When Constance Ritherton writes a memoir (and she has written three now) she auditions ghost-writers by taking submissions, then deciding, along with her agent, which are the best. Fiction or non-fiction, either will do, as long as it grabs you by the throat and slaps you like the hand of truth. The authors were all fresh out of university, usually with a few publications on websites or poetry pamphlets printed out on the school printer; they rarely had agents of their own.
This is a sort of open secret – known by experts, assumed by the wise but acknowledged only by those who, for their own petty reasons, bear a grudge against Constance Ritherton – the kind of thing that might finally make the news one day without surprising a soul. Ghost-writing is a convenient deception, tacitly accepted by a world where people can be brands and literature is undervalued. Trump, Hilary Clinton and JFK simply did not have the time or talents to write a book.
What people don’t realise is that Ritherton has used those very submissions as chapters.
#
It started with a young writer named Albert Penny, who wrote a brilliant story about trying to bring buckets of sand home from the beach so he could make his own beach in the backyard, which he really did when he was ten.
Ritherton liked the story so much, and felt so wistful for her childhood years, that she invited Albert Penny to her house for a special, one-on-one meeting.
‘Sit on the sofa with me,’ she’d told the young man, who perched on the edge.
In those days she had a plush red sofa with gold brocade that stretched all around the living room. The butler brought them each a glass of Bloody Maria, which is a Bloody Mary with tequila, and Albert Penny gripped his as carefully as if he were carrying it over a tightrope.
‘Your story impressed me very much,’ said Ritherton as she reclined in a Classical pose. ‘As I said over the phone, I’d very much like to hire you as my ghost-writer. But I need to ask a few questions first.’
‘Of course,’ he said, trying to sound natural. ‘Ask away.’
She sipped the drink delicately so as to not get tomato juice around her mouth, which she didn’t, but patted her lips with a pink napkin anyway.
‘Is it real?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The story, did it really happen?’
‘I suppose. I really did try to take the sand home from the beach.’
They each laughed, but politely, not proper laughter.
‘Marvellous.’
‘But in real life Mum and Dad wouldn’t let me bring a bucketful of sand into their car.’
‘So the rockpool, the pet crab?’
‘That’s made up.’
Ritherton stirred the air with her fingers and tossed her head back to watch the chandelier hanging above, motionless. Penny wondered how many Bloody Marias she’d had.
‘I loved it all so much. It took me back to when I was a girl, coming home from the beach with sand in my shoes, sand in my underwear even. My father took me crab-fishing too, you wouldn’t believe the size of some of the beasties we caught.’
Penny nodded.
‘I’d like to put the story in my memoir.’
‘But it’s not real.’
‘It’s real to me. Every scene is like a memory, half-remembered. The voice is like an old song from my childhood. It might not have happened in real life, but it is true, and when it comes to art that’s what matters.’
#
It has happened since. Whenever Constance Ritherton comes across a story she likes more than her memories, or that rings truer than real life, she solicits the author to relinquish it to her, thus creating a patchwork life out of the lives and dreams of others.
The years go by as quickly as pages turned in a book and Ritherton finds herself remembering something that happened to someone else, or overhearing a thrilling anecdote from one of her friends, and she sends the notes to Albert Penny or whomever is ghost-writing her current memoir, and instructs them to include it.
Ritherton’s autobiographies have sold 10,000 copies in the UK and boast five-star reviews in the Guardian and the Financial Times.
#
Julie Jones was in her third year of university and had already applied to do her Master’s. As someone who disliked alliteration in all its forms, but particularly in a person’s name, she was considering the pen names Julie Wolfe and Theodora Jones. She had decided to study creative writing at the University of Manchester, having enjoyed the sole creative writing module on her literature degree, which had been taught by the little-known but successful short storyist Albert Penny.
Following a drunken conversation with Dr Penny in the local student bar, she had applied for some paid work writing the memoirs of former celebrities, which struck her as far more tolerable than what her roommate was doing – writing erotic novels with misogynistic undertones.
‘That whole scene with the manager sounds a bit rapey to me,’ she’d told Greg.
They were in their living room, Greg sitting on the armchair whose back had fallen off, and she on the spare mattress. They had made their own purplish cocktails out of the various spirits and liqueurs they’d had lying around.
‘I know, but it’s what the readers want,’ he said. ‘I wish you wouldn’t read them anyway, I had to fight to get those trigger warnings.’
‘Fight?’
‘Yeah, I’d wanted them on the front cover but we settled on putting them on the preface. I’m thinking that if I keep pushing my feminist agenda maybe I can gradually reform the whole company.’
She might have fancied Greg, though he was kind of boring. She sometimes thought, if they stayed friends for long enough, that she might start fancying him in her thirties – he had the sort of intellectual scruffiness that improves with age – though by then he might be even more boring.
‘Isn’t the company just two other people?’
‘Alright, steady on. We can’t all have phone interviews with famous actors.’
