’t worry, babe,’ Victoria said to David Beckham, who was holding Matt Damon’s hand and weeping. ‘You’re safe now. We’ll always be together. We’d better clear up this mess.

David Beckham looked at Matt Damon, still in his arms, and he said, ‘At least the end is coming. There was never any pity in my heart, and now there’s not even that.’

‘That’s right, babe. Let’s kill lots of people.’

They dragged the bodies out of the room. I was shivering terrified in my closet, but I knew I had to fulfil my mission and get back to my bed as quickly as I could, before my absence was discovered. I raced out of the window, and along the balcony to the Master’s office. It was Habitat-style when I was expecting quilted leather, but I didn’t have long to think about decorating. The safe was part of the huge desk, and the combination was my own birthday, so I was into it in moments. I had to find the location of the demons’ London headquarters. The top file said, DEMON HEADQUARTERS ADMIN: VARIOUS. I opened it. The first subsection was about Harrison Ford’s mansion, which is where I was standing. The second was about a small palace in Paris. The third was a picture of 11B South Square – the Chambers next to mine in Gray’s Inn. Across the front of it were huge red capitals which read, ‘SCHEDULED FOR IMMINENT DEMOLITION.’

Chapter 31: Can This Really Be True

2007-09-25T15:27:00.001+01:00

‘You’re testing me,’ said Matt Damon to David Beckham. ‘I get it.’

‘No, Matt,’ said David Beckham. ‘This is for real.’

‘But that’s what you would say if you were testing me.’

‘What would I be testing, though?’ said David reasonably, taking Matt Damon’s hand in his as they sat on the edge of the bed. ‘We all know you are gay and even if we didn’t, it’s not as if any of us would care. We’re evil, by conventional standards, but not homophobic.’

‘I suppose that’s right,’ said Matt Damon. ‘But I can’t… I mean… It’s all too good to be true.’

‘Sometimes,’ said David Beckham, ‘Something too good to be true is true. Like you.’

‘But,’ said Matt Damon, eyes clouding again with worry, ‘I thought you were married! To Victoria Beckham.’

‘I am.’

‘That’s what I thought! In that case…’

‘I don’t love her, Matt Damon.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘The Master makes me and Victoria be together because we are such an experienced and successful operational unit in the ongoing battle against our pathetic enemy, but that has never meant anything apart from us being together when are fighting. And I can no longer live a lie.’ He leaned across and kissed Matt Damon gently. ‘Victoria loves me, but I hate her.’

Matt Damon said, ‘Are you gay then?’ David Beckham kissed him again, and Matt Damon kissed him back. When they broke apart, Matt Damon said, ‘So, seriously, are you?’

I found this scene riveting. I enjoyed it less than I would have done a week earlier, because now David and Matt were enemies of mine who were bent on destroying the world, and I was in a closet in the room in which it was taking place. They kissed again. On the whole, on a technical level, although David Beckham was taking the lead, Matt Damon looked less nervous, but not as good a kisser. It’s hard to tell, though, and I shouldn’t have been thinking of that anyway, but it was better than thinking of what would happen if someone went into my room next door and discovered I was not lying drugged on my bed. After some more kissing, Matt Damon said, ‘The other thing I want to know, David, apart from whether you are gay…’

‘I am gay.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s so great. The other thing I want to know is this: you know how Jean-Marie le Pen is the new fascist leader of France after we helped him get elected?’ David Beckham nodded. ‘Well, I’m so slow sometimes, and I’m not sure precisely why we did that, or why everyone is talking at the moment about an invasion? What can that possibly be about? It seems like the vitally important background to the events we are participating in, and it would be really helpful for me if you were to explain the situation clearly.’

‘Ok,’ said David Beckham. ‘I will. You know how our thing is that we are extra-terrestrials who regenerate in new bodies?’

‘Yes, I know that. Are you always gay?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Great.’ They kissed again. Then Matt Damon said, ‘Sorry, you were telling me about France.’

‘Yes. So, Matt Damon, you know about how it’s the final battle coming up between us, the demons, and the other guys, the angels?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you know how we can only be killed – properly killed so we don’t regenerate – by having our heads cut off with the special magic sword that David Tennant has, or by being sucked into a black hole?’

‘But David Tennant, who has the magic sword, is on the other side. So we need a black hole!’

‘Well, the problem with that is that to get a black hole, one would have to reproduce the conditions of the Big Bang, which is hardly…’

‘I would like to have Big Bang.’

‘Yes, that would be great, but… Anyway, Matt Damon, in simple terms, it is very important that le Pen can extend military control in France, because we need to enhance tension so we can move to the next stage of our plan. That’s what we’ve been doing with inciting riots, and now the time is almost right.’

‘What is the next stage?’

‘That’s exactly what I was getting to, Matt Damon. In order to stop the French people from revolting completely, because we can’t shoot everyone in a whole country, we have to do something really dramatic that gets them confused and sort-of-backing the government, even if it’s only for a little bit.’

‘I think I see.’

Matt Damon was clearly lost but he pretended not to be because he wanted to impress David Beckham. Equally clearly, David Beckham realised and didn’t want to hurt Matt Damon’s feelings, so he carried on with his explanation. ‘At this very moment, the French army is overrunning Andorra, which is a country in France.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it will confuse his people, and create outrage, and allow him and our generals to take even greater military control. Then, le Pen is going to invade the Channel Islands very soon, probably the day after tomorrow. The Channel Islands, by the way, are some islands near…’

‘I know the Channel Islands very well,’ said Matt Damon, offended. ‘Everyone knows the Channel Islands. I’m a huge fan of Bergerac.’

‘Of course,’ said David Beckham. I forgot you had a thing with John Nettles.’

‘He had a HUGE…’

‘I don’t need to know that, Matt Damon. Where was I? Yes, the world will be horrified by the invasion, and the French people will have no idea how to take it, but they will find it hard not to support their military for the first few days, and we are so close to the final battle that a few days are all we need.’

‘Won’t the English invade right back?’

‘That’s what’s so clever about the whole plan. The angels are based in London, and because of this invasion, we have a brilliant way of dealing with the whole London situation.’

‘And then the world will be ours?’

‘Yes, Matt Damon. But for me, the world is not enough. I want you.’

‘You have me, if it really is true that you are gay.’

‘It is true.’

‘Would you like to have sex?’

‘Yes please.’

‘Oral sex or normal?’

‘Both.’

‘Great.’

CRASH. ‘I knew it!’ said R Kelly, the black American singer, bursting out of the closet right next door to the closet I was in. ‘I knowed it, Matt Damon! You knowed I love you, and now you gonna have both kinds of sex with David Beckham right in front of me. Well, that ain’t gonna happen, man. I’m gonna pop a cap in yo sorry ass, which means shoot you.’

Chapter 30: Out of the Fire and Into the Incinerator

2007-09-24T13:29:00.001+01:00

I genuinely wanted to die. If you have ever had to pretend you are unable to move your body while an American actor who looks like a popular but mean High School Boy calmly removes your pants and chats about what’s going to happen next, you’ll know what I mean. It helped that I was still half-drugged, but it took every piece of my self-control not to scream when he lifted my legs apart, stood next to the bed and shuffled down his jeans, just out my sight. I could feel tears welling in my eyes. There was no way, none at all, that I would be able to lie inert while…
CRASH! The door burst open. I must have jerked in shock, but luckily no one was watching. After the crash, a silence. I could hear High School Boy breathing heavily, nervous for the first time. ‘Are you insane,’ said David Beckham, in his not-for-the-public, quiet, commanding voice.

‘Buddy said…’

‘No,’ said David Beckham. ‘Victoria told me she found the two of you in here. You might have been able to fool her, but that’s because she’s an idiot.’

‘David!’ said Victoria.

‘You’re a moron, Victoria. What did they tell you?’

‘They…’

‘I don’t care.’ He spoke again to High School Boy, who hadn’t moved. ‘Where’s Buddy? Is he in the toilet? Buddy?’ The toilet door was in my eyeline, and I saw Buddy, an older, skinny actor I’m sure I nearly recognised from all the minor parts he claimed to have played, shuffle into the room, clearly terrified. ‘What did he tell you?’

‘Oh gosh,’ said Buddy. ‘He said that the Chosen One was a sex maniac or something and she would be angry if she didn’t have sex because she was drugged, and so…’ there was a sharp pop, and a little black circle appeared in his temple. As Buddy slumped, the circle started to swell red. I didn’t scream or anything because the sight was so familiar. It was like watching the planes crash into the Twin Towers – beyond the sheer awfulness of what was happening, there was a deep surprise that the explosion looked so like the special effects in a movie.

‘What did you do that for?’ said David Beckham.

‘You heard him, about the sex,’ said Victoria. ‘That was gross.’

‘We’ve got a battle,’ said David. ‘A huge battle. We need every soldier we have. Some, for instance, we can send on suicide missions. Do you understand?’

‘Sure, babe. Please don’t be angry with me. It’s just, what he said, you know! It’s like you and me. That time I had sex with you, remember, when you were basically asleep and didn’t really know what was going on, and it was, like, the worst thing in the world for you that I did it. So when he said that, I just through, I mean, I thought you’d agree he had to die? Because you have to be READY to have sex? Like we will be one day? Babe?’

High School Boy said, ‘Is she serious? Does she seriously not realise that…’

David Beckham said, ‘Not now.’

High School Boy laughed. Then he said, ‘Victoria, if I’m going on a suicide mission, I’m not going without telling you that…’ There was another pop, and silence.

‘Babe!’ said Victoria Beckham. ‘Why did you shoot him? What was he going to say?’

‘I don’t know, said David Beckham briskly. ‘I was always going to shoot him, because he was the ringleader. But Buddy could have been useful. Put her knickers back on, and let’s get these bodies out of here. Mary Sue, I’m sorry for this, and I’ll see you in a few hours. The Master will be here tomorrow, and I’ll need to prepare you for what to expect.’

Two hours later, I had control of my body. Every time I moved, I was terrified the door would open. But eventually, I reached under the covers and snatched up the piece of paper Miss Smallbone left me. On one side of the paper was a hasty plan of the wing I was imprisoned in. On the other was a set of instructions. The gist was: next door to this room, in The Master’s office, was a cabinet containing the details of the demons’ British headquarters. I needed to get to the cabinet, open it, memorise the details, and get back to my bed. The last line of the note read, ‘I’m sorry you have to do this. I’ve only just found the PIN that opens the cabinet, and I won’t have time to get to the office. The PIN is MSP200577. I dare say you can remember that. Good luck.’ Of course I could remember it. The Master used my initials and birthday as the combination for his private safe. It was not as if I needed any more proof that these people took the crazy story of me being the Chosen One seriously.

I looked at the bloodstain on the floor. I thought, ‘Is there any point in waiting?’ I decided, ‘None at all. Your pathetic courage will fade away very soon anyway. Just do it. Come on Mary Sue!’ This overexcited attitude was my downfall. I snuck onto the balcony to edge along to the Master’s office, and I accidentally turned the wrong way. I went into the room. I thought I heard a noise, and a stared around me desperately, but I couldn’t see anything, and I put it down to the fact that this was the most nightmarish and awful day pretty much anyone could ever have had. Then I looked around dumbly for fully thirty seconds wondering why the Master would have made his office so boudoirish. Then I twigged, and I was just about to leave when I heard the door handle turn. Panicking, I leapt through the nearest door, which turned out to be one of those clothes closets with slatted doors. Heart racing, I watched as David Beckham entered the room with a confused and happy looking Matt Damon.

‘Are you serious?’ said Matt Damon. ‘I can’t believe you’re really serious about what you just said!’

‘Of course I am,’ said David Beckham. ‘The end of days is coming. This is the time we all have to reveal who we are. This is when we all have to be who we must be, Matt Damon. This is when we all have to be with who we must be with.’

WEEKEND SIX

2007-09-23T16:04:00.000+01:00

Well, I'm totally in New York. It's hot as a badger's bum, but I've got glamorous aircon. Getting things dealt with before I travelled meant I lost two days of my cushion, so I really will have to get going tomorrow. The next day might be a write-off because of first night party. The show, apparently, is looking great - I will not go to final rehearsals because it's not as if I could influence anything at this stage and everyone agrees that it would be exciting for me to see it all, for the first time, on stage. I am one of the everyone who agrees this.

Inbetweentimes, I am reading about giant fish. I am mad for giant fish.

Chapter 29: Think of England

2007-09-21T09:24:00.000+01:00

‘That’s true,’ said Buddy, looking at my inert body. ‘No one has EVER had sex with a Chosen One. We’ll be the first!’

‘She’s not a virgin, you dolt,’ said the one who looked like a High School heartthrob.

‘She’s not married!’

‘She married Gavin, you dolt.’

‘But Gavin’s a pussy. And she saw Gavin and Cathy doing it in the hotel after the wedding, so she never went on honeymoon. So she didn’t do it with Gavin, you can’t fool me.’

‘They had sex BEFORE they married, you dolt.’
Buddy’s lip curled with distaste. ‘Oh Jeez,’ he said. ‘ BEFORE she got married. She’s one of THOSE women!’

‘You are the biggest dolt I have ever met.’

‘Then why did you drag me here with you?’

‘This is why,’ said High School Boy, as the door opened and Victoria Beckham came in to inject me with the drug that stopped me controlling my body. As if he hadn’t noticed, High School Boy said,

‘No, Buddy! I’ve let you see her now. It’s time to get out of here. Oh, hi Victoria. Is everything going well?’

‘You’re not supposed to be here,’ said Victoria Beckham.

‘I know,’ said High School Boy. ‘But Buddy was mad to see her, and you know, he’s such a dolt, you never know what he’s going to do.’

‘What could he do to her?’ said Victoria. ‘Oh, I know, sex! Men are so gross. Well, you’d better go. I’m sure Buddy can have sex with her when it’s time to torture her, if it comes to that. Sex is torture anyway, in my experience, but I suppose it must be worse if you’re having sex with a dolt.’

‘It must be terrible,’ agreed High School Boy.

‘But that’s for then,’ said Victoria Beckham. ‘For now, we have to be nice to her, the Master says.’
Buddy looked at High School Boy. ‘But you said we were allowed to…’ he started.

‘I literally have no idea what the dolt is going to say next,’ laughed High School Boy, smoothly.

‘What is a dolt?’ said Buddy.

‘Let’s go, Buddy, I’ll explain outside.’

Victoria Beckham gave me the dose of Somnus B which, if Miss Smallbone had been able to do what she said she’d done, would not be Somnus B at all. After what had just happened, I almost wanted to be drugged. How could I possibly have stopped myself from reacting to all that if I’d not been drugged? And if I reacted, then I would be drugged properly again, and I wouldn’t be able to carry out my mission and escape, and maybe Miss Smallbone would be captured, and that would be literally the end of the world.

Victoria sat on the edge of the bed. ‘People get very hung up about sex,’ she said. ‘I’m one of them. I’m really hung up about it for no good reason, except for one.’ A tear rolled down her cheek. ‘In every reincarnation, I fall in love with David Beckham, but he ignores me. Except for it always seems like we have some big battle to prepare for, and I’m a good soldier,’ she wiped the tear away, ‘and he’s a good general, so the Master makes us be partners, and I feel like I’m going crazy with love, but he just thinks I’m stupid. I can never do anything to make it better. Every time I think that this time something will have changed and it will be better, but it never is. When we got married, and we went to live in so-called Beckingham Palace in Sawbridgeworth, near Bishop’s Stortford in Hertfordshire, I made the house as amazing as I could, and still David thought it was vulgar. We never have sex.’ She stood up. ‘Well, not never. We did sleep in the same bed on our wedding night, and I woke him by… Well. In a special way. And then we had sex after that, but he wasn’t really awake, and I hoped this might break through his reserve, because I assume it must be shyness basically, or that he’s had a bad experience or something, but David got really angry and told me that if I ever did it again, he would cut out my heart, good soldier or not. I honestly don’t know what to do about him. I just need a friend. I hope you can be my friend, maybe, when you come round to being our side after we torture you, and then if you’re the Chosen One, you can order David to love me.’ She stood up, and smoothed her tiny skirt. ‘I’ll be back later. Thank you for listening to me.’

I felt sorry for her, on one level, but there were many other levels on which I didn’t feel sorry for her, and they were more important levels. For the next hour, I tried to move my fingers. Several times I wasn’t sure I was having any effect, but then I started to be sure, and I was soon able to move my head and my whole arms. Before I had complete control of my body, and before I was able to reach my arm under the mattress to read Miss Smallbone’s instructions, the door opened again, and in came Buddy and High School Boy.

‘But Victoria told us we shouldn’t be here!’ said Buddy, ‘And she’s really scary.’

‘I explained, you dolt…’

‘Does “dolt” really mean “dude”?’

‘Absolutely. I explained that sex is really good fun, didn’t I?’ Buddy nodded. ‘And obviously a nice girl wouldn’t have sex before marriage? But the Chosen One DID have sex before marriage, so she must really like sex, mustn’t she?’ Nodding again. ‘She’s the Chosen One, so she’s going to be really important, and she’s going to be really pissed off if she hasn’t been having sex.’ Buddy nodded more vigorously, like a child who doesn’t quite understand a maths problem. ‘So, if we have sex with her, she’ll be really grateful, and she’ll reward us.’

‘Yes,’ said Buddy. ‘I understand.’

‘I’d better go first,’ said High School Boy, taking off his trousers. ‘I don’t want you watching. Why don’t you sit in the toilet till I get you.’

‘Okay,’ said Buddy.

‘He really is a dolt,’ said High School Boy when Buddy was out of earshot. ‘I’m under no illusions about this. The Master will go crazy if he ever finds out, which I dare say he will, because I dare say you’ll tell him. But I’ll get reborn, and that’s not so bad. And I’ll have had sex with the Chosen One. How good’s that?’ He smiled, as he reached for my skirt. ‘Though the basic reason I’m doing this is that I’m a bad guy. It is what it is.’

