Джоан Харрис - Blueeyedboy

Of course Nigel never heard all that. That was the way she told it, though; that was Ma’s version of the tale. Peter Winter took three weeks to die, leaving his widow pregnant and alone. But Gloria Green was tough. She found a childminder in White City and simply worked harder, pushed herself more, and when she left her job at last, two weeks before the baby was due, her employers took a collection that raised a total of forty-two pounds. Gloria spent some of it on a washing machine and banked the rest, to make it last. She was still only twenty-seven.

At this point I think I might have gone home to my parents. She had no job, hardly any savings, no friends. Her looks, too, had begun to fade, and little remained of the Gloria Green who had left Red City with such high hopes. But to crawl back to her family — defeated, with two children, a baby and no husband — was unthinkable. And so she stayed in White City. She worked from home; looked after her sons; washed and ironed and mended and cleaned, while all the time she was searching for another escape, even as her youth left her and White City closed around her like a drowning man’s arms.

And then Ma had a stroke of luck. Peter’s insurance paid out. Turns out he was worth more dead than he’d ever been worth alive; and finally, Ma had some money. Not enough — there was never enough — but now she could see a light ahead. And that piece of good fortune had come along just as her youngest entered the world, making him her lucky charm; her chance at the winning ticket.

In certain parts of the world, you know, blue eyes are thought to be bad luck, the sign of a demon in disguise. But to carry a blue-eye talisman — a glass bead on a piece of string — is to divert the path of malchance, to send back evil to its source; to banish demons to their lair and to bring good fortune in their place —

Ma, with her love of TV drama, believed in easy solutions. Fiction works to formula. The victim is always a pretty girl. And the answers are always right under your nose, to be revealed in the penultimate scene: by accident, or perhaps by a child — tying up all the loose ends in a pretty birthday-party bow.

Life, of course, is different. Life is nothing but loose ends. And sometimes the thread that seemed to lead so clearly into the heart of the labyrinth turns out to be nothing but tangled string, leaving us alone in the dark, afraid and consumed with the growing belief that the real action is still going on somewhere without us, just around the corner —

So much for luck. I came very close. Almost close enough to touch before it was taken away from me. It wasn’t my fault. But still she blames me. And ever since, I have tried to be everything she expects of me; and still it’s never quite enough, never enough for Gloria Green —

Is that what you feel? says Clair, from Group. Don’t you think you’re good enough?

Bitch. Don’t even go there.

You’re not the first to try it, you know. You women, with your questions. You think it’s so easy to judge cause and effect, to analyse and to excuse. Do you think you can fit me into one of your little boxes, a neatly labelled specimen? That, armed with a few choice details, you can pencil in the rest of my soul?

Not much chance of that here, ClairDeLune . You people really have nothing on me. You think I’m new to this game? I’ve been in and out of groups like yours for the greater part of twenty years. As a matter of fact, it’s kind of fun: recalling childhood incidents; inventing dreams, spinning straw into fantasy —

In this way, Clair has come to believe that she knows the man behind the avatar. Fat Chryssie — aka chrysalisbaby — also thinks she understands. In actual fact, I know more about them than they could ever know about me; knowledge that may come in useful some day if ever I choose to exploit it.

Clair thinks she is trying to help me. I think she is in denial. Clair’s therapeutic writing class is really nothing but a disguised attempt at amateur psychoanalysis. And Clair’s online fascination for all things damned and dangerous suggests that she, too, feels damaged. I’m guessing an early experience of abuse, perhaps by a family member. Her fixation with the actor Angel Blue — a man so much older than herself — suggests that she may have daddy issues. Well, of course, I can sympathize. But it’s hardly reassuring in a lecturer. Plus it makes her so vulnerable. I hope it doesn’t end in tears.

As for Fat Chryssie’s interest in me — it seems to be purely romantic. Well, it makes a change from her usual posts, which normally consist of a series of lists detailing her calorie consumption — Diet Coke: 1.5 cals; Skinny Cow: 90 cals; nacho chips, lo-fat cheese: prolly about 300 cals — punctuated by agonizing monologues on how ugly she feels, or interminable pictures of skinny, fragile Goth girls that she refers to as thinspiration .

Sometimes she posts pictures of herself — always body shots, never the face — taken on a mobile phone in front of the bathroom mirror, and encourages people to rant at her. Very few indulge her in this (with the exception of Cap, who hates fatties), but some of the other girls leave ana — love , or saccharine messages of support — Babe, you’re doing great. Stay strong! — or half-baked advice about dieting.

Thus Chryssie has acquired an almost evangelical faith in the properties of green tea as a metabolism booster, and in ‘negative calorie foods’ (which to her mind include carrots, broccoli, blueberries, asparagus and many other things that she rarely eats). Her avatar is a manga drawing of a little girl dressed in black with butterfly wings growing out of her shoulders, and her signature line — at the same time hopeful and unutterably sad — reads: One day I’ll be lighter than air . . .

Well, maybe she will. There’s always hope. But not all Body Freaks die thin. Maybe she’ll end up as some of them do, dead of a stroke or a heart attack on the porcelain phone to God.

One of her online friends — Azurechild — has been urging her to try something called syrup of ipecac. It’s a well-known purgative, with potentially fatal side effects, but which causes rapid weight loss. Of course it’s irresponsible, one might say downright criminal, to encourage someone with Chryssie’s weight problem, and with her already weakened heart, to take such a dangerous substance.

Still, it’s her choice, isn’t it? No one is forcing her to take the advice. We do not create these situations. All we do is hit the keys. Control . Alt . Delete . Gone. A fatal error. An accident —

So — How Well Do You Think You Know Me Now?

That’s this week’s meme , posted by Clair, snagged by Chryssie, who always tags me, like a child in a crowded playground trying to summon a circle of friends.

Clair and Chryssie, like so many of our online clan, are addicted to memes : Internet chain-letters, whose purpose is to simulate interest and conversation, often in the form of a questionnaire. Sweeping the Net like a schoolyard craze — Post three facts about yourself! What did you dream about last night? — passing from one person to another, disseminating information both useful and otherwise; these things behave like viruses, some going global, some dying out, some ending up on badguysrock , where talking about oneself — Me! Me! — is always a popular pastime.

When tagged, I tend to reciprocate. Not because I enjoy self-promotion, but I find these exercises intriguing for what they reveal — or not — about the recipient. The questions — to be answered at speed — are designed to create the illusion of intimacy, and to answer them correctly sometimes requires a level of detail that might challenge even the closest friend.