One of her stories had made its way to a retired stage actor by the name of Constance Ritherton, who had played Lady Macbeth, Golda Meir and Blanche DuBois, but was now remembered for a series of adverts for chocolate biscuits. Dr Penny had warned her that Ms Ritherton was a strange but fascinating woman who paid well and backed up her passions and idiosyncrasies with steadfast logic. He’d described her as the sort of person who either inspired or revulsed, as did all truly free spirits.
#
The telephone interview was scheduled for the late evening which surprised Julie, but being an artist herself she appreciated it. She was surprised again when the call connected and she found Constance Ritherton home alone, and as drunk as the hour permitted.
Ritherton sounded cheerful in between puffs of a cigarette and sips of a drink, and there was an echoey quality to the transmission that granted a speculative enormity to her living room. Julie folded her laptop away so she could lie out on the bed, pressing the phone to her ear with her right shoulder.
After some pleasantries the conversation turned to work, and Ritherton’s mood changed with it. Her speech, which had been quick and ebullient, became professionally monotone. Julie had said little, but worried she’d done something to upset her. Ritherton had been calling her by her prospective pen names and had a charming way of muddling them up, but now she addressed Julie only as Miss Jones.
‘This story of yours is quite something,’ said Ritherton. ‘The voice is so confident, the emotions are so real. It’s almost more real than real life, in that way only a great piece of writing can be.’
‘Thank you, Ms Ritherton.’
‘But I must ask – is it real?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Is it a retelling of something that happened to you? Or to someone you know?’
‘Oh, no, not at all. I would never be that brave. It’s made up.’
There was a pause while Ritherton shifted about on what sounded like a leather sofa. On Julie’s end, a gang of rowdy lads went past on the street outside, shouting more than was necessary.
‘You’re telling me it’s fictional?’
‘Yes.’
Somehow, Julie had the sense that she’d given the wrong answer, and awaited Ritherton’s response without drawing breath.
‘If you don’t mind me asking, what inspired you to write such a thing?’
The question probed like a rubber-clad finger in the mouth. In truth, while the story was fictional, the anger inherent had come from a real incident at their university. There had been a young woman who cleaned the student halls. Her name was Alma and Julie had often chatted to her in the shared kitchen, or near the outside smoking area. The incidents had been frequent, isolated. Some of the boys left used condoms for her to find. Others had touched her. Some details Alma refused to speak of.
Julie had lost sleep over it. She’d had long, angry showers that used up all the hot water. She’d never intended to write the story but in the end it came out anyway, during a dark, sleepless night when the wind tore at the drainpipes, and the sentences poured out one after the other, as though she were a conduit for something greater. But line by line the story morphed into something else. The anger, the injustice – that was all there, but the events were different enough to be unrecognisable.
And with all the #Metoo stuff going on, it seemed natural to make it about an actress instead.
‘Just something I read once in the paper,’ said Julie.
Not entirely a lie – it’d been in the student paper.
‘I see. So perhaps it’s just a coincidence.’
‘A coincidence?’
‘Yes.’
A revelation was erecting itself, brick by brick, in her brain. She opened her mouth but found there was no longer any workable conduit between the two organs.
‘Well,’ continued Ritherton after a sip. ‘I suppose that sort of thing must happen to a lot of women. No doubt it was worse when I was a girl.’
During that short pause Julie felt a torrent of emotions with which she could not keep pace. In her mind’s eye, Ritherton deflated – something the world had never seen except feigned at the Globe Theatre. Somewhere in her chemical deluge there was pride, for she had triumphed, and terror, for she had uncannily reproduced a defining moment in the other woman’s life (some seers predict the future but she had predicted the past). There was also anger – dark anger – like the kind she’d felt on behalf of Alma.
But, from Constance Ritherton’s platform, that anger could reach the masses, it could hotwire the press, it could spark an explosion of lost jobs and banned Twitters. Real, righteous action.
‘Miss Jones,’ said Ritherton. ‘On the strength of your writing alone we’d like to hire you to write our next memoir.’
‘I’m honoured.’
‘We’ll have to meet face to face. I have much to dictate.’
‘I suppose we have something of a head-start,’ said Julie.
‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘Well, one chapter is more or less done, isn’t it. The one I sent you. Obviously we’ll have to change the names.’
‘Oh, I see what you mean, dear.’ Ritherton’s tone was becoming more cheerful again. She had a very expressive way of speaking when she was happy, like every word had its own intense meaning. ‘No, no, no, we’ll not be putting anything like that in the book. But if you have any other pieces then I’d love to read them. I love a good short story. So much more enjoyable than real life, don’t you think? Now, get your diary out, let’s arrange a meeting. My place.’
#
Julie and Greg, partway through their four-day weekend, stayed up all night celebrating. She hadn’t wanted to, but Greg convinced her with homemade cocktails (purple ones) and frozen pizza. She didn’t tell him about the coincidence, but on his way to bed, when he made a little joke about ghost-writing being more problematic than sexist erotica, she couldn’t even force the little laugh that social customs dictate.