Chapter 28: Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire

2007-09-20T08:59:00.000+01:00

If there’s one thing worse than being drugged by demon enemies so that your mind is completely aware of everything that is happening but cannot control your body, it is having your leader turn up unexpectedly when all hope is lost, tell you that she could free you if she wants, but is not going to do so.

‘I know this sounds bad,’ said Miss Smallbone. ‘You must be furious in there, and frightened. But the fate of the world hangs in the balance. I spent three months getting a job on Harrison Ford’s household staff, which was almost ruined when I had to come to London to see you. I’ve told very few people that he’s high up in the demon hierarchy in case one of our rasher angels tried to challenge him, because this is the only place I have identified as a sometime base of The Master. It is vital that we identify the Master, we’ve been trying for years, and here you are, and he’s definitely coming to meet you in two days time. This is an unmissable opportunity, Mary Sue. I know you would stay here and pretend to be drugged, but it would be difficult for you to do that convincingly, wouldn’t it? So isn’t it better to leave you as you are, just for now, for your own safety, while we know that they almost certainly won’t do anything to harm you?’

I wanted to scream. I didn’t want to be used as bait. Miss Smallbone noticed the laptop, open at the BBC news webpage about me, David Tennant, Johnny Depp, Matt Damon, etc. She shook her head. ‘I can’t believe you are the top story.’ She clicked twice and steered the screen into my view. The headline ran FRANCE ANNEXES ANDORRA, RENOUNCES UN, CLOSES BORDERS.

‘You see?’ said Miss Smallbone. ‘It’s started. There were riots, which Le Pen and his fascists deny, but the army opened fire indiscriminately. Thousands were killed. Everyone knows and the French are now terrified. They’re staying inside, telling each other that this guy they elected in a freak accident will realise he can’t carry on like this, and back down, and France will return to the world table, and the rest, but Le Pen doesn’t care what happens to France. He just wants martial law, and he’s got it. The top three generals, and the heads of the air force and navy, they’re all demons. They’ve been planning this for thirty years, and I only realised five years ago, and we haven’t been able to stop it. They’re winning, Mary Sue. We need a victory. We have to find out who The Master is. So you have to stay drugged, I’m sorry.’ Then she said, ‘I’ve told your parents you’re safe. It seemed better.’ And she left.

Nothing happened for the next few hours. Victoria Beckham ‘teased’ me by showing my pictures of torture techniques, but that was it.

The next morning, twenty minutes before my shot of the Somnus B drug, the door opened, ‘Mary Sue,’ said a hastily entering Miss Smallbone. ‘I’ve had to change my mind already, if you can imagine such a thing. They’ve heightened security again, and it’s very hard for me to get even to you, and this was my last chance to switch syringes. Also, there are some things you will have to find out. I’m slipping some under your mattress’ – footsteps approached the door, and then went past – ‘I’m very sorry, I must go. You cannot hint, EVER, that you’re not drugged. Good luck.’ And Miss Smallbone was gone.

What seemed like a second later the door opened again, and two men walked in. One was about twenty, good looking in that very obvious, US High School way (which I like in a show like Buffy, and dislike in something like American Pie). The other was a thin man in a leather jacket and tight jeans. He was about forty-five, but he was trying to look thirty-five. I very vaguely recognised them both. ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Leather Jacket, ‘As you’ve surely noticed, I’m Buddy Fletrock, from Crime Forensics Squad, which came just after CSI! And from Ghost Cop, which came out post-Dead Again! And I was also the blind assassin in the first six episodes of One Hell Of A Day, which was inspired by and in many people’s eyes surpassed 24. Also, and you might not know this, I was considered for the part of Spike in Buffy.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘You don’t believe me? I was seriously considered! My agent said I was THIS close. And in West Wing, I once played Colonel McManus – never named in the credits – who was in the Situation Room when a helicopter crashed and he had to look sad.’ Tiny flecks of spit gathered at the corner of his mouth. ‘I can’t believe you’re just lying there…’

‘Buddy, you idiot,’ said High School Boy. ‘She’s drugged. She can’t react. That’s why we’re here.’

‘Yeah,’ said Buddy, gathering himself. ‘I totally remembered that.’ He took a step towards me.

‘That’s why we’re here. Him and me – and we’re both demons, blah, blah, blah, so he’s totally as old as I am, which is seventy million years old, so don’t be deceived by the fact he has a younger body at the moment, or think that I’m paranoid about my age, even though it’s just as bad for male actors in Hollywood as female ones, because believe me, I’m not paranoid, like I say – have come to see you because you’re The Chosen One.’

‘I’ve never had sex with a Chosen One before,’ said High School Boy.

Chapter 27: Who's That Girl?

2007-09-19T09:07:00.000+01:00

I was led to my room, mind racing behind my drugged and impassive face. Here I was, in what was obviously an enemy stronghold, and Miss Smallbone, the legendary Teacher, whose real identity was known only to me and David Tennant, and who the enemy were desperate to identify, was wandering around, cool as you please, dressed as a maid. For the first time I thought to myself that the enemy were sensible to be afraid of The Teacher, who they still thought was a man. On the other hand, it made me more nervous of their leader, the equally anonymous Master.
Also, I was exhilarated to know that I was about to be rescued. I had only spent one day being drugged, but I can tell you that there is nothing like being an alert mind trapped in a body you can’t control for making you feel helpless and hopeless. Suddenly, I was not alone, and the enemy were not all-powerful. But as I sat in my room, my body having been clearly instructed not to leave my bed except to go to the toilet when I needed, I started to have doubts. How could Miss Smallbone possibly be here already? I left her in London four days ago (was it really only four?). I’d flown to Los Angeles in Johnny Depp’s private jet, and then spent two days at his mansion before I’d been kidnapped, and poor Vanessa Paradis and Ewan McGregor had been killed. That was yesterday, and today I’d been paraded around LA by Victoria Beckham and Matt Damon. The enemy were convinced that the Beckhams and Damon, as well as Harrison Ford, whose mansion this was, had not been identified as demons until Victoria’s stupid actions. They thought that the good guys would only be learning today where I might be being held, and yet the Teacher was already here. How could that be? How could she already have a job here? Was she twins? Was one of them an evil twin? If so, was it a trick that she winked at me? Was she actually The Master? If you think this sounds paranoid, you try being told you’re the Chosen One in a War for the Fate of the World, and then having to watch your friends being killed, and then finding yourself stuck as a dumb mind in a disobedient body.

I wished Miss Smallbone would come and explain away my fears, but nothing. The hours passed, and darkness fell. I hadn’t had this evening’s dose of the drug that kept me imprisoned, and I was beginning to hope they would forget. I was almost more frightened by the thought of trying to escape on my own initiative than I was of being drugged again. Still, I started trying to control my fingers, just as something to do. I don’t know if I had begun to succeed when the door clicked open. My stupid body didn’t turn round to see who it was, but I was certain it must be Miss Smallbone at last. I was certain.

‘Turn round, dumbo,’ said Victoria Beckham. ‘I don’t mind calling you dumbo, because as soon as you understand you should be on our side, you’ll find all of this funny and forgive me. And if you never understand, we’ll be torturing you anyway, and being nice would have been a waste of time. I want to show you something cool.’ She was holding a very small laptop computer, and she sat next to me on the bed, and pulled up the BBC news website. ‘You’re the biggest story in the world,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d get SOME column inches, but this is GREAT!’

The headline ran, ‘Who’s That Girl?’ The story underneath it, with pictures, ran as follows: ‘Police around the world are looking for Mary Sue Park, 30, a barrister from West Hampstead in north London, who seems to be the key to a sensational round of slayings involving some of the world’s biggest celebrities.

‘On Monday, Miss Park was visited in her office in Gray’s Inn’s South Square by David Tennant, who, moments later, was seen to murder Miss Park’s estranged husband. Before Miss Park could be questioned by the police, she disappeared. In seemingly unconnected news yesterday, the Scottish actor Ewan McGregor and the French pop singer Vanessa Paradis were gunned down in the LA home of Paradis’s partner, Johnny Depp. Police were treating this as the work of intruders, but astonishing pictures received by the BBC today show a heavily disguised Miss Park arriving in Los Angeles with Depp, McGregor and Paradis three days ago.

‘As if this weren’t enough, further stories are emerging about the previously anonymous Miss Park. She was seen shopping with Victoria Beckham, and as these pictures show, the pair are clearly bosom pals. But Miss Park seems even closer to Matt Damon, this photograph shows teh couple in a passionate clinch in Damon's eco-jeep.

‘Miss Park’s friends claim to be astonished by these stories, and say that this behaviour is completely out of character. Her family decline to comment. David Tennant, incredibly, still insists that she is his lawyer, and will represent him when his case comes to trial next week.’

Victoria Beckham beamed at me proudly. ‘Isn’t this great!’ she said. Isn’t it totally hilarious! And you haven’t seen the best bit – the comments sent in by the public are…’ There was a discreet knock on the door. ‘Yes,’ said Victoria impatiently. ‘What is it?’

The door opened, and in came Miss Smallbone. ‘Excuse,’ she said, in a heavy accent. ‘Have this for you. Mr Ford say is time for you give this to guest, no?’ She handed over the leather wallet which held the syringes of Somnus B, the body-control drug. Victoria Beckham gave me my injection, and Miss Smallbone said, ‘Mr Ford say he want to see you, Miss Beckham.’ Victoria Beckham left. As soon as the door was shut, Miss Smallbone said, ‘Well, Miss Park, I don’t know what to do with you. I could have switched drugs, and given you back control of your body, but on the whole, at the moment, I think that would be a bad idea, don’t you? I don’t want you getting frightened and trying to escape.’

Chapter 26: Stupid Victoria Beckham

2007-09-18T09:13:00.000+01:00

‘Gross,’ said Matt Damon, pulling away from our snog. I say ‘our’, but I was drugged with something called Somnus B, and I couldn’t resist him. And I say ‘snog’, but really it was him putting his mouth over mine, lips pursing in reluctance. My drugged eyes had been open through the horrible few seconds, and as if through windows I’d watched him looking past me to where the paparazzi had their cameras trained on us.

When we got back to Harrison Ford’s mansion, where I was being imprisoned, we were greeted in the hall by Harrison and David Beckham. ‘What the hell have you been doing?’ said Harrison.

‘Stop, Harrison,’ said David, nodding at the back of a woman bent over and scrubbing the floor.

‘We do this in private.’ Then he turned his gaze on Matt Damon and added, ‘And let’s not be too hard on Matt until we’ve heard his side of the story.’

Matt Damon looked confused as we led into the lounge. ‘But David,’ he said, as soon as the door was closed, ‘I presumed this was your idea. That’s how Victoria made it seem.’

Harrison Ford turned angrily on David Beckham. ‘This isn’t the first time,’ he said. ‘She’s a liability. I’m tempted to put her on Somnus B. This is amateur hour. She’s as bad as Cathy Calloway with her ridiculous “proof” that Mary Sue shagged David Tennant. These things draw attention to us at just the time our anonymity is becoming vital.’

‘I know, Harrison,’ said David, doing his best not to grimace. ‘But there’s nothing we can do for now. It’s the Master’s decision: if it comes to a fight, we can’t do without Victoria, and she knows it.’ David Beckham, shorn of his silly mannerisms and fumbling speech, was genuinely commanding presence, and Harrison Ford deferred instantly. David cocked his head, and added,

‘That’s her now.’ The three men instinctively drew together and stood facing the door, behind which came a sharp stiletto clicking. The clicking stopped, the men tensed, there was a pause, and then Victoria Beckham threw open the door, her face shining with defiance. ‘You’re an idiot, Victoria,’ said David Beckham.

‘Just because you can’t control me?’ said Victoria. ‘Just because you’re intimidated by strong, sexual women?’

‘Not for those reasons,’ said David calmly. ‘Please do explain what you were hoping to achieve?’

‘Why do you have to talk like a dictionary?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ David’s face indicated that he was reviewing his last sentence, looking for words a five-year-old might find tricky.

‘You know what I mean, you twat.’

Matt Damon said, ‘I thought you…’

‘No, Matt,’ said David gently. ‘I want her to explain.’

‘I didn’t do any harm,’ pouted Victoria. ‘Either The Master gets her to join us, or we have to torture her. Either way, there’s nothing to stop me having some fun and making it difficult for the precious little angels. I’d like to see them get her out of this without her looking like a bitch in the newspapers! I’d like to see what David Tennant is saying now. Tell me how that harms us? Go on, tell me! You’re a coward. The time is coming when we can stop skulking around and hardly killing anyone.’

‘Well, Victoria…’

‘Go on, explain.’

‘The explanation is…’

‘I told you! There’s no explanation.’ Her face was sheened with sweat as she made her desperate interruption. She could see from the passivity on David Beckham’s face that he had a clinching argument. When an opposing barrister has that look in court, I always know it’s time to pack my bags. David waited until Victoria’s shoulders slumped, and she said, ‘Go on.’

‘The Master cannot get to LA for two days, because nothing can be allowed to compromise his cover and future freedom of movement. We have the Chosen One,’ he nodded at me, ‘And, since no one knew about you or me, or Harrison, we were under no danger of her being found. Now, you have paraded her for the world’s press – and you’ve used poor Matthew abominably, incidentally – and you have told the angels precisely who we are. Luckily, they do not yet know about Harrison, but once they arrive in LA, and do some investigation, they will find out where we have been spending our time, put two and two together, and attempt to rescue her. We are safe for a maximum of five hours.’

‘Five hours! There’s no way they could…’

‘We’ve underestimated The Teacher before. He’s very good, and we know there are more angels in LA.’

‘She knows what The Teacher looks like,’ said Victoria, looking at me. ‘Give me five minutes with her, and I’ll know too.’

‘I’d have thought you’d realise that you’ve done enough damage already. As soon as we leave this room, Harrison is going to have to take security to Level One, no one into the house, and no one out, and that includes us, now we’ve been compromised. Do you understand now?’

‘This is ridiculous,’ said Victoria.

‘I’m so sorry if I’ve done some thing wrong,’ said Matt Damon. ‘Which it looks like I have.’

‘It’s isn’t your fault, Matthew,’ said David Beckham. ‘Don’t worry.’ David came and stared at me through my eyes. ‘I know you’re in there, Mary Sue,’ he said. ‘Victoria is a fool, but it’s really just over-eagerness. You’ll understand when The Master comes to explain. You’ll realise that your precious Teacher doesn’t understand what our kind were meant to be, and that living too long with the humans has muddied his mind. Then, in the end, you’ll help us kill him, and the rest of them, and then we will feast on this world, and then we will move on. I know this sounds terrible to you now, but you’ll understand, I promise.’

Victoria was ordered to lead me to my room. On the stairs, we passed the maid, who stood primly to attention, head bowed. As soon as Victoria was passed her, the maid lifted her eyes to mine and winked. I’m glad my body couldn’t react, because it was The Teacher, Miss Smallbone.

Chapter 25: Things to Do in LA when You Haven't Got a Mind of Your Own

2007-09-17T10:24:00.000+01:00

‘Humans are just meat,’ Harrison Ford continued. ‘They are things for us to play with.’

‘You aren’t stronger than them,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen.’

‘We aren’t stronger than them ANY MORE, but we will be as soon as you and the Master open the Gates of Hell.’

‘You’re not special!’

‘We do regenerate eternally,’ he reminded me. ‘That’s pretty special.’ I didn’t say anything. ‘You WILL join us, Mary Sue.’

‘Never.’

‘I’m sorry, but we have ways.’ He gave his lop-sided grin, but it now just seemed frightening. ‘Who is The Teacher, Mary Sue?’ he asked. They were obsessed with The Teacher, who was the leader of the good guys. They assumed it was a man, but The Teacher was a little, neat woman called Miss Smallbone, who was the person who told me who I really was. There was still so much I didn’t understand, but I knew that it was vital that The Teacher’s identity remained a secret. ‘We can make you tell us. It wouldn’t be pleasant.’

I’d always wondered, I dare say everyone has, what would happen if they were tortured. I’ve always assumed that I’d want to hold out, and then, the second someone started pulling off my fingernails, I would scream and tell everything. I said, ‘I’ll never tell you.’

‘Well,’ said Harrison Ford. ‘Then I am very sorry for what is about to happen.’ I did my best not to react, and he thought I didn't understand. He said, 'I mean the torturing.'

‘Wait, Harrison,’ said David Beckham, softly. He had entered behind me at some point.

‘We should check with The Master.’ David Beckham tapped briskly into his mobile phone, and was answered immediately. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘She’s right here. She won’t speak. Do you want us to… No? I thought not. Harrison was going to do it without asking you. I’ll tell him, sir. Okay.’ He listened again. ‘She’s stronger than she looks, yes.’ Another pause. ‘Yes. Yes, sir, I agree, it would be dangerous. Yes, sir, thank you.’ He flipped his phone closed. ‘We wait for him. He’ll be here in two days.’

‘Why?’

‘He says you’re a clumsy moron, Harrison. The end of days will go a lot more smoothly if she’s standing willingly alongside him when the time comes. If we torture her, how easy is that going to be? We can’t touch her mind.’

‘So what do we do till then?’ said Harrison Ford, cowed. Then, like a puppy that knows it shouldn’t have widdled on the carpet and is trying to make amends he said, ‘Somnus B?’

‘Of course,’ said David Beckham, and he nodded to the black woman, who reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a small leather wallet. In it was a set of loaded syringes. David took one, and sat next to me. ‘I know you don’t trust me yet, but that will change. This is simply so we can make sure you don’t do anything stupid to yourself while you’re our guest.’ Without any warning, he jabbed me with the syringe, held my arm while he discharged the fluid into me, and carried on talking. ‘Somnus B is perfectly harmless. All it does is disconnect certain volitional centres of the mind from the relevant body-motor functions. You’ll function normally, but you will have to do whatever we say. I’ve never taken the drug myself, but I imagine it must be rather relaxing.’ He held up his hand, palm to me, and said, ‘Kiss this.’ Instantly, I did so. Then he pinched me, and I recoiled. ‘Yes,’ he said, that’s worked. Volition gone, but protective reactions fine. I say we put her to bed.’

It’s very hard to describe the effects of Somnus B. you can still receive information from your senses, but you feel like you are watching the world, rather than in it, as if what you are seeing and feeling is all a huge television programme. You feel like a prisoner inside a gaol made of you. You can scream, but you can’t make your body scream. It is horrible, and I won’t tell you what the demons usually use the drug to make people do.

I was sent to bed, where my body slept, while I stayed awake, terrified, for half the night, stuck in the blackness. In the morning, I was woken by a sharp prick in my arm. My mind leapt in shock, but my body stayed still. A maid was giving me a top-up injection, and behind her, hands impatiently on hips, was Victoria Beckham. ‘You look awful,’ she said, ‘and I frankly do not think that anything can be done for you this side of major surgery, but I’ve been told to keep you busy, and I think we can have some fun. We’re going shopping.’ An hour later, we were in the sort of shops you only see in movies, with assistants scurrying all around us. I had been told I couldn’t speak. ‘Don’t mind her,’ said Victoria. ‘She’s an idiot mute, but I adore her completely, like I adore all disadvantaged people, so I’m taking her shopping for the day of her life!’

‘That’s so wunnerful, Victoria,’ said the acidic Italian woman next to us. ‘She an idiot why she eat so much? You not tie her hands nor nothing?’ Victoria gave a long-suffering shrug. By the time we left the arcade, I was painted and dressed like a pop singer in a video, by which I mean a rich prostitute.

I was made to carry my bags of new clothes from the car to the restaurant, which seemed inexplicable until a group of paparazzi started snapping at us, and Victoria said, ‘She’s a darling!’ and kissed me. She whispered, ‘Act like you love this,’ and my body did. She turned back to the reporters and said, ‘I thought I knew about clothes, but this girl has shopped me off my feet! Do you know her? She’s Mary Sue Park, an English celebrity lawyer! Mwah, mwah!’ I wished I could turn off my eyes, but my body posed and preened, and clung onto David Beckham when he joined us, and all I could do was watch reporters making notes.

Once inside, Victoria had plate after plate of delicious food put in front of me, and she told me to eat them. She watched, eating nothing, her face a combination of desperation and wonder. It was odd, but things got hideous when we were joined by Matt Damon. He grinned at Victoria and said, ‘Is she ready?’ Victoria said I was. Matt Damon ordered me to follow him out of the restaurant. He held my hand for the eager photographers, sat me next to him in his big red pick-up truck, checked to see that the press were still watching, said ‘Stay still,’ reached over, and snogged me.

WEEKEND FIVE

2007-09-17T10:16:00.001+01:00

Odd. Thought I posted something yesterday morning. Wasn't a very extensive round-up, since I don't have much news. I mainly went on about having bruised ribs and my ecstatic joy that I will be reviewing a book about giant salmon when I get back from NY next month.

Also, I said that I am planning to go next Friday or Saturday, not that I have bought my ticket yet, for various complex reasons, which means that I ought to be well settled in next Monday, and there should be little danger of interrupted service, but nothing is ever certain. Posting times will obviously change.

If you are in New York, obviously, you should be planning to come to THIS.

Chapter 24: You Eat Meat Don't You, Mary Sue

2007-09-14T08:40:00.000+01:00

‘I’m sorry you had to see that,’ said Harrison Ford. ‘It must have been awful.’ Before today, I really had almost managed to convince myself that that Angels and Demons were warring for the fate of the world, that I was the ‘Chosen One’ who would play a crucial role in their final battle and that I was under the protection of such ‘Angels’ as Johnny Depp and Ewan McGregor. But now Harrison Ford had shown me a video in which Depp and McGregor said I should be killed, and they’d happily do it themselves. ‘They’re not your friends, Mary Sue,’ said Harrison gently. ‘You mean nothing to them.’ I knew nothing any more. I mechanically raised my fork to my mouth, concentrating on the action.

Harrison Ford’s lovely assistant Demeter had dressed me in a beautiful blue and gold dress, but dinner had not been formal. It was just me, Harrison, a fat man in a brown wig, and a nondescript black woman of about my age. They all seemed extremely nice, and my steak was delicious. I hated every moment of it, because my whole self was stripping apart, tatters swirling around a black plughole, the other side of which was … I didn’t know. Maybe on the other side was nothing, so there wouldn’t be a me anymore at all, which would mean this was the plughole of madness. Or maybe waste-disposal-unit was a better image, since I was being shredded. Or maybe it was just a life transition, I would still be there on the other side, but a different, reconstituted me.

‘But they didn’t kill me,’ I protested, quietly.

‘They hadn’t killed you yet, but they would have.’

‘Why hadn’t they killed me if they were going to kill me?’ There was no answer. ‘Ewan McGregor and Vanessa Paradis died trying to protect me.’ At the thought of Vanessa, who had been so sweet, I started crying.

‘There, there, Mary Sue,’ said the black woman, putting her hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s good you can cry. But they weren’t trying to protect you. They were just trying to stop us getting hold of you.’

‘Why?’

‘Because…’

‘Why did they change their mind?’ I asked. ‘When was that video taken?’

‘It was last week, when…’

‘Stop!’ I gulped, trying to get my thoughts straight. ‘Wait. They said that if you and The Master got hold of me, we might be able to open the Gates of Hell.’

‘Yes,’ said the fat man. ‘It’s going to be brilliant!’ He looked at the others. ‘Oh,’ he said, abashed. ‘Darn, I shouldn’t have said that. I remember. Softly, softly.’

‘You’re an idiot, Norville,’ said the black woman. ‘He’s an idiot. Once we explain, you’ll understand why…’

‘No,’ I said, and all the bits of my self started coalescing again, on this side of the plughole, forming a shape that was still me, and which would never fit through to the other side. ‘No way. You ARE the Demons. You sent Gavin to marry me, and he shagged Cathy on our wedding day, and she’s another Demon. That’s not something the goodies would do. And the others were protecting me because it’s the right thing to do, even though it was dangerous. It must be because the Teacher told them to, because…’

‘No,’ said Harrison Ford. ‘I’m sorry. The Teacher would have kept you alive for a while, because the Angels have such bleeding hearts, but when it came to it, when he realised that it is your destiny to join us, he would have killed you himself.’

It was horribly plausible. The Teacher, Miss Smallbone, was a little plump woman who gave off a frightening air of capability. She would regret doing bad things, but she’d do them. But David Tennant told me trust her, so I said, more defiant than convinced, ‘That’s not true! I KNOW the Teacher.’

‘You’ve seen the Teacher!’ blurted Norville. ‘Who is he?’ He turned to the others. ‘She’s seen him. We can find out what he looks like. We can kill him, and this will all be over. Do you want me to torture her?’ His piggy eyes bore on me eagerly. The black woman sighed deeply, and he said, ‘What? She knows… Oh shoot. I’ve done it again! I’m such a doofus. Softly, softly. Er, Mary Sue, when I said “torture”, I was speaking metaphorically. It’s our word for … er … making you a cookie, which is American for biscuit!’ He looked at the others hopefully, and then he said, ‘Ok. I’ll go. Sorry guys.’ He went.

‘In one way,’ said Harrison Ford, ‘Norville’s right. This is all just words. The Master. The Teacher. Angels and Demons. You have a value system which means one side sounds more attractive, but that’s because the Angels, so called, are more devious than we are. They’re weaklings. They don’t want to become Gods, which we were always meant to be, which we were before we ended up on this pathetic little planet. You are one of us, Mary Sue. Once you recognise that, everything else is simple.’

‘The Gates of Hell,’ I said.

Harrison Ford said, ‘the Gates of Hell is more mere words. Hell is not a place. All it means is that we will finally have access to the world we lost seventy million years ago. It’s our destiny.’
‘What will happen to the world, to all the people in it?’

‘People?’ said Harrison Ford. ‘These aren’t really people. You are further above them than they are above the cow we’ve just been eating. Once you realise that, everything else is simple. You eat meat, don’t you, Mary Sue?’

Chapter 23: Sometimes You Don't Want to Choose, But You Don't Have a Choice

2007-09-13T08:21:00.000+01:00

When I was sixteen, the decision over which A-levels to do caused me a month of sleepless nights. I wanted to take English, History and French, but then I wouldn’t be in any of the same classes as Hetty Winglass, my best friend since the age of seven. Hetty wanted to be a vet, so she was taking Maths, Chemistry and Biology.

We made our selections with heavy hearts, and hugged each other about the end of an era. Over the summer, at birthday parties and sleepovers, I must have regaled a million people with my calculation that Hetty and I had never spent a lesson in a different classroom since we went to proper school, which added up to something approaching five thousand hours, and now it was over. Hetty wasn’t always with me when I did this speech – though she often was – because at the parties that summer she was in the process of getting her first and last long-term boyfriend, James Dust.

Because of James, I didn’t see Hetty as much as usual that summer, but we still met up at least a couple of times each week. I made most of the arrangements, but in every friendship there’s always one person who makes the running that way, and I barely noticed it, let alone minded. I didn’t notice it officially, anyway. My mother sometimes asked me pointedly whether Hetty ever called me, and I said, ‘Of course she does, sometimes.’

Whatever. When we met up, we talked about the coming year, and giggled about James and how much he was in Hetty’s thrall, and why I wasn’t snogging anyone at these parties, which was for reasons I didn’t know, because I quite wanted to snog people, it just never happened somehow. I said, probably quite often, probably in quite a serious voice, that I was really, really sad that we weren’t going to be in lessons together any more, and this would be a real change in the routine and lives we had each lead for more than half of the years we had been on earth. ‘Yeah, Mary Sue,’ laughed Hetty. ‘But it’s just lessons!’ and she would change the subject. I thought she couldn’t bear to talk about it, which I almost couldn’t, but I was forcing myself because it was the mature thing to do to face up to this situation.

By mid-August, I could stand it no longer. I told my mother that there was no real point in my doing French A-level. Everyone knew that the best way to learn a language was to live in the relevant country, which is why a year of a degree course was abroad. I could live in a France any time, and there was no point in my doing French literature when I was doing English literature already, so it would be more balanced if my A-levels included a science subject, and I hated Maths, and Chemistry was full of Maths, and so the logical thing was to do Biology. My mother asked me if this was because of Hetty, and I told her she was being stupid, and we had a fight. My mother asked why Hetty wasn’t changing one of her subjects, and I said that it was nothing to do with Hetty, though I wasn’t pretending it wasn’t gong to be great for us both, but there was no way Hetty could change her subjects, because she wanted to be a vet. When I told Hetty, she wasn’t as instantly thrilled as I expected, but I assumed it was the surprise, because after a tiny moment, she gave me a hug.

On the first day of our sixth form, we arrived in our new, more lax uniforms. We were now allowed a jumper in one of four colours other than the standard blue. Hetty and I had agreed on burgundy, but when she arrived, she was wearing green. She said she forgot. I said I didn’t mind.

Our first biology lesson was late that morning. I was the first in the room. We’d sat in the same seats for biology all through senior school, and we knew that once we had those seats on the first day, we would remain in them for the next two years. So I sat down, and craned my head around for Hetty to join me. While I was doing so, Claire Settles slipped in under my arm with a big grin. ‘Hi, MS!’ she beamed. ‘Partners?’ Claire had never been in our class before, she’d been promoted from the second stream because she was good at sciences, and she didn’t know that I was always partners with Hetty. I was slightly confused, and I was in the process of working out how to extricate myself when I saw Hetty look over, look surprised, shrug and sit down next to Lise Palmer. My stomach was in knots throughout the lesson, which I spent trying to figure out how to explain Claire’s mistake to her.

But that never happened. After the lesson, I went to the lavatory. I was in a cubicle when I heard two people enter, laughing. One of them was Claire Settles. ‘Ok, Hets, I did it, but you owe me.’

‘I know,’ said Hetty, ‘but I totally need a break from MS.’

‘I thought you and her…’

‘That’s what everyone thinks. I don’t mind her, but she’s, I mean, she cramps my style, doesn’t she?’

‘I would have to say yes,’ said Claire, judiciously.

‘Yeah. I’m not being cruel, am I?’

‘No,’ said Claire. ‘You’re way out of her league, really. You’re basically being kind to her, aren’t you?’

‘Basically.’

It is because of that day in the toilet when I was sixteen that the adult me – sitting on the end of a bed in Harrison Ford’s mansion, having just watched a video of some people who claimed to be her protectors talking about how it would be better for everyone if she were dead – recognised the black weight in her stomach, and knew for certain that while she might be able to crush it, contain it and move on, it would always be there, added to the list of unforgettable betrayals, testament to the fact that she never seems to learn. Stupid, stupid Mary Sue.

Chapter 22: Alone

2007-09-12T09:47:00.000+01:00

Harrison Ford’s LA mansion was even more amazing than Johnny Depp’s. I was wobbly on my feet after being driven here in the boot of the Beckhams’ car, for which Harrison apologised profusely. The Beckhams had been dismissed, bickering. ‘Come inside,’ said Harrison, and took a few steps. I didn’t move. ‘I won’t bite,’ he added, his eyes twinkling. I couldn’t help smiling. Even though I knew these people were extra-terrestrial demons who wanted to destroy the world, it was hard to completely dissociate them from their public faces, and everyone a bit loves Harrison Ford. ‘Come on,’ he said again. Nodding at the well-guarded gate behind me, he added, ‘You really don’t have any choice.’

‘Are you going to kill me?’

‘We will never kill you, Mary Sue. You’ve been brainwashed by Depp and the others, so I don’t expect you to believe me straight away, but I’m here to help you come to terms with you are. Everything will be easier if you’re at least prepared to consider the possibility that I am on your side. Will you do that?’

‘No,’ I gulped. I had seen the Beckhams murder my friends.

‘You’re spunky,’ he smiled. ‘But believe me, you’re one of us, not one of them. Those people,’ his face wrinkled into a sneer of distaste, ‘they did not tell you the whole story. They didn’t show you what they’re really like. That’s why…’ he looked at me again, shivering in my bikini, in spite of the hot LA summer, and the mucky sweat from the boot of the car, and he stopped. ‘I’m so sorry, I’ve forgotten my manners.’ He clicked his fingers, and a bland-faced woman in neat grey slacks emerged behind him, seemingly from thin air. ‘Demeter, look after Miss Park. I will see her for dinner in an hour.’ Harrison Ford winked at me, and said, ‘Think about what I’ve said, that’s all. I’m sorry we can’t let you go, but as soon as you realise what those people are like, you’ll understand why we rescued you.’
***

An hour later, I was looking better than I’ve ever looked in my life. The efficient Demeter had whisked me into a beautiful wooden shower room which sprayed water with dizzying pressure from every wall, and from there into a walk-through closet that made me feel like I was entering Narnia. She picked out a blue and gold dress which made me look like Versace had designed something just for me. She was efficient without being cold, and perfect in the real sense, which includes being impossible to dislike.

Does this mean I was starting to wonder if Harrison Ford might be telling the truth? No. I was just in a daze. There was nothing I could do, and I had to stay alive until my friends came to rescue me. Johnny Depp was going to be crazy that the Beckhams had killed Vanessa, and he’d be out for revenge, and Johnny Depp was definitely one of the good guys. I was sure of this, even if, when I tried to lay out the concrete evidence, I emerged with not a lot. After all, he’d been in league with David Tennant, who murdered my husband (albeit he said my husband was a demon), and he’d whisked me away from the police (albeit he said that I wasn’t safe if the demons knew where I was). I only had Johnny Depp’s word for it that his side in this battle was the angels, and that Harrison Ford’s side was the demons. What if there were no goodies and no baddies? What was I supposed to do then? How was I supposed to choose which side to be on, if I really was the Chosen One, whatever that meant? I got a grip of myself, determined not to be bamboozled. Johnny, Vanessa and Ewan McGregor were the goodies, I was almost absolutely sure.

There was a soft knock on the door. Demeter entered with a DVD, put it in the machine, and said, ‘Mr Ford wanted you to watch this before dinner. He felt it would be helpful.’ Then she flashed a sudden, brilliant smile at me, a smile of complete happiness and welcome, and she said, ‘I’m SO glad we’ve found you at last, Mary Sue. I’m SO glad you’re safe from those bastards.’ And then she added, ‘You look beautiful.’ I really liked Demeter, and I found myself hoping she was deluded, rather than evil. I was nervous of watching the DVD, but I had no choice. Harrison Ford could obviously make me watch it if he wanted, and it was surely better to do it alone, where I could govern my reaction. It was probably something horrible, like them torturing people, so I knew what to expect if I didn’t do what they wanted. I clicked play.

The screen was grainy, as if it had been filmed with a furtive surveillance camera of some kind. On screen Johnny Depp and Ewan McGregor were eating in an obviously posh restaurant with the small red-haired woman who had helped me evade police protection.

‘So,’ said Johnny, ‘We finally know who she is: Mary Sue Park. Who’s dealing with her?’

‘The Teacher forbade it,’ said Ewan. ‘The Teacher knew who she was all along.’

‘But not now, surely!’ said Johnny. ‘Not know we know she’s married one of them! She’s too dangerous. We have to kill her.’ He turned to the red-haired woman, and said, ‘It’ll be you, won’t it?’

‘I hope so.’

‘We should never have let it get this far,’ said Johnny Depp. ‘If Mary Sue Park was sitting at this table, I’d strangle her with my bare hands.’ The red-haired woman agreed emphatically. Ewan McGregor nodded reluctantly.

I sat on the end of the bed, shattered.

Chapter 21: Victoria Beckham Calls Me Fatso, but The Situation is Such that I Do Not Give Her a Piece of My Mind

2007-09-11T08:36:00.000+01:00

‘Thank goodness you’re safe,’ said David Beckham. He was standing with a gun in his hand by Johnny Depp’s pool, and he loomed over the dead bodies of Vanessa Paradis and Ewan McGregor. ‘We’re here to rescue you.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What did they tell you?’ said David Beckham, calmly. ‘They kidnapped you, didn’t they?’

‘They didn’t kidnap me. They were protecting me!’

‘Have you heard of Stockholm Syndrome? It’s where you become emotionally attached to the people who capture you? I think that…’

‘I have heard of Stockholm Syndrome, thank you very much,’ I shouted, edging away from him, but there was nowhere to run. Behind me was a sheer wall down into the valley. I opened my mouth to scream. David Beckham smiled. I screamed.

‘No one can hear you,’ he said. ‘You’re all alone now.’ He took a step towards me. ‘Don’t be frightened.’

‘I’ll jump!’

‘No you won’t, fatso,’ hissed a little voice in my ear, as Victoria’s wire hard fingers closed around my wrist. ‘I’ve got her David, let’s go.’

‘Calmer, please, Vicky,’ said David, in a tone that made it seem as if he didn’t like his wife very much. ‘We are not your enemies, Mary Sue. You have been brainwashed. Pretending to be your friend is a counter-intelligence technique that these people, Paradis in particular, have come to use in a disarmingly sophisticated fashion over the years. She can be very persuasive.’

Listening to him, one thing was obvious: ‘You’re not really David Beckham,’ I said.

He gave a half-smile, and with a flicker that didn’t change anything physical about him so far as I could see, he became a different person. His eyes took on the familiar Beckham bewilderment, and his head started nodding slightly as he said, ‘You, y’know, er, you like don’t think I’m David, y’know, because I was speaking in, y’know, English? Er, like, y’know, Mary Sue. It’s all an act, y’know. Right? Y’know?’ I knew. All of a sudden he was the urbane, articulate Beckham again. ‘All actors will tell you how enjoyable it is to play a character you can use to confound expectations. Now, I’m terribly sorry to hurry you, but we have to go.’

‘You can’t make me.’

‘We certainly don’t want to, but “make you” is something we can literally do. But there’s no need. We’re all on the same side.’

I wasn’t falling for this. Lovely Vanessa Paradis’s empty eyes looked up at me. I screamed again. ‘She’s hysterical, babe,’ drawled Victoria Beckham. ‘It seems your charm is getting us nowhere here, for about the millionth time. And we’ve got to get her out the front, so what say I just knock her out?’

‘No, Vicky. We must be ready to…’

‘Bored now,’ said Victoria, and the heel of her palm thudded into the side of my head.

***

I came to curled up on in a stifling, enclosed space, and I was being jolted furiously. My neck was sore, my head was throbbing and could feel a slippery-thin strand of saliva sliding from my mouth and down my cheek. I was obviously in the boot of the Beckhams’ car.

They hadn’t killed me yet, so they probably weren’t going to kill me until they were certain that I wouldn’t help them, or their precious Master. I knew David Beckham was lying about being on my side. Partly this is because I’d liked Ewan McGregor and Vanessa Paradis very much – my stomach lurched again at the thought of them, only slightly mollified by the thought that they would be regenerating somewhere – and partly because I wasn’t prepared to believe in a world where David Tennant was the baddy and David Beckham was a goody. Maybe this doesn’t seem very rational to you, but I can’t help that. When I was going out with the evil Gavin, the only thing we argued about regularly was stupid football. I tried to explain was that football was soap opera for boys: endless, repetitive storylines, and villains and heroes, ridiculous hyperbole, celebs and character-driven plots that last for years, into which otherwise sane people get totally sucked-in. I tried to explain that this wasn’t a criticism – it was just a way of explaining the fascination – but Gavin always got angry, and told me that football was more real than soap opera, because you didn’t know what was going to happen. As if that makes a difference, I would say. It’s not as if I know what’s going to happen in the next episode of Eastenders. Sport is totally soap opera for boys, whatever boys think, and David Beckham is the ultimate personification, because he’s crossover – so obviously soap opera that even sport-hating girls can get in on the story. Why was I thinking about this in the boot of the car? Well, maybe it’s because I was in the boot of a car, and I was trying to stop myself thinking what might happen when the boot opened, because all the possibilities filled me with terror.

The car stopped. I filled with terror. After the engine noise and crashing, the silence was deafening. Two sets of footfalls crunched on gravel from the doors and round to the boot. Several new feet came running towards the car. ‘Have you got her?’ came a familiar, American voice I couldn’t quite place. ‘Is she alright?’

‘Vicky knocked her out,’ said David Beckham.

‘Why?’ said the voice. There was a pause. ‘You’re an idiot, Victoria.’

‘Whatever.’

A key was inserted into the lock, and the boot tugged open. When my eyes adjusted, the first thing I saw was the concerned face of Harrison Ford. ‘I’m really so very sorry, Mary Sue. It wasn’t meant to be like this. I can only apologise. Please let me help you out of there and start trying to make amends for this ridiculous situation.’

Chapter 20: Fear and Loathing in La-la Land

2007-09-10T08:44:00.000+01:00

I walked out through the huge glass door that separated Johnny Depp’s lounge from the sundeck that led into his infinity pool and looked over a perfect green valley in the hills north of LA. I reflected to myself that if this weren’t the end of the world, I would just have had the most amazing two days of my life.

Ewan McGregor emerged behind me in royal blue swimming shorts and a stupid Hawaii-print shirt that hung weirdly because of the gun in its pocket. I didn’t like the guns, but Ewan was my bodyguard and he insisted. I stretched in the baking late-afternoon sun, feeling a little breeze flutter across my outstretched arms. Vanessa Paradis waved from the sun-lounger, wearing bikini bottoms and a little white blouse, and called, ‘Hey, Ewan! Ze sun is at ze yard-arm, no? Mary Sue would like a gin and tonic?’ Ewan cocked his eye, and I grinned at him, shrugging as if to say, ‘Why not?’

‘Do you want one too?’ Ewan called back to Vanessa.

‘For sure, I thought you would never ask me. Also maybe one of ze steak sandwiches if zere are any left. I am ravishing.’

Ewan laughed.. He patted my shoulder and said, ‘I’ll see you in five.’

I dived into the pool, and swam a few lengths. From the moment I learned I was the Chosen One, etcetera, I’d started to become more physically confident. With every stroke, I felt myself connect with the water, and pull myself cleanly past my hand, like a knife slicing a line down the pool. When I told Vanessa about this physical change, she replied that it was all in my mind. Being an angel or demon – if I was one, which was moot, since my parents had been one of each which had never happened before – came with no superpowers, unless you counted automatic reincarnation. Whatever, I felt fresher and stronger than I’d ever felt in my life. As the tiles slid effortlessly past beneath my nose, I thought about this morning’s bemused stories on the BBC website. The reporters clearly didn’t know what to say about me. The police wanted to interview me about my husband Gavin’s murder, and to treat my disappearance as mysterious, but my parents (my human ones) insisted that they were in contact with me, and everything was fine. So did David Tennant (my demon-turned-angel father), who I was defending on the charge of murdering Gavin (which he had done, but only because Gavin, unbeknownst-to-me, was a demon). All the while, my head of Chambers, Sir Connaught Sampson-Samson, was oiling the troubled waters, saying that I had demonstrably done nothing wrong, as hundreds of witnesses could attest, and I should be allowed to do my job however I saw fit. Sir Conn was an angel. (Ha ha.)

I reached the end of the pool, and in one movement I pulled myself out and onto my feet. I’d never been able to do this before, surely? Vanessa threw me a towel, and I joined her under the sunshade. ‘You look super great!’ she said.

‘I feel it,’ I replied. Then I noticed her face had turned serious. ‘Oh oh,’ I said.

‘I am sorry,’ said Vanessa. ‘We ‘ave waited as long as we could, so you could recover from ze shock, but we ‘ave to make plans, no? You will ‘ave soon to go back. Zere is Tennant to look after.’ She pursed her lips when she said ‘Tennant.’

‘You don’t like him?’

‘We ‘ave fought ze demons for 70 million years,’ she replied. ‘Tennant, or ze demon Grebulon as we know ‘im, was ze worst. ‘E kill me many, many times. ‘E cruel beyond belief. ‘E is your father, I suppose, but I do not trust ‘im. It was ze Master’s idea for Grebulon to seduce Guinevere, and Guinevere is still broken by it, and only ze Teacher ‘as ever see ‘er again.’

‘He saved me from Gavin.’

‘Well,’ Vanessa admitted. ‘Yes.’

‘And the Teacher trusts him.’

‘Yes, also.’ All the angels were fascinated by the Teacher, their secretive leader, who none of them had ever met. Only David Tennant and I, so far as I was aware, knew that the Teacher was a small woman called Miss Smallbone. I had, however, been told which of the world’s prominent figures were angels and which were known to be demons. I was surprised that Jeremy Clarkson was a goodie (‘Ha ha,’ squealed Vanessa. ‘It is ze perfect disguise, no!), and there were a myriad others. Of the demons that had been definitively identified, I’d already learnt about the French fascist President le Pen, who was definitely up to something. Others included Matt Damon, Graham Norton and Liz Hurley, which explained the latter pair’s shock wedding earlier this year. Also, and I was really sad to learn this, the lovely Ian Hislop and Stephen Fry. I suppose they were the demon versions of Clarkson.

‘Where is Ewan?’ said Vanessa. ‘I am dying of ‘unger.’ At that moment, there was a huge crash, and Ewan McGregor flew backwards out through the plate glass door. As he tried to swing himself to his feet, blood painting crazy patterns in the Hawaiian print, a stilettoed foot connected with the side of his head, and he crumpled with sickening finality.

‘Oh my God!’ I shouted, trying to stand. ‘Ewan! Are you ok!’

Tiny hands on my shoulder pressed me to my seat. ‘You are not ready for zis,’ said Vanessa. ‘I should ‘ave realised. Victoria Beckham was always one of ‘zem. She will not survive zis day.’

It was only then that I managed to focus on the owner of the stiletto, who was now stalking the edge of the pool as Vanessa Paradis strode to meet her. They met in a flurry of kung-fu somersaults and jack-knifing kicks almost too fast for the mind to register. It can only have been thirty seconds when a soft, lisping voice interrupted them. ‘Always the theatrics, Victoria,’ said David Beckham, ‘We haven’t got time.’ He was holding a gun. He raised it and fired.

‘Oh la la,’ said Vanessa Paradis, a red carnation blooming through her blouse. ‘I am sorry, Mary Sue. You will save us all, I know it. Tell Johnny I love ‘im.’

WEEKEND FOUR

2007-09-08T09:03:00.000+01:00

Here is the news:

1. Some people (one person, really, but I dare say others are just being polite) have pointed out a temporal anomaly with respect to le Pen and Hitler. I should go back and fix this today, and I might, but there has been a washing machine crisis and the house smells of old fish tank. This is not a smell I am familiar with, but it was the description given by a friend. Might bale out the foetid water with my housemate's favourite mug. If that doesn't improve my mood, I don't know what will.

1.5. If I don't do it by lunchtime, I will not find time today, because I have guests this afternoon.

2. In news from Analytics: the UK is still the king of the swingers, as far as Mary Sue's readership is concerned. Second place is a battle royal between Japan, USA and plucky little Canada, who has maintained her lead due to a burst on Friday. France has stopped reading, for reasons passing comprehension, but Germany remains reliable. Belgium has indicated that there might be some small interest, and I'm pretty confident of her progress up the charts. I've always really like Belgium. Vietnam visits seldom, but stays a while. Finally, there was an Irish reader, but he or she took one look and left. The numbers involved in all these statistics are tiny.

3. In more news from Analytics: incomers from Google 'leapt' yesterday, so I did some more research. The most common search term getting readers to the site is "Milly Chen", predictably. For "Milly Chen", Mary Sue has a current google number of eleven. I would like to see her on the front page, but what can you do?

4. Gripped by google numbers, I typed in "Cathy Calloway". Mary Sue's google number this time was six, behind the North Carolinan interior decorator. "Rollo Price" sees Mary Sue at 20, after many things to do with a guy who wrote a book called "After Desert Storm." Surprisingly, "Miss Smallbone" threw up a google number of 3. Since Miss Smallbone is a Bond homage, and the web is full of Bond sites, I was both shocked and gratified. There is another Miss Smallbone also. She coaches netball at Sacred Heart College in Western Australia (Always Striving Upward To You Our God).

5. I love the fact of having readers. It is slightly a struggle not to spend too long thinking about Mary Sue, which I literally cannot afford to do.

Chapter 19: The French are Crazy

2007-09-07T08:54:00.000+01:00

‘Mary Sue! Mary Sue!’ I was many fathoms sunk in the deepest fluffy sleep of my adult life. The bed was amazing, but there was a loud background hum, which was weird. I started to drift away again. ‘Mary Sue!’ This time was being shaken, and I opened my crusty eyes, bewildered and disoriented. Opening my eyes didn’t make things any less confusing, because there next to me on the bed was Vanessa Paradis. I closed my eyes again. ‘No, Mary Sue, I am sorry,’ said Vanessa. ‘Zis is important you get up now, for ze jet lag.’ I nodded, as my consciousness finally began to batter at my sleeping-state and remind me of yesterday’s extraordinary events. I opened my eyes again, and forced myself to sit.

‘How long was I sleeping?’ I mumbled.

‘Just nearly four hours,’ said Vanessa. But we land in Los Angeles soon after midnight, so you must not be all bushy eyes and ready for ze new day, no?’

‘When is that?’

‘Three more hours. We ‘ave all had ze little doze. I ‘ave brought zis.’ She pressed a big mug of coffee into my hands. ‘Ze shower is a good one. You would like a snack? I ‘ave already ‘ad bacon sandwiches, but zere are many more. Or if you want company for Danish pastry? Zey are good ones also.’ I nodded, still woozy.

When I stumbled through into the main cabin of Vanessa and Johnny Depp’s private jet, I was feeling surprisingly normal, physically at least. Ewan McGregor was looking at a laptop screen, but when he saw me, he shut it and looked guilty. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Ewan,’ said Johnny. ‘Mary Sue has to know what’s going on.’ He looked at me. ‘It’s nothing you don’t already know, in terms of facts, but obviously the reporters have… Well. It’s probably best you read it yourself.’
I sat down, and opened up the screen. It was a BBC web page with the headline, DAVID TENNANT SWORD MURDER HORROR. The picture was a crazy-faced David Tennant talking to me in the middle of South Square. The BBC had decided not to print the horrifying pictures of his decapitated victim, but subtly assured readers that these were available widely online. The text referred to me as ‘Mr Tennant’s lawyer, who has mysteriously disappeared and who is urgently wanted for questioning by the police.’ I was almost immediately returned to the adrenal panic that had been my default state since David Tennant walked into my office yesterday afternoon and said I was key to the imminent final battle between reincarnating angels and demons that could destroy the world. My hand was over my mouth, probably to stop my heart from jumping out.

‘I’m so sorry, Mary Sue,’ said Ewan McGregor.

‘I have to phone my mum. Where’s my phone, I couldn’t find it?’ Johnny shook his head. ‘It’s not secure,’ he said.

‘But…’

‘The Teacher has spoken to your mom. We have a message from her and your father. They say, “We are sorry we never told you the truth about your birth, we love you.” Your mom also said, “Why did you cut off your beautiful hair, you look like a convict.”’

‘Can I send them an email?’

Johnny shook his head again. ‘They will be being watched, everything they do, all their email, phones, the lot. And your friends. We have secure lines ourselves, but if the demons know any friends are in contact with you, those friends will be in deadly danger.’

I looked back at the screen, and noticed a link on the side of the page to the day’s other stories. One in particular leapt out at me: FRENCH CEASE PAYMENT FOR NORTH SEA GAS. I clicked on the story. Ever since Le Pen’s shock Front National victory in the Presidential elections, France had been behaving erratically. Borders had been closed, and quarrels picked with all and sundry. Like most Britons, I said I found this horrifying, but there was a lot of schadenfreude. It was funny to watch self-satisfied French liberals go into paroxysms of embarrassment as the populist President played up to his people’s basest instincts. It was clearly going to come to a sticky end, which would teach the smug French a lesson. That’s what we all thought, back then. Vanessa noticed what I was reading, and in a tiny voice she said, ‘Oui, it has started.’

David Tennant, in our hurried chat at the police station, told me not to trust the French, and that le Pen was a demon. ‘What’s really going on?’ I asked. ‘What are the French trying to do?’

‘It is not ze French,’ said Vanessa Paradis, defensively. ‘It is ze demons.’

‘Sorry.’

Johnny Depp said, ‘We’re not sure. Have you read the article?’ I shook my head. ‘Well, two weeks ago France cut itself off from Russian gas because le Pen argued with Putin over whose pet dog would win a fight, even though le Pen has a poodle and Putin has, well, basically a wolf.’ I nodded. This had seemed very funny on Have I Got News For You. Johnny carried on, ‘Le Pen said it was insupportable that Asiatic nations held power over France, so Europe must go nuclear, blah, blah, blah. And now, when France actually NEEDS North Sea gas for the first time, le Pen suddenly says that Britain has been stealing from France for decades, via the EU subsidy, and he says France will take its reparations in free gas.’

‘That’s crazy!’ I said.

‘It’s absolutely crazy,’ agreed Johnny. ‘We think he must want an economic crisis, which he’s going to get. He’s already started to blame Russia and the UK for France’s problems. We’ve seen this before.’

‘When?’ Johnny Depp reached past me and clicked another link. This was headlined, MAYOR BORIS ACCUSES GOVERNMENT OF APPEASEMENT. I looked at Johnny, open-mouthed. ‘You’re not saying…?’ Johnny nodded. ‘But le Pen is nothing like Hitler! He’s a joke! France isn’t going to go to war!’ And then another thought struck me. ‘Boris! He’s not, I mean, he can’t be…’

‘Oui,’ said Vanessa. ‘Ze true names of ze man you know as “le Pen” is “Hubris,” one of ze most powerful demons. Ze true name of ze angel “Boris” is “Nemesis.” Always zey have fought, so much zat zere true names have become part of your human language.’

‘So Boris was…’ I couldn’t finish.

‘Yes,’ said Vanessa. ‘It is so obvious I am surprised no one notice already. Boris was Churchill.’

Chaper 18: Mile High Club

2007-09-06T10:09:00.000+01:00

I sat on little armchair in the toilet of Johnny Depp’s private jet trying to take stock of my life. This morning, I was a moderately successful barrister whose husband had left her on her wedding day, but who was determined to turn over a new leaf. At lunchtime, nothing much had changed. Ten hours later, I was the Chosen One, escaping demons who were chasing me so I would be ready for the Final Battle when I would either defeat the Master – whoever he was – or help him open the Gates of Hell – which everyone agreed sounded like a bad thing. Moreover, glancing at myself in the mirror, I had got through customs on a fake passport which said I was a pornstar, and the make-up-caked face that stared back at me wasn’t my own. I called through the door to ask if I might use the remover and moisturiser that I presumed must belong to Vanessa Paradis.

‘Oh la la,’ said Vanessa when I emerged. ‘That is so much better Mary Sue! You look wunnerful! More champagne?’ I took the glass. ‘It is ok we eat now?’ she said. ‘I am ravishing, and it is quite late, no?’ I nodded. She gestured loosely at a linened table hugged by fixed, leather, swivelling chairs. This was definitely better than EasyJet I had booked for an ill-advised surprise weekend in Copenhagen for me and my bastard demon ex-husband Gavin two months ago. I checked with his secretary that Gavin had no work commitments, but he still spent the whole time checking his watch grumpily. At the time I blamed myself for being a cliché and trying to turn my beloved into something he wasn’t. I was so stupid.

By the time I’d eaten smoked trout salad, and half an amazing steak, I was in a much calmer place. Food always does that. Also: two and a half glasses of champagne. The others had kindly done the talking, mostly about inconsequential things and mutual friends. Obviously I was agog, but I tried to play it cool. Early on, giggling about something surprising he’d said about Kiera Knightley, Ewan said, ‘Secrets, of course,’ he said. ‘You know that.’

I nodded emphatically as if to say, ‘Of course, totally, how can you even have thought my texting finger was itching?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he corrected himself, ‘I didn’t mean you couldn’t tell anyone. We’re not trying to replace your friends, it’s just that, until we’ve double-checked… We just don’t know who you can trust.’

‘We hate saying that,’ said Johnny Depp. ‘There’s nothing more important than friends.’ The others mumbled assent. ‘Your best friend’s Jen Duckling, yeah? Sorry, don’t be shocked, we have to know everything about you so we can protect you. We think Jen is what she says, I mean, we’re almost totally sure, but it’s hard. Look, we got it wrong with Gavin, even though we sent… Well. I’m not going to say what we did.’

‘You can’t say that to her!’ spluttered Vanessa Paradis, horrified, breaking away from eating for the first time since the food had arrived. ‘Mon dieu! Men!’ She looked at me, shaking her head. ‘I apologise for Johnny, he is moron almost all ze time.’

‘I didn’t say anything!’ protested Johnny Depp.

‘She is not fool! She can work out from what you say zat we checked out Gavin by sending him succession of beautiful and athletic women to tempt him.’

‘I hadn’t worked that out.’

‘Oh no!’ squealed Vanessa. ‘My apology.’

‘Gavin resisted a selection of beautiful and athletic women?’ I said. It was almost flattering.

‘No, no,’ said Vanessa. ‘He resisted nothing.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘We thought he was arsehole, not demon,’ Vanessa clarified. ‘We wanted to tell you, but ze Teacher said you must live ze life absolutely your own, mistakes also, until ze time came.’ She re-attacked her buttered potatoes.

‘Mary Sue,’ Johnny Depp began.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’m fine.’ I wasn’t, obviously, but one more horror in the day only added a small amount to the overall awfulness of everything. The adrenalin that had kept me going since Gavin was killed swirled out of me like water plunging through a plughole, and the weight of the day hit me like a blanket made of soft lead. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Is there somewhere I can lie down?’

‘But zere is ice cream coming! Wiz pistachios!’ I shook my head. ‘But of course. Johnny and I have ze room wiz ze children tonight, and over zere, zat one is for you. Ewan can sleep on ze chair.’

‘Oh,’ I said, flustered. ‘That’s wrong. I’m used to travelling coach. One of these chairs will be fine.’

‘It’s a double bed,’ said Ewan McGregor, wolfishly.

‘Oh la la! Do not listen to him!’ said Vanessa. ‘He is incorrigible, and he does not know when he should not be making zese jokes.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Er, no, it’s fine. I’ll be asleep in three seconds anyway. We could top and tail?’

‘Really?’ said Ewan. ‘I think that’s one that even I have never done before. Is it where you…’

‘No!’ I said. ‘It just means that you sleep with your head at the other end to mine, that’s all.’ I looked at his twinkling eyes. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘You’re joking.’

‘Of course I’ll sleep out here,’ said Ewan. ‘You don’t have to worry about us, Mary Sue. It’s our mission to protect you.’

Chapter 17: Pornstars Get Upgrades

2007-09-05T08:49:00.000+01:00

‘What the hell is this?’ I said, genuinely angry. ‘This is all a joke to you?’ I was waving my fake passport at the red-headed woman, the passport which said I was a pornstar.

‘But…’ said the woman.’

‘Do you think it makes me feel empowered?’ I said. ‘Do you think it’s my secret dream to be a pole dancer because being leered at is a sign of being a strong woman in control of her own sexuality?’

‘Mary Sue…’

‘You know, of course, that almost every woman in porn is grossly exploited, and that glamorising the superstars legitimises the bottom-feeding bastards enslaving the crack-addled junkies.’

‘Of course I…’

‘And you realise that making sex a legitimate industry helps the arseholes enslaving thousands of girls who’ve been sold by their parents or escaped repressive dictatorships only to find themselves in brothels where…’

‘Stop it, Mary Sue!’ snapped the red head. ‘Yes, I know.’

‘Then, presumably you won’t mind when I tell you to…’

‘Shut up, Mary Sue. I get that you’re excited to have the chance to be angry about something you understand, after everything that’s happened, but we don’t have time for your high horses, I’m really sorry. We’ve got to get you out of the country right now, this is a special flight, and believe me, that passport is going to make you a lot less conspicuous than one saying you’re a barrister. And also, security will remember all the wrong things about you. This is stuff we know about, and you don't,’ she added harshly, handing over a make-up box. ‘We’ve got twenty minutes. Go to town.’ I tried to snatch the box, but I felt sheepish. What had that been about? Ginger-girl was obviously right – I’d gone into rant mode because I’d been pushed around ever since I’d met David Tennant and he’d cut off my husband’s head. I had a chance to vent, and I’d taken it. I am the most predictable person in the world.

I looked into the make-up box. It was full of things I had never been able to afford, by which I meant things that were so expensive I refused to buy them. It transpired that they genuinely were better than the things I had at home. We were approaching Luton airport by the time I’d finished. In a weird way, I felt protected, like you do at a fancy dress party where your costume armours you against your normal shyness. Maybe it’s what pornstars do? Maybe they pretend that the pornstar person is a different person to them. Maybe that’s how they pretend to be in control of what’s happening to them, or pretend not to care? Or maybe they’re just addled. I looked at my lap, and I said, ‘But my clothes?’

‘Bag behind you. Change now – now one can see in.’

The bag contained a little t-shirt with a Rolling Stones-style mouth-and-tongue twisted so it was licking my breast, a pair of high heels with Perspex and fur, which made my jeans suddenly look as if they might have cost a thousand pounds, and a wig very like my hair looked before I hacked it off, but with golden highlights and a slight curl. ‘Wait,’ I said, struggling into the shirt, ‘Surely I’m not allowed to wear a wig? Not going through customs?’

‘Also, you’re not allowed to go through with a fake passport.’

‘Oh, yes.’ I thought the wig would look preposterous, like every wig I’ve ever seen a man wear, but it didn’t. Maybe we only notice the preposterous wigs, and that’s why we all think wigs are preposterous? I looked like, well, I don’t really know what pornstars look like, but I didn’t look like the me who went to work this morning.

When we got to Luton airport, the redhead gave me a quick look, nodded and handed me a pair of huge shades that covered most of my face. ‘When they speak, say nothing. Just look bored.’ We turned into a drive marked service vehicles only, and up to a chi-chi aluminium and glass terminalette. Everything was there – a customs man, a passport control, an x-ray machine and the world’s smallest Starbuck’s concession – but on a dinky scale, and with a lot more deference. Ginger did everything for me, while I stood six feet away, trying to look haughty and feeling stupid.

There was a screech of wheels from outside, and a skidding sound. I was terrified, but I think I kept the fear behind my panda glasses as I ‘boredly’ turned my mask to the main doors of the terminalette. Ewan McGregor was setting a huge black motorbike on its stand. He rushed in, glanced breathlessly at Ginger and theatrically mopped his brow. ‘Whew,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d be too late. The Teacher only called me an hour ago.’ Then he turned to me and said, ‘Are you all right, Mary Sue?’ I nodded. ‘Come on then.’

Ewan McGergor’s bag preceded mine through the X-Ray machine, and he handed over his passport. When it came to my turn, the man apologised that I would have to take off my glasses. I did so, but I could have been a Cyclops for all he’d have noticed. From the moment he read my passport, his eyes never got above my breasts (‘How tiny they are!’ he must have been wondering. ‘Is that her thing?’) and, in tiny glances, my mouth. It was creepy, but I could see that my job was no surprise to him, and there was no chance he’d remember what I looked like. Ewan McGregor was practically pulling me out of the door when he suddenly swivelled. ‘Harold,’ he called to the man on the X-Ray machine, and tossed him a set of keys. ‘I know you’ve always loved that bike. Treat her well.’ The man’s face lit up, and I noticed that the red-haired woman was quietly leaving.

‘Aren’t you coming with us?’ I called.

‘I’ll see you later,’ she replied. ‘If we’re lucky. Stay strong, Mary Sue.’

I’d ever been to Luton airport – I always imagined it was a crappy one, and maybe it is for normal passengers, but the bit where all the film stars keep their private jets is very nice. Fifty yards walk in the hazy twilight and we were climbing the stairs of an unbelievably cool-looking plane, and Johnny Depp was at the door ushering us in, saying, ‘Thank God you’re safe, Mary Sue, let me take your things, not a minute to waste, you are ok aren’t you, Vanessa’s dying to meet you, but she’s just getting the kids to sleep, hi Ewan.’

The engines were already roaring as I climbed in, and the moment Johnny Depp closed the door, the plane started to move. ‘Champagne?’ said Ewan McGregor. ‘You look as if you need it.’

Chapter 16: I Get a New Job I Hate

2007-09-04T08:56:00.000+01:00

‘Quick, quick, Mary Sue’ said the woman. ‘We’ve got a plane to catch.’

‘Er,’ I said, clambering into the car. ‘Okay.’ My head was spinning which was fair enough, I think we can agree, since I’d just realised that my father was a reincarnating demon who had been Sir Lancelot and was now David Tennant, and who was now on the side of the angels. The moment my feet left the pavement, before I had even closed the door, the Golf whizzed from the kerb, tyres squealing.

The woman, a small red-head with a snub-nose, squirmed to look over her shoulder, making sure the police hadn’t realised we’d snuck away. ‘I think we’ve done it,’ she said, beaming at me.

‘There was only one cop car, right?’

‘I think so.’

There was a pause, and then the redhead said suddenly, almost embarrassed, ‘You were with the Teacher, weren’t you? He was in your flat?’ I said nothing about Miss Smallbone, because her identity was a secret from everyone except me and David Tennant. ‘Good,’ said the redhead. ‘I understand. It’s good you don’t say.’ She looked at me sceptically, and added, ‘You don’t look like a Chosen One.’

We zipped North out of West Hampstead and towards Finchley. I presumed we were heading to the A1 until we swerved down a side road. ‘Car change,’ she said. ‘Security.’ We switched into a smart black BMW with tinted windows, my pathetic luggage on the back seat, and resumed our journey in earnest. I started crying. When the redhead realised, her whole face changed, not sympathetically. ‘Stop it, Mary Sue,’ she said. ‘We haven’t got time.’

‘But,’ I said, ‘but…’

‘No buts. You’ve had a shock, but this is it now. This is the battle for the end of the world. We can’t afford one mistake. Remember that. One mistake and all this,’ she gestured with her right hand at a particularly unprepossessing row of those big houses that sit inexplicably alongside major roads, ‘this all goes kablooey. Do you understand. You’re a soldier, and people are dying.’

‘I am not a soldier.’

‘Then you’d better learn fast. I’m sorry.’

She was so strict. The other people who had helped me today (can this all have happened in one day – one afternoon, even!) had been so nice. I had a horrible thought. ‘Are you a demon?’ I asked.

‘Get over yourself,’ she said harshly. ‘I picked you up because The Teacher told me it was necessary, and I was glad to, because he says you’re our only hope, but that doesn’t mean I like it.’

‘The other angels are all so…’ I didn’t know how to say it.

‘I’ve heard it all before,’ she said. ‘I’m not here to flatter your ego. It’s our job to fight the demons, and some of us, naming no names, have got soft, and they’ve dropped the ball. They forget this is a war, and there’s no end until the last battle, which is coming, so pardon me if I’m not all chocolate and kittens.’ Her words were harsh, but by the end of this speech, she was sounding brittle. I glanced across at her, but her eyes were fixed in front, and the knuckles on her hands were white.

‘Are you scared?’ I asked.

Her knuckles whitened further. ‘Of course I’m scared,’ she said. ‘This is the end of the world.’

‘But the prophecy?’

‘The prophecy says you might save us. Might. Or you might help the Master open the Gate to Hell.’

‘That really sounds bad,’ I said.

‘Yes, it does,’ she replied. Then she flexed her fingers, and she said, ‘But we’ve been frightened before,’ in a way that made it clear she wanted me to shut up, so I did, and we flitted through cars in the gathering dusk. After a while, I don’t know how long, I heard something from my bag, and I realised it was my phone vibrating. As I reached for it, the redhead said quickly, ‘Whoever it is, don’t answer.’

The caller was a mobile number I didn’t recognise who had called three times in the last twenty minutes. The same number had also sent a text message. ‘Ems,’ it read, ‘Rollo here. Nice manoeuvre to get away from us. I’m with DI Pushkas, who wants me to say you are being silly, and what you are doing is dangerous.’ I wanted to reply to Sergeant Rollo Price and give him a piece of my mind. He had pretended to be my friend so I would weaken and tell him what was going on, but he actually despised me for being a bloodsucking lawyer instead of a judgemental pillar of virtue like him. I hate being angry with people who are annoying simply because they are worthy and right, but I really was furious. His attitude might be virtuous, but it wasn’t kind, and I needed someone to be kind to me right now.

‘Was that Rollo Price?’ said the redhead, face twisting into a look of distaste. ‘Did the Teacher tell you anything about him?’

‘The Teacher said not to trust him.’

‘There you go.’ Before I could ask what she meant, she handed me a brown leather attaché case, and said, ‘Look this over. It’s your new identity.’ In the case were various papers, a huge sheaf of dollars and an American passport. ‘Don’t worry,’ said the redhead. ‘This is just to get you quickly through the checks at Luton.’ I flicked it open. There was a picture of me taken I don’t know when. I was, said the passport, Takumi Swallows, Pornstar.

Chapter 15: Oh, My Papa

2007-09-03T08:47:00.000+01:00

‘I’m sorry you had to hear that,’ said Miss Smallbone, shaking her head and taking back the directional microphone. I glanced again out of my window at Rollo Price. The former love of my life (unconsummated) was still smirking after his sneaky private revelation that he was only being nice to me so I would confess to him.

On one level, where he was purely a policeman, I could see his point. He had found me talking with David Tennant the moment after David Tennant had murdered my evil demon husband. A competent copper would have to be suspicious, but it had been a horrible day for me, and I needed someone I knew to trust me. ‘I have to call Jen,’ I said.

‘No,’ said Miss Smallbone.

‘She’s my best friend.’

‘No friends. That’s what I’m saying. You can’t trust anybody.’ She was clearly on the edge, and I decided to wait until she left before calling Jen. Miss Smallbone had kept on eye on the television screen, which was still reporting breaking news of the gun battle at Centrepoint which the reporters had no idea was the latest in an aeons-long struggle between good and evil. A red banner across the bottom read, NEWSFLASH: Davina Mccall slain: among bodies found after Centrepoint gunfire. More later. Miss Smallbone turned up the sound, and we listened to a confused reporter trying to make head or tail of the business. ‘Davina was very brave,’ said Miss Smallbone.

‘What happens to her now? How does she get reborn?’

‘As a child again. I will be able to find her quickly, but she is lost for this battle. She is a warrior. Was England’s Freddie Flintoff at Centrepoint?’ I nodded and Miss Smallbone instantly flicked to a cricket match of some kind on Sky Sports, and breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of Freddie being interviewed. He had cuts and bruises all over his face, but he was grinning, ‘Ah’m just a clumsy oaf,’ he said. ‘Cracked my head as Ah was getting out of t’car, tried to regain balance and tripped over t’curb. Ah’m reet t’bowl, don’t worry.’

‘Right,’ said Miss Smallbone. ‘If the enemy did this to Centrepoint, then they’re deadly serious. They’re desperate to get hold of you, and right now. Your house isn’t safe enough, they’ll be on their way. We have to get you out of here.’

‘Don’t I get a choice in this?’

‘No. I’m very sorry. I can make you come if I have to.’ I made for the window where I could shout to Rollo Price, but Miss Smallbone was suddenly in front of me, impossible fast, and holding my hand. ‘Please don’t make me hurt you with my finely honed ninja skills,’ she said, almost pleading. ‘This is hard for us all, I know, but I’m your only hope. You have to believe me.’ She took out a slinky Apple iPhone, even though they hadn’t properly been released yet, and turned her back while she gave a brisk set of instructions. ‘You have ten minutes to pack,’ she said.

‘What do I need?’ I asked.

‘Nothing really. We can provide. But if you want your own things, put them in a bag right now. Pack a swimming costume,’ she added, almost as an afterthought.

She followed me into my room. I was trembling again, which was my default setting for the day.

‘You say my parents aren’t my parents.’ I said.

‘I’m so sorry. This is not how we wanted this to happen.’

I carried on, eyes glistening as I rummaged for my least embarrassing pants. ‘You say my real parents are a demon and an angel.’

‘You are the Chosen One.’

‘What does that even mean?’

Miss Smallbone put her hands in front of her face, not to weep or anything, but to take a deep breath and clear her head. I thought again what an odd shape she was for a superhero, if that’s what she was. But then, I thought, being a little, neat, plump woman must be a perfect disguise. She dropped her hands, ready to speak. ‘The prophecy said that a demon would fall in love with an angel. After seventy million years, it hadn’t happened, and people didn’t believe it. The Master, however, was desperate for the Chosen One so he could open the Gates of Hell, whatever that means.’

‘But we agree it can’t be good.’

‘Absolutely. The Master told his most faithful lieutenant to seduce an angel, and produce a child. This is all happening hundreds of years ago, incidentally. The demon, whose name in that age was Lancelot, seduced the angel Guinevere…’

‘Lancelot and Guinevere?!’

‘Yes, they are your parents.’

‘But…’

‘When Guinevere realised she’d been tricked, she turned on Lancelot, said she would never bear the child, and ran away. She’d fallen in love with him, and angels love forever, so her heart was lost. She disappeared. Lancelot, enraged, brought about the ruin of Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table. But then, miraculously, Lancelot realised that he had been transformed by love, and was truly in thrall to Guinevere. When his fellow demons learnt this, they pursued him mercilessly, and they have killed him cruelly many times, with much torture. For many generations also, he received no help from the angels, for we despised him then and many of us still do. But he usually escaped, and he has spent the lonely centuries seeking his lost love. Eventually, he persuaded several angels that he was sincere, and he joined us, but still, his soul was bent on finding Guinevere.’ She stopped.

‘What happened?’

‘He hasn’t found her yet.’

‘But what about me, then?’

‘I found Guinevere, unchanged and unaged. Guinevere had held her child in suspended animation for many hundred years, stopped her clock, which is a thing we can do, but it makes us stretched and weak, and she was stretched thinner than anyone I have ever seen, and she deathly tired. I persuaded her that the demon was truly remade, and that she must bear the girl at last. She did, and she died. She was reborn a few hours after you. It was I who chose your parents.’ She checked her watch. ‘Are you ready.’

‘Just about. Where is my mother now?’

‘You will know in good time.’

‘And my father?’

‘I don’t think you should…’

RAT-TAT-TAT! There was the sound of live gunfire, for the second time in the day, and my life, and Miss Smallbone rushed to the window. Sergeant Price and his partner looked up once, then charged down the street away from my house and towards the disturbance. Instantly, Miss Smallbone rushed me downstairs. As we emerged from the front door, a plain blue Golf pulled in. I looked round at Miss Smallbone, and I said, ‘It’s David Tennant, isn’t it? David Tennant is my father!’

WEEKEND THREE

2007-09-02T10:51:00.000+01:00

Hi. I had a busy week and didn't write chapters on two days, but I rectified that yesterday and today, so I still have my buffer, which will be vital come the end of the month, when I am in New York, which a friend of a friend recently described as The Big Apple That Never Sleeps So Much They Named It Twice, which is about the best thing I have ever heard.

The French character I enjoy so much turns up later this week.

Feedback gives a different flavour to writing - comments on and off blog tell me which things have been more memorable than I expected and which storylines I must remember not to forget, etc. Also, when I read predictions, I sometimes want to change things to confound them, and I sometimes want to gratify expectations, and I can't really explain why I sometimes feel one way and sometimes the other. I am very engimatic. It is part of my charm.

I am not certain how many chapters there will eventually be, because I don't know what will happen to Mary Sue, but I am guessing somewhere in the sixties. In case you care.

Chapter 14: Romeo and Mary Sue

2007-08-31T08:37:00.000+01:00

Miss Smallbone sat on MY chair, in MY kitchen, paid for by MY money, thanks to a deposit given me by MY parents, looking as if she was chewing a wasp. We stared at each other. I cracked first. ‘Who are you?’ I asked. ‘David Tennant told me to trust you, but why should I? He killed my husband.’

‘We don’t have time for you to get hysterical,’ said Miss Smallbone, primly. ‘David killed Gavin because Gavin was a demon, and you should be grateful.’

‘Are you, “The Teacher”?’

That stopped her in her tracks. ‘Did Sir Connaught take you to Centrepoint?’ she asked tersely. I nodded. ‘There’s no fool like an old fool,’ she sighed. ‘So, you’ve seen headquarters. It’s more than I ever have.’

‘We only just escaped.’ Miss Smallbone looked shocked. ‘There was a fight. Didn’t you know? You were betrayed.’ I turned on the television, and flicked to News 24. There were pictures of Centrepoint, smoke gushing from high windows, and a reporter saying that ‘initial reports of a terrorist atrocity,’ now seemed less likely than a ‘Russian mafia gunbattle.’

‘Was anyone hurt?’ whispered Miss Smallbone.

‘I didn’t see.’ I turned to her. ‘Please tell me what all this is about. I feel like I’m going mad.’

‘I know,’ said Miss Smallbone. ‘I’m sorry.’ She pointed weakly at the screen. ‘David was certain we’d been infiltrated somehow, and this proves it. We have no time to waste.’

‘David Tennant said I was the Chosen One,’ I said. ‘What does that mean? It’s insane. You must have made a mistake.’

‘I’m sorry to be the person to tell you this, Miss Park, but you are not who you think you are. You never have been. If you went to Centrepoint, perhaps someone told you about the great battle, seventy million years ago, and how we ended up on earth?’

‘Trevor McDonald told me.’

‘Well, the one thing that is eternal about us, apart from the fact that we live forever, is that those of us who have come to be called Angels hate the Demons, and vice versa. There is an ancient prophecy, like always in these cases. It says that one day a Demon will love an Angel, and a child will be born. This child will be the Chosen One, for good or ill. The Child will be the only one who can slay the Master, who is the main Demon.’

‘Why don’t the Demons just kill me?’

‘Because the Chosen One, if she joins the Master, can open the Gates of Hell. We don’t know what that means, precisely.’

‘It sounds bad,’ I said.

‘It certainly does.’

I was calm now, much calmer than I had been at any point since David Tennant had cut off my husband's head. ‘You’ve made a massive mistake. My parents aren’t Demons and Angels. They’re a Korean historian and an English teacher. I’m really sorry to have wasted your time, but I totally look like both of them.’

‘Call them up.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘I don’t have time.’

My mother, as she had earlier when I spoke to her briefly about what had happened with Gavin, tried desperately to sound calm, for my sake, and I loved her even more than usual, which was basically impossible. I said I was sorry I was being abrupt, and that I was going to ask her an extraordinary question, and that I didn’t want her to get angry with me for asking, but it was suddenly unbelievably important that I did, even though it was ridiculous. By the time I got this far, I could hear her starting to cry. ‘I knew this day would come,’ she said.

‘You know what I’m going to ask?’

‘I can’t do this over the phone. I’ll get in the car now.’

‘No!’ I yelped. ‘No, mum. I’m sorry, I can’t explain, but nothing you can ever say will stop me loving you. But I need to know right now.’ There was a long silence. ‘I promise I’m okay, but I have to know.’

I heard her take a huge breath. ‘Your father and I tried for a child for several years. It didn’t work, and we decided we wouldn’t spend our lives trying. We wouldn’t let it define us, or be bitter. And then, the very next day, we found you on our doorstep.’

It felt like a horse had kicked my stomach. ‘But,’ I said. ‘But I look like you. I look like you both.’

‘When you arrived, you were a little white girl with red hair. Over the first two months, your skin darkened, your eyes changed, and you came to look like us. You were like a miracle. You are a miracle.’

It took my mother and I half an hour to say goodbye, and we only managed it because we were in protective shock. I wanted to call her straight back, but Miss Smallbone said, ‘No. I’m sorry. If Centrepoint is compromised, we have to get you somewhere safer than this. And you have to remember, you cannot trust anybody.’

‘That isn’t true,’ I said. ‘I have old friends. I know them. I looked out of the window at Sergeant Rollo Price, who I had such a crush on eight years earlier. ‘I can trust Rollo.’ Miss Smallbone shook her head. ‘Of course I can.’

‘Wave at him,’ she instructed. I attracted his attention, and did so.’ Miss Smallbone cocked her head for a moment, reached into her pocket and passed me a small earphone. ‘Directional microphone,’ she said, and touched her brooch. ‘Attached to this.’

She pointed it at Rollo just as Rollo’s partner said to him, ‘I can’t believe you’re being so friendly to her. She obviously knows something about that poor bastard who was killed.’

‘Softly, softly, catchee monkey,’ said Rollo out of the side of his mouth. ‘She used to be in love with me.’

‘You sure it wasn’t mutual?’

‘Oh please,’ said Rollo, as he carried on smiling up at me. ‘Mary Sue’s a bright girl who could have done some good with her life, but decided to be a parasite. It’s exactly what the world doesn’t need.’

‘So why are you playing nice?’

‘If I keep softening her up, she’ll crack by this time tomorrow,’ Rollo said smugly.

Chapter 13: I Woke Up and It was All a Dream

2007-08-30T08:59:00.000+01:00

After the explosion, the gunfire started, just the other side of the wall. Immediately, everyone stood between me and the battle sounds, and someone pressed a button on the biggest sofa. It’s seat flipped sideways and up to reveal a chest of futuristic-looking guns, which were quickly and efficiently passed out. ‘Oh God,’ said Sir Trevor McDonald. ‘We’re probably all going to die.’

‘Don’t listen to him,’ said David Mitchell the novelist. ‘He’s always really negative.’ To the others he said, ‘They’ll be past the autoguards very soon. Be ready.’ Freddie Flintoff and Davina Mccall took up position at the front. David Mitchell the novelist turned and said, ‘Get her home safely, Sir Conn. We must fight here.’

‘I’m just checking,’ I said. ‘But I’m not immortal, like you are? Is that right? Or am I?’

‘We don’t know,’ said David Mitchell the novelist simply. ‘And we cannot take that risk. Don’t worry about us. This is just a skirmish. They’ll break off when they see you aren’t here. Run.’

Sir Connaught Sampson-Samson, bon viveur and self-proclaimed lion of the law, was not famous for his quick feet, but he fair twinkled through the furniture. The lift plunged us down through Centrepoint, past the secret entrance in the cleaner’s cupboard in the underpass by Tottenham Court Road, and opened into a grubby office. Through the filthy window, I could see that we were off a corridor in Tottenham Court Road station proper, near the Central Line. ‘Oyster card?’ asked Sir Conn. ‘I nodded. ‘Sign in with it here,’ he said, indicating a reader by the office door, ‘since we have circumvented the ordinary entrance.’

‘Who uses this office?’

‘Just us. The sign on the door says Operational Systems. We make sure it’s occupied sometimes, and no one pays it any attention. Chop-chop.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Your house. It’ll be safe for the moment. The Master wants you alive.’

‘Why did you get me out of that fight then?’

‘Stray bullets.’

When we reached West Hampstead, I headed straight over the road to Oddbins. I had some wine at home, but I was pretty sure I’d run out of Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food, and I would need some. It had been a long day. I asked Sir Conn if he wanted anything. ‘I’d better pootle off, old thing. There will be some clearing up.’

‘Were you really betrayed?’

He nodded ruefully. ‘Centrepoint’s been our main base since it was built. And now we must find somewhere else. Davina’s going to be livid. She’s just redone the kitchen and emergency sleeping area. Still. We have a back-up HQ prepared. You’ll see it soon, I’m sure.’ As we turned into Dynham Road, I saw the police car. I looked at Sir Conn. ‘You realised they’d be here, surely?’ he said. It was obvious, now I thought of it. Standing next to the car, beautiful in the early evening, was Sergeant Rollo Price.

‘Hello, Ems,’ he said, as if we saw each other every day, and as if nothing had happened. ‘Sir Connaught.’

‘Sergeant Price,’ said Sir Conn. I trust you will be able to look after her?’

‘Probably not as well as you, sir. Very nifty, how you gave us the slip, back at Tottenham Court Road.’

‘I don’t understand, officer?’

‘When you were driving, which you’re not now. Do you remember?’

‘I can’t honestly say that I do. But if you say it happened, then I’m sure it did. I can’t stand around here all day. Until tomorrow, Miss Park.’

‘It was interesting,’ said Rollo, raising his voice slightly, ‘that twenty minutes after you gave us the slip near Centrepoint, there was an explosion in that building, and sounds of gunfire. I’ve been listening to reports on the police radio.’

‘What an exciting life it is in London’s police force,’ said Sir Conn.’ I have always admired you for it, to be sure.’

‘Yes, and forty minutes later, which is probably how long it would take someone to get here from Tottenham Court Road, here you are.’

‘I honestly do not know what you are saying. I look forward to our next encounter.’ And with a tiny incline of his head, more respectful than mocking I thought, my illustrious Head of Chambers spun and was gone.

‘Tell me what’s going on,’ said Rollo. ‘I can help you.’

I wanted to, I really did, but I shook my head and went inside, clutching my Oddbins bag. As I climbed the stairs, I could feel myself starting to tremble. I had go this far on adrenalin, but my reserves were exhausted. I needed a shower, I needed a glass of red wine, and I would put some dressing on a bag of salad leaves before I ate my ice cream, because then I would be having a balanced diet.

In the shower, after being shocked for the manyth time that day by my stupid new short hair, I leant against the wall and washed the day away. David Tennant had killed my husband, who was a demon, and I had sat in a meeting of elves-slash-angels in a secret hideaway in central London, and it was all because, for some reason, I was the Chosen One. I turned up the heat until I was gasping, and forced myself to stand until I could bear it easily. At which point, I realised at last that the only logical explanation for any of this was that I had gone crazy, or that this was still a dream, like that series of Dallas when Bobby Ewing was dead. In fact, by the time I emerged and was drying myself, the logical puzzler at the forefront of my mind was this: IF I had gone crazy, THEN Sir Conn had brought me home and this meant bad things for me jobwise, BUT I probably did remember buying some ice cream, which would be waiting for me in the freezer, which was excellent; IF it was all a dream, THEN so was the ice cream, BUT I’d still be welcome at chambers. It was tricky. My hair was definitely short, for instance, so some of today had happened. There really might be Ben and Jerry’s. Best to check, certainly. I went to the kitchen.

‘Mary Sue Park,’ said a crisp voice, and I yelped with shock. ‘It was Miss Smallbone, who David Tennant said would explain everything. She was sitting at the table, frowning at me. ‘Why did you take so long to get here? Didn’t David tell you not to speak to anyone?’

Chapter 12: I didn’t do what David Tennant told me to do, and someone is going to die because of it

2007-08-29T10:46:00.000+01:00

‘Hey, lass,’ said Freddie Flintoff in his soft, Lancashire accent, his cornflower blue eyes bearing gently down on me. ‘You look knackered. You need a seat. You’ve had a hell of a day.’ He took my shoulder gently in his huge right hand and guided me out of the lobby and into an astonishingly bright room. David Tennant had told me I had to go home and not speak to anyone at all, but I had been dragged here by my boss, so it wasn’t my fault.

I sat numbly in a black leather armchair while a selection of mostly famous faces arranged themselves around me. They were trying not to stare, but I felt like the first worm surrounded by a group of very polite early birds deciding who should go first. ‘Stop staring at her, you pelicans!’ said Kylie Minogue, shaking her head, and then looking at me. ‘They’ve got no manners. Do you want some tea? I put the kettle on five minutes ago?’ I nodded, and she skipped out of the room, saying, as she went, ‘Don’t frighten her, you great galahs.’

‘Er, yes, of course,’ said Sir Trevor McDonald gruffly. ‘Sorry about that. I appreciate it must be intimidating. When we heard about what happened, we felt it would be best to know that there are people on your side in all this. David Tennant did explain?’

‘He started to,’ I said. ‘But I am still very confused.’

‘Naturally,’ said a young, smooth man, who was one of the ones I didn’t recognise. ‘What did he tell you?’

‘I hardly know. That history was a battle between good and evil, between angels and demons, and that I was the Chosen One, and I am on the side of the angels. It made no sense.’
They looked at each other. ‘Was Tennant with anyone?’ asked the smooth man. The room I was in must have been forty metres along each side. It was a corner, windows on two sides, high up in Centrepoint. It didn’t seem like the kind of place anyone lived, but it didn’t seem like an office either. It was more like a private club. I still hadn’t answered the smooth man’s question. David Tennant had been very emphatic that I must not tell anyone about Miss Smallbone, who had been with him, and who he said would find me and tell me what to do next. But that had been before my lawyer and boss, Sir Connaught Sampson-Samson, had lost the police and brought me here. I didn’t know what to do. In the end, I shook my head.

Sir Connaught said, ‘Good girl. Even if The Teacher was with him, that’s something we don’t need to know.’

‘But…’ started the smooth man.

‘The Teacher might be real, might be a myth, might be any of us. But whoever he is…’

‘Or she,’ said Davina Mccall.

‘Of course, old sausage. Whoever he or she is, his or her security is that no one knows.’
The others nodded. I didn’t know what to say. ‘Is this a penthouse?’ I ventured.

‘No,’ said the smooth man. ‘That would be too obvious. This is a couple of floors down. No one knows it’s here, apart from us.’

‘I’m glad it’s not all famous people here,’ I said to the smooth man. There was some stifled giggling and I knew I’d said something wrong.

‘He’s David Mitchell, the novelist,’ said Kylie Minogue, bringing me a mug of tea. ‘He hates it that no one recognises him, and especially now that there’s this other David Mitchell, the comedian, who everyone does recognise.’

‘I assumed that David Mitchell the comedian wrote the novels,’ I said. ‘He seems so clever on the telly.’

Kylie broke into a peal of laughter as David Mitchell the novelist sulked. ‘Loads of people think that. It’s really funny.’

‘Sorry, lads and lasses,’ said Freddie Flintoff. ‘Much as I’m enjoying t’banter, I’ve got a Twenty20 international cricket match to play at t’Oval. Can we get a move on?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Sir Trevor McDonald. ‘Seventy million years ago, in a distant galaxy, there was a war so terrible you cannot imagine. It lasted five million years, and it destroyed the planet of Traxltl, a place so beautiful you cannot imagine it. The energies unleashed were also so terrible you cannot imagine them, and the few survivors were flung by a wave of power across space and landed up on earth of all places, having suffered in ways that are so terrible you cannot imagine what they were.’

‘You really are a wizard with words, Trevor,’ said David Mitchell the novelist, still sulking.

‘Harrumph’ grunted McDonald. ‘Well, We landed on earth in this huge explosion of energy, which darkened the sky for hundreds of years and destroyed the dinosaurs, and we have been here ever since. We are immortal,’ he added, ‘like the elves in Lord of the Rings.’

‘No, Trevor!’ said David Mitchell with a pained expression. ‘If you’re going to use contemporary references, you have to get them right!’

‘The elves do live forever, don’t they?’ muttered the newsreader, mutinously.

‘Yes, but they don’t get reborn in new bodies when they die?’

‘What? They just stay looking the same?’ He asked. I nodded. ‘Harrumph. Anyway…’

‘So you’re not really angels?’

‘It’s tricky trying to explain what we are. Some of us have come to love the earth, and we seek to protect it. Others, our enemies, who are the baddies, basically, by any rational standard, are bent on dominating everything.’

‘Do you have special powers?’

‘That’s the thing. We are not stronger or cleverer than humans. But, like I say, if we are killed, we are instantly reborn in another body. We can only be truly killed by having our heads cut off with the sword of Zsarkon, which David Tennant has.’

‘So, Gavin…’ I began.

‘Yes. Your husband won’t trouble you again. And the other way we can be killed is by being thrown into a black hole. But even though we have no superpowers, so-called, we have always been present in the great human struggles, fighting the Demons. We were Churchill and Wellington against Hitler and Napoleon, and so on. We have been involved in all the big conspiracies, like JFK, et cetera. Do you see?’

‘It’s all so surprising,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry, pet,’ said Freddie Flintoff. ‘We’re here to protect you. No one know about us, or this place. Only us. You’re completely safe.’ He sounded as if he was trying to persuade himself.

CRASH! Everything juddered and we all fell to the floor apart from Freddie Flintoff, who looked angrily around him. Everyone flashed significant, horrified looks at everyone else.

‘So,’ said Trevor McDonald grimly. ‘David Tennant was right. The prophecy is true. We have a traitor in our midst!’

‘Or someone followed you,’ said David Mitchell the novelist to me and Sir Connaught Sampson-Samson. ‘And now we have to fight to save her life.’ I swallowed guiltily.

Chapter 11: Sir Trevor McDonald's Comforting Voice

2007-08-28T09:08:00.000+01:00

It was lovely and sunny on the roof of the police station, but I had to get out of here. The police were right that I knew more than I was saying about David Tennant and why he had killed my husband, even if the things I knew were a kind of crazy madness that I didn’t officially believe. I caught sight of myself in one of the glass panels walling the covered section of the roof, and I was shocked for the thousandth time that day by my stupid new haircut. And now I’d be in the newspapers. When I got my phone back, half the messages would be from my mother saying that I looked like a convict. There was no way that everything that was happening wasn’t a nightmare, and the reason I knew this for certain is that I found the hair aspect amusing rather than tragic. I looked at Sir Connaught in mute appeal.

‘Would you please stand away from us, Sergeant Price,’ he told Rollo. ‘I must speak with my client.’ He walked me to a shaded bench, sat me down and perched alongside. ‘I want to get you out of this building as quickly as possible, old thing, get you somewhere where we can work out what to do. However, Tennant insists on speaking to you. Do it, find out what he needs to tell you, tell the police you have nothing more to say, and then we will leave. Once we’re out of here we can have a proper conference.’ I nodded.

‘I said that David is my client?’ I said. ‘Can I really use that to keep what he said secret?’

His eyes glittered, and an edge of smile appeared. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘If you aren’t involved in this crime, and so long as he doesn’t ask you to plead against what you know to be true, then yes. Given what he did to your husband, it’s terrifically unprofessional, from an ethics viewpoint, and as your Head of Chambers, I disapprove wildly. However, these are extraordinary circumstances, and from a legal perspective, you’re fine.’

When the police reluctantly let me in alone to see David Tennant, David smiled and said, ‘Thank God you’re here. Are you ok? Is Sir Conn sorting you out’

My reaction was to weaken at the knees. Appropriate, I told myself. Stay appropriate. ‘How do you know about Sir Conn?’ I asked.

‘I know a lot of things. You didn’t tell them what I said?’ he asked. I shook my head. ‘Good. It would have made you sound like a nutter, like I must sound to you.’ I glanced at him sharply. ‘I know how this appears. Good and evil, angels and demons. You need to know what you’re involved in before you can help me, and I can’t tell you here. I only have one crucial thing to say to you, the reason I absolutely had to see you now, and it’s this: you need to speak to Miss Smallbone before you do anything else.’ Miss Smallbone was the lawyer David brought with him to my office this afternoon. He’d already told me not to mention her name, though I couldn’t see why he was so worried. Seeing me puzzle over Miss Smallbone’s place in the scheme of things, a shadow crossed David face. ‘You didn’t mention her, did you? Not to anyone, even Sir Conn? I can’t tell you how important this is.’ I shook my head. ‘Of course! I knew you wouldn’t. She’ll be at your flat. The very next thing you must do is speak to her, and let her explain what’s happening, and tell you what to do. I’ll be fine here until tomorrow. Go straight home. Don’t let anyone divert you. I cannot tell you how crucial it is you speak to her first.’

Detective Inspector Pushkas was very unhappy when I insisted on going home, and as Rollo Price took me to the back door, he advised me urgently, as a friend, that I should really help the police in any way I possibly could. Sir Conn pulled up in his bright red Aston Martin. ‘Had to put the roof up, just in case anyone was here. Pity. Lovely day. Hop in.’ I did, and before I could say goodbye to Rollo, we roared away, wheels squealing. ‘Love doing that,’ said Sir Conn. ‘Parp parp.’ He sped through the traffic, eyes fixed on the rear-view mirror. ‘Police following,’ he said. ‘Don’t blame them. Nil desperandum.’ At Tottenham Court Road station, he pulled over to the side of the road and squeezed out.

‘No, Sir Conn. I have to go home.’

‘Because Tennant told you to? Don’t worry. He wouldn’t mind this.’

‘But, Sir Conn…’

‘No time, old thing. Hurry, hurry.’ Sir Connaught Sampson-Samson is a hard man to gainsay. I got out of the car. ‘Don’t worry about the car, someone will come for it.’ He pulled me towards the tube entrance, and I followed dumbly. He wove through the crowds, and along to one of the horrible underpasses. He was holding a clipboard for some reason. A man, smelling hideously of urine, was in the doorway of what looked like a cupboard. Sir Conn reached over him, unlocked it and pulled me in after him, turned and shut the door. ‘Clipboard,’ he said, waving it. ‘It’s like we’re invisible. People think we’re reading the meter. If they thought at all. Don’t like using this door, but needs must.’

‘What is this place?’

‘Cupboard,’ he said, turning on a light. It was full of mops. ‘This, however…’ He pressed his thumb against a light switch at the back of the cupboard, and the wall opened. ‘Hop in.’ It was a lift, with four buttons, Sir Conn pressed the top one. The lift whooshed up, up and more up. Sir Conn raised his eyebrow.

‘Centrepoint?’ I asked. He nodded, pleased.

The lift opened on a ring of worried faces. I didn’t recognise half of them, but, among the other half were Davina Mccall, Freddie Flintoff, Jeremy Clarkson and Kylie Minogue. They gave a collective sigh of relief as Sir Trevor McDonald’s patrician voice intoned, ‘Thank goodness, Mary Sue. We were very worried about you.’

Chapter 10: Rabbit Stew

2007-08-27T09:16:00.000+01:00

FLASH ‘What’s Tennant like in bed?’ FLASH ‘Did you put him up to it? FLASH ‘Do you agree that you are a Human Black Widow of Death?’ FLASH FLASH FLASH.

I was like a bunny in the lights. I was dimly aware that Sir Connaught Sampson-Samson was trying to tug me inside, but I stood stock planted. Then the door burst open behind me, and Rollo Price practically lifted me in the air as he swept me back into the station. The whole thing can only have lasted twenty seconds, but my legs were jelly.

As soon as we were safely inside, Rollo spun me towards him, and said, ‘Are you okay, Ems? I’m really sorry about that.’ His voice seemed to come from deep in his grey-blue eyes. I nodded dumbly. Still holding me, Rollo looked furiously at the thin sergeant. ‘What the hell are you playing at? You knew they were out there!’

The sergeant shrugged his meagre shoulders. ‘David Tennant killed her husband,’ he said. ‘She knows something about it, and she isn’t answering our questions. She’s not the victim.’

‘Don’t be absurd,’ hissed Sir Conn. ‘This girl is no more capable of murder than a peacock. You know that.’

The thin man looked at me, not particularly apologetic. ‘I am sorry, Miss Park. We doubt you instigated this, but you have to start telling the truth.

Sir Conn interposed himself between me and Rollo, put his arm around me and walked me back into the building. Rollo and the thin sergeant walked behind. While we walked, he whispered,

‘Right-ho, old thing. I’m getting you out of here. Let’s find a place to sit down.’ Every bench and chair in the station seemed to be occupied. We stopped in a corridor which opened into a room of desks full of people pretending they weren’t trying to listen.

‘I’ll look after her while you speak to the chief, Sir Connaught,’ said Rollo. ‘If that’s what you want? We’ll wait here.’ Sir Conn looked doubtful, but I nodded that it was okay, and he bustled off.

‘Sorry, Ems,’ said Rollo. ‘Some of the guys here aren’t the most conciliatory knives in the block.’

‘I get why they’re annoyed,’ I say. ‘I can see what it looks like.’

‘I know you,’ said Rollo. ‘Don’t worry about anything.’

‘I really want to sit down.’

‘Well, there’s… Wait. Come with me.’

‘But, Sir Conn thinks we’re waiting here.’

Rollo looked at the thin sergeant, who nodded wearily. ‘Atkins,’ said the sergeant to the small, Cornish-looking man on the nearest desk. When that fat guy comes back, tell us we’ve gone to the roof, okay?’ Atkins nodded.

Five minutes later, we were standing among pot plants in what was, all in all, a very pleasant roof garden. We hadn’t broken stride on the way here, but Rollo had somehow magicked into existence two mugs (not even plastic cups) of tea. It really felt like I was alone with Rollo. The thin man was twenty yards away, standing like a wraith, imperturbable. I imagined that was the secret of his detecting success – people forgot he was there.

I started as a raven landed ten feet from us on the back of a bench, and cocked its head, as if in warning. This was me being hypersensitive – animals don’t warn people – but David Tennant had told me not to trust anyone, and I was trying not to trust Rollo because David had been so certain, but here Rollo was, not just protecting me but also acting like an anchor to my past, to the time when everything was normal. But when had things stopped being normal? For a moment, I thought it was this morning, when my husband was killed. But then I thought it must actually be when he and Cathy Calloway, on my wedding day, did … that thing. But if they were demons, which in Cathy Calloway’s case seemed unarguable, then maybe it went back forever, as early as I met Cathy, which was before I first saw Rollo. Which meant that Rollo wasn’t an anchor to the time before at all.

But, whatever the logic, Rollo felt like an anchor, and that’s what counted. But David Tennant told me to trust no one until I’d spoken to Miss Smallbone, and I’d immediately let Rollo, who I hadn’t seen for years, lead me onto a high roof, where we were all but alone. I looked at him over the lip of my mug. ‘You can trust me, Ems,’ he said. ‘Whatever happens, I promise, you can trust me. I’m here to help you.’

‘I want to tell you what’s happening, but I can’t. I’m sorry, Rollo.’

He smiled. ‘Don’t worry about that. We’ll talk in good time.’ He indicated the thin man. ‘Apart from anything else, I wouldn’t put it past that one to have some kind of directional mike secreted about his person.’ The thin man waved back gently as, from behind him, Sir Conn burst onto the roof garden.

‘Mary Sue,’ he said, not quite angry. ‘What have you said to him?’

‘We’re not your enemies, Sir Connaught,’ said Rollo.

‘Please trust me, Mary Sue,’ said Sir Conn, ignoring him. ‘These people are not your friends. This is a horrible business, they want it over fast, and you are way for them to do it. I want you out of this building before you do yourself any more harm.’ Then he frowned, ‘Unfortunately, before you can do that, it is imperative that you speak briefly to David Tennant.’

WEEKEND TWO

2007-08-25T10:53:00.001+01:00

Well, I'm still enjoying myself, and I'm still a crucial few days ahead of the game. I am gong to do this progress report in list form, which is not elegant, but there you are. Some of the points have been dealt with in comment conversations, but this is a round-up.

1. Monday: this might be a holiday for bankers and suchlike sybarites, but it isn't for freelancers. We never take days off. I am not taking today off. In fact, while I get on well with bankers, lawyers, accountants, etc., all they are doing is servicing the world. They say that people like me are dreamers, etc., but someone has to make stuff, whether that means digging stuff out of the ground, or turning stuff into chairs, or whatever. These primary producers are the green plants of the economic ecosystem, the people who make the things that the accountants and lawyers can then make money out of. Writers are primary producers in the purest form - we create stuff out of nothing. I am almost literally chorophyll. By which I mean, in response to a number of emails, 'Yes, there will be a new chapter on Monday.'

2. 'How are you finding the creative process?' a couple of people have asked me. Well, it's liberating not to be worried about the whole, and just to trot along writing the next thing that comes to my mind every morning. And, indeed, HAVING to write like this, because I can't afford to spend more than an hour on it every day.

3. Feedback: as I've said elsewhere, it's nice to be writing for an audience. I'm not worried by working alone, and trying slowly to get stuff just right, but this is nice for a change.

4. Editing: I think it might be bad form to edit a personal blog, because it goes against the immediacy/intimacy of the form. This isn't a personal blog, though, so whenever you point out typos or obvious mistakes, I will correct them. Thank you very much if you have already done this.

5. Consistency: is the hobgoblin of little minds, etc. However, I am striving not to make continuity errors, as per above. What I cannot guarantee is that storylines I set off on early on will necessarily all be followed through. I have an increasing idea where this story is going, but it is only an idea, and certain things are bound to go by the wayside. Hopefully, those will be the crappy bits you haven't liked.

6. I have got a grip on my obsession with site statistics, to a certain degree. And comments. I only check in a few times a day.

7. I love writing Sir Conn to a ludicrous degree. This is something to be wary of it, and I am beware of it. There's another character you will meet sometime in the next couple of weeks (I think) that will also cause this trouble. She is French, and I will say no more about her, except that every time I think of the things she is going to say, I find myself giggling.

8. I'm having a whale of a time; I dare say that's obvious; I hope you are too.

Chapter 9: Proof That I've Been Shagging David Tennant

2007-08-24T09:18:00.000+01:00

Cathy Calloway was waving a brown manila envelope. She thrust it into Rollo’s hands. ‘It’s proof, Sergeant Price,’ she pouted at him. He didn't react. ‘I only didn’t recognise you because it’s been such a long time, and I remember a pretty boy rather than this beautiful man,’ she added, dragging her carmine nail softly down the back of his hand as he took it. Rollo glanced guiltily at me to see if I’d noticed this, and twisted his features into a look of distaste. The beard suited him. He looked good in uniform too.

‘Miss Calloway,’ he said. ‘You will have to wait until we have time to interview you about this.’

‘No way,’ Cathy said, withdrawing. ‘I have to go.’

‘What’s going on?’ asked Detective Inspector Pushkas, arriving with her Sergeant, a very thin man with tightly curling hair that needed to be cut, wearing steel-rimmed glasses and a bad black suit.

‘This woman says she has proof that Miss Park was involved in a prior relationship with Mr Tennant.’

‘Really? You’re Miss Calloway, yes? I spoke to you at the scene?’

‘Yes. And I have to go. I have done my civic duty, and now I must go back to my office.’

‘I’m afraid that’s not how it works,’ said Pushkas. ‘We’ll need to discuss this evidence with you. My sergeant will make sure you’re comfortable.’ The thin man led an angry Cathy down the corridor, and Inspector Pushkas turned to me. ‘Miss Park, Sir Connaught Sampson-Samson left me in no doubt that I should wait for him before conducting any interview with you. Sergeant Price will look after you. I’ll look at whatever’s in this envelope. Judging from the things Mis Calloway said at the scene, I’d be surprised if you have anything to… Well. It would be unprofessional of me to continue. Interview Room Two, Sergeant Price.’

About twenty minutes later, the door of the sickly pale blue room opened to admit Pushkas and her sergeant, along with Sir Conn. He sat beside me, saying, ‘We’ll be out of here in ten minutes.’

Pushkas repeated the questions I’d been asked in South Square, and I told the same story: David Tennant arrives, says he’ll need a lawyer, looks out of the window, goes downstairs, and kills my cheating husband Gavin. ‘Why?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know.’ I don’t tell her that David said I was the Chosen One. ‘I’d never met him before.’

‘Miss Calloway tells a different story.’

‘She’s lying. What was her proof?’

‘Proof?’ rumbled Sir Conn. ‘Really? I doubt that.’ Detective Inspector Pushkas and the thin sergeant barely suppressed their grins. Pushkas slid over the colour print-outs, on ordinary paper, of three photographs. The couple involved were considerably better built than David Tennant or myself, and the images were clearly culled from a porn site. The faces, attached by someone with a rudimentary knowledge of Photoshop, were David’s and mine. There were three different pictures for David, but all three of mine were the publicity shot from our chambers website.

‘The thing is,’ said Pushkas, ‘that while this is ridiculous, we can’t absolutely dismiss the claim, under the circumstances. Mr Tennant arrived in Miss Park’s office, and killed Miss Park’s husband. Some link to Miss Park is very plausible.’

‘Miss Park has never met David Tennant,’ said Sir Conn.

‘You seem very sure of that, sir.’

‘I am sure. Miss Park can’t keep a secret. Open book with transparent covers. I’m Head of Chambers and even I used to hear about her terrible dating stories. Very funny. Looked forward to it every Monday. And she loves David Tennant, it’s one of her things. I’d have known. We all would. End of story.’

‘However, Sir Conn, you see my point.’

‘I do, of course. But you seem mine. Dozens of witnesses to the event, and my client didn’t know the killer. Her husband is dead, she is shocked and confused, but she had nothing to do with this terrible crime.’

I suppose it seems strange, but that was the moment when the reality hit. I turned away from Sir Conn, twisting in the uncomfortable bucket of my plastic chair, and I was sick on the floor. ‘Oh God,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just…’

‘No, no,’ said Sir Conn. ‘Don’t worry. Let me get you home.’

‘I’m sorry, Sir Connaught, Miss Park,’ said Inspector Pushkas. ‘But the dozens of witnesses who saw David Tennant kill your husband also saw you and him talk extremely earnestly during the five minutes it took us to arrive. I need to know what he was saying.’

I didn’t want to say the lunatic things David said about the angels and demons, but I didn’t want to look as if I was hiding anything. Then I had a brainwave. ‘I’m very sorry,’ I said, as calmly as I could with the pile of sick at my feet, ‘but Mr Tennant asked me to be his lawyer. I am sure there would be no problem, but this is a very strange situation, I’m relatively inexperienced in terms of crime, and I’m worried about the boundaries of lawyer-client privilege, especially in a case with this profile. I am sure that Mr Tennant will agree for me to tell you what he said, but I have to take advice on that subject. I’m really sorry, and I’m sure I’ll be able to clear this all up as soon as I’ve spoken to him,’ I added, ‘I do want to help. I just, I mean, it would be terrible if I got it wrong and told you something inadmissible.’ Pushkas assented reluctantly.

‘Good girl,’ said Sir Conn, approvingly.

‘Mr Tennant will be ready for you in about twenty minutes,’ said Pushkas. ‘He’s been asking for you.’

‘May I get a breath of fresh air?’ I asked. Detective Inspector Pushkas nodded for the thin man to escort us. As we walked through the station, it seemed as if every officer was staring at us, including Rollo, who was trying to be reassuring. As we stepped through the door, there was an explosion of flashlights. Voices shouted, ‘Were you shagging David Tennant!’ and ‘Did he kill for love!’ and ‘Do you agree that this is the crime of the century!’

Chapter 8: What Rollo's Been Doing Since 1999

2007-08-23T08:37:00.000+01:00

I looked from Rollo, the boy of my youthful dreams, who Cathy Calloway stole from me, to David Tennant, the man of my very adult dreams, who gripped in his left hand the severed head of Gavin Wishton, my husband, who Cathy Calloway had just been on my honeymoon with. This all seemed like Cathy Calloway’s fault. On the other hand, in the interests of full disclosure, Rollo and David were both looking at me very nicely, which made the situation better than it might otherwise have been. ‘You’re a policeman?’ I asked.

‘Actually,’ said Rollo, ‘I’m a strippogram.’

‘Oh, really, I…’

‘Yes, Mary Sue, I’m a policeman.’

‘I know, I know. I was joking. Like you did.’ He shouldn’t make jokes at a time like this.

‘Mr Tennant?’ said Rollo.

‘Yes, officer.’

‘You aren’t about to do anything stupid, are you?’

‘No.’

‘Good. I’d appreciate you lifting that head by the hair – yes, just like that – so forensics can get as clean a view of the neck as possible. Is that going to be a problem for you?’

‘No,’ said David Tennant. ‘That’ll be fine. I haven’t hurt Miss Park.’

‘I can tell that,’ said Rollo, ‘from the fact that I haven’t broken your nose.’

Rollo and David squared up to each other in a very subtle way, like two stags who have never had to worry about fighting because all other stags have always simply dipped their antlers and walked away. Cathy Calloway interrupted. ‘What are you talking about?’ she yelped. She still hadn’t recognised Rollo in his beard. ‘Why aren’t you arresting them?’

Rollo stood – he was still very tall – and Cathy finally realised who he was. She softened her face and prepared to unleash the breathy simper that I only heard when she was talking to boys. Rollo held up his hand. ‘Sorry, miss,’ he said. And his voice raised a level. ‘Everyone! I’d like you all to retreat about fifteen yards so we can set up a perimeter for forensics, who are the guys beetling in all around you in the black windcheaters with SOCO on the back, trying to pretend they’re in CSI.’ A swarm of police had arrived by now. ‘I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to take statements. It’ll take time, and we appreciate your forbearance.’ The assembled multitude didn’t mind one bit – a change is as good as a holiday, and all that. Rollo looked back to me and he said, ‘Don’t worry about anything, Ems. I’ll have SOCO look at you first, then we’ll get to the station, get you away from this mess.’

Everything happened like television, which was reassuring. Rollo arrested me, so he could stay nearby. He introduced me to the Detective Inspector, a comforting woman called Pushkas, who asked a few brief questions and then she’d speak to me properly at the station. I knew what to do for the forensics man, who treated me very differently from the way Rollo had, and who took my phone, sneering when I asked if I could quickly call my mother. When he’d finished, Rollo led me off to his car. Sir Connaught Sampson-Samson, my Head of Chambers, puffed heavily into our path. ‘Interesting times, Miss Park,’ he said.

‘I didn’t do anything, Sir Conn.’

‘Good enough for me. However, it is very possible, looking at the situation in the day’s cold light, that you will find yourself in need of an extremely good lawyer, such as myself. It would be an honour to…’

‘Sir Conn, I couldn’t!’

‘I know what you are thinking. How could you, a barrister of relatively junior status, possibly afford the services of Sir Connaught Sampson-Samson, lion of the law? Nil desperandum, old thing. I shall do this pro bono. Heard what happened with the famous slug Gavin and his houri. It will be an honour.’

‘But, Sir Conn…’

‘I know what you are thinking. Sir Connaught Sampson-Samson is a lion of the law, none lioner, but what could he possibly know of the grub and mucky byways of petty vulgar crimes like murder? Nil desperandum, for Sir C S-S, in his well-remembered youth, fought hard and often for the criminals, just for fun. Odd I’ve never told you that before.’ He had told me of course. He tells everyone. In 1964, he solved the Penge Bungalow Murders, alone and without a leader. It caused quite the stir, apparently. ‘Anyway, won’t take no for an answer, see you at the choky.’ He barrelled off to find his car.

Rollo sat with me in the back when his partner drove us to the station. ‘When did you become a policeman?’ I asked.

He put on a stupid charming face. ‘After uni, when I split up with, I mean, when Cathy dumped me, I went travelling, to clear my head. I didn’t know what to do. I meant to have a holiday, but when I was visiting my sister, who works for the UN in Nairobi, I wound up doing odd jobs around her office, and it snowballed somehow, and there I still was, five years later.’

‘Why did you come back?’

‘Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner,’ he said. ‘Here’s where I want to live, MS, always has been. But when I was in Nairobi, I was really helping people in trouble, and I couldn’t think what to do back here that would be as fulfilling.’

‘But?’ I asked.

‘In Africa, most of it, being rich gets you a completely different kind of law to everyone else. And then, suddenly, one day, I realised that was true everywhere, even in England, and right that moment I decided to be a policeman. I’m not joking, justice is like a mission for me.’

Somehow, when we arrived at the station, Cathy Calloway was already there. ‘She was planning it with David Tennant from the start,’ she said triumphantly. ‘She was shagging him. I have proof.’

Chapter 7: Some Reasons Why Cathy Calloway Was my Archenemy Long Before She Shagged My Husband on My Wedding Day

2007-08-22T09:24:00.000+01:00

In my first month at Imperial College, London, I had the biggest crush you’ve ever seen on a third-year geographer called Rollo Price. In those initial, terrifying days at uni, I thought that everyone else was from another, superintelligent world, and I was a fraud (do you ever stop thinking that?). Cathy Calloway lived in the room next door to me. For a short time, I thought Cathy was my best friend; she thought she was the coolest girl in any room she was in, and she thought everyone else thought it too.

Late at night, when everyone had finished drinking excitedly in whoever’s room we had ended up in that night after the bar, I would crap on to Cathy about how beautiful Rollo was, and how he’d looked at me at lunchtime in a way that seemed to indicate he recognised me as someone he had once seen before, rather than as another nameless face in the adoring horde, or of how I'd watched Rollo playing rugby under the cover of giving support to Big Ginger Matt, who lived in the room below mine, and how amazingly he'd tricked some boy from Bristol by pretending to pass, but not passing. ‘It’s called a dummy, dummy!’ said Cathy.

‘Oh.’

‘You’ll learn!’ she said, patting my arm. ‘You have to be careful, though. Boys hate it when you seem keen.’

‘Really?’ I said. I’d certainly read that in magazines. I was not very experienced when I got to university. I’d been to a secluded boarding school where some girls seemed to talk a lot about sex, very knowingly, very much in the way Cathy Calloway did, but not with me. I’d been kissed a couple of times at parties, but more by luck than judgement, and I mean bad luck.

‘Absolutely, darling,’ said Cathy. ‘You’ve been mooning over him for a fortnight. He’ll be bored of you by now. Do you want me to put in a good word? I’ll do that if you want? But whatever you do, you have to ignore him totally, or if you can’t ignore him, at least be rude. Okay?’

‘Thanks, Cathy,’ I said. I wasn’t certain she knew what she was talking about, but I thought she was from another, more confident planet (which wasn’t totally unperceptive, in retrospect). And so I watched her spend a week chatting with Rollo in the bar, giggling every time he opened his mouth, clutching his forearm, running her finger along his latest cuts and bruises. She would tell me that everything was going well, and she was building up trust prior to setting us up on a date, and I would believe her (which shows I was totally unperceptive, in retrospect).

Then, dancing one night at St Mary’s, where Cathy had dragged me because we knew the rugby team would be there, I got separated from everyone but a big, sweet, Canadian guy, who insisted on walking me home. I invited the Canadian in for tea, because you could do that back then without it meaning anything, and we listened for an hour to Cathy shouting ecstatically to Rollo next door that he was, ‘Amazing, again, oh, God, amazing,’ and her bed thudding against the wall again and again and again and again and again and again, and, ‘I’m coming again, oh my God, how do you do it Rollo, you’re amazing, oh my God, Rollo.’ I still swear she raised her voice every time she said ‘Rollo,’ but maybe I’m imagining it.

The Canadian said, ‘Rollo really fancied you, you know, when you arrived, but you were totally uninterested.’

Cathy said, ‘I’m sorry darling, but we were so drunk, and we danced, and it was, I mean, so strong, he’s like a wild animal, and I couldn’t resist, and some of the things he did!’ she smiled seraphically. ‘I’m just saying: Oh. My. God!’ Then she held my hand, and said, ‘You don’t mind, do you darling, because, it’s not like anything ever happened between you guys, it was just a little crush.’ But she could see that I knew, and although we never said anything about it ever, from then on, secretly, we were best of enemies.

Cathy’s brazenness should seem funny after all these years, but it doesn’t. Instead, I look back, and even now, I still think of what might have been if I had not been such an idiot. There’s nothing to be done. She shagged Rollo loudly all that year, and a couple of other guys behind his back (‘They mean nothing, darling, they’re just practise. Don’t judge me, it’s just the way I am. I know I can trust you, girls don’t tell or ALL other girls hate them!’). She dumped Rollo as soon as he graduated, and spent the next two years sleeping with professional footballer who played for Chelsea.

And now, here she was, having just returned from my honeymoon, which she’d spent shagging my husband, whose dripping head was now sitting on the floor by my knee, teetering over the cobbles on three inch heels and waving at a tall, bearded policeman. ‘It was her!’ she shrieked. ‘It was that fat bitch on the floor! She killed him in revenge. She made David Tennant kill him with a sword!’ She was shrieking, but her eyes were cold.

The policeman advanced slowly. His partner, a black woman whose dyed orange hair poked from under her helmet, tried to hold him back, but he didn’t seem afraid. He squatted in front of me and said gently, ‘Is everything okay, Mary Sue? Are you alright?’

It was Rollo.

Chapter 6: How Does My Archenemy Know David Tennant?

2007-08-21T09:16:00.000+01:00

My triumphant bitchcow archenemy Cathy Calloway was standing next to two policemen at the South entrance to Gray’s Inn Square square. As I looked, more policemen rushed in behind her. Next to me, David Tennant shook his head wearily, and said, ‘I’ve been so stupid. I’m sorry, Mary Sue.'

‘What is it?’

David looked at the circle of barristers – at my colleagues and all the people I saw every day – edging around us ghoulishly, as the police decided how to approach, and he rose to his knees.’ ‘No!’ he commanded. ‘No closer.’ Everyone froze, out of respect for what he had in his hand. I would have done. David dropped back to his knees, and whispered urgently to me, barely audible,

‘That will give us two minutes, at best. There isn’t time for me to explain properly, but she’s one of them.’

‘Cathy Calloway is a demon!’

‘I know it’s unbelievable, but…’

‘No. I’m totally not surprised.’ It was the first thing he’d said all day that made sense. It’s not that I didn’t believe he was an angel, or that there was an evil Master trying to get hold of me because I was the Chosen One, but a small voice inside me said I only believed these things because he was David Tennant, and I was in complete meltdown after seeing him cut off my husband’s head. But Cathy Calloway being a demon – that was a no-brainer. ‘How do you know? Why couldn’t you tell before?’

‘When we are enraged, joyful or triumphant, we lose control of our eyes. If you know what to look for, you can see it then. She’s enraged.’

‘Is that how you knew about Gavin?’

‘When I heard what happened at the wedding, we knew he couldn’t be who he’d seemed. He fooled us too. So, we let them know I would coming to see you today, and I thought he’d come after me.’

‘It was a trap!’

‘Yes. We couldn’t let him get so close to you again. But I didn’t know about her.’ He nodded at Cathy Calloway. ‘I’ve known her a very long time. I should have realised she’d be involved in this.’

‘Have you fought her before?’

‘I…’ David Tennant stopped. ‘There isn’t time.’

‘Are you alright, MS?’ called Dinky, my clerk. ‘Don’t touch her, Tennant, you creep,’ she added.

‘She’s perfectly safe, Miss Wiseman. And she’s extremely lucky to have you clerking for her. I would not prefer another clerk in this courtyard.’

‘Thank you,’ said Dinky, blushing.

‘How do you do that?’ I said.

‘It’s just manners.’ He looked around us again. The police seemed finally to be getting their act together. ‘Okay, this is it. I’ll be taken away in a moment, but you’ll see me at the station.’

‘Where’s the sword?’ I asked. ‘It was three feet long, and I can’t see it.’

David Tennant just winked, and then he seemed to think of something. He leant towards me, and said urgently, ‘Don’t trust the French.’

‘The French?’

‘Come on, Mary Sue,’ David Tennant hissed. ‘I know you’re not stupid – the French have elected a fascist.’

‘But it was an electoral accident, basically.’

‘That’s how it always looks, Mary Sue. But le Pen is President now. He’s already tightened border controls and started crowing about la Gloire. He’s screwing Europe in Brussels, and his bribing his people hand over fist.’

‘That’s politics,’ I said, unsure at the direction this was taking. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘Everyone’s too young,’ said David Tennant, shaking his head ruefully. ‘You’re all too young. You don’t understand how fragile this all is. Don’t trust the French.’

‘Is le Pen another demon?’

‘Of course he is. That’s why we had to get Boris to stand.’ He looked at me sharply, and said, ‘You did vote for him, didn’t you?’

‘What?’

‘You voted for Boris Johnson? For mayor?’

‘I…’ I looked at him. This seemed important. ‘Is he one of you? An angel?’

‘Of course. He’s a played the part before. I’m really surprised no one’s noticed.’

‘What part?’

‘Believe me, with what’s happening in France, people are going to be very grateful for Boris. He won’t break, and he loves this little island. I honestly think he’s the only one enjoying what’s going on.’

‘Is le Pen the Master?’

‘I don’t think so – the Master could be anyone. None of us know what he looks like this time round, and his eyes are very guarded. You will only know when he really lets go, when he’s sure he’s won. That’s why you can’t trust anyone.’

‘I can’t do this.’

‘Yes you can, Mary Sue. We’ve been watching you, and we know you can. You’re much stronger than you think. How many lives have you already saved?’

‘Er, none!’

‘Er, actually, at least, seven.’ I looked blankly at David Tennant. ‘Those children you rescued when you were swimming off Sennen Cove?’

‘They’d have probably…’

‘They’d have died. And three times you’ve stopped people falling onto tube tracks in rush hour.’

‘Everyone must have…’

‘Almost no one has. You saw them toppling as the train came, and you saved their lives. That almost never happens. And twice in traffic, when… You won’t even remember. You don’t realise, but I promise you, actively saving seven lives is not nothing.’ I looked at him. I remembered these things, but they were so easy to do, and they were over so quickly. It was hardly as if I’d gone to Africa and snatched children from warlord kidnappers trying to turn them into drug-crazed soldiers.

‘What are you DOING!’ screamed the voice of Cathy Calloway. She was standing at the edge of the circle, hands on enraged hips, shouting at a tall bearded policeman who she wasn’t really looking at. She was looking at me, practically licking her lips.

‘Don’t worry, Mary Sue,’ said David Tennant. ‘You’re stronger than her. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met.’