Secret Story Read Online Free PDF Page A

it’s always shut now,” he said.
    “I’m sure I’d have liked whatever you wrote. You didn’t even let me finish it.” Her eyes continued glistening with a threat of tears as she said “You ought to have known I was on your side when I’d been to the school about the other one you wrote.”
    “We’ve been through all this. Where’s it leading?”
    Kathy reached towards him. When he left her hands stranded on their backs she said “Have you heard about the new magazine that’s out next month? The
Mersey Mouth
. How would you like to be in it?”
    “Get a job there, you mean? I thought your idea was I should have a secure one just like yours.”
    “They ran a competition for the best short story set on Merseyside by someone from Merseyside who’d never been published before.”
    Dudley’s twinge of frustration was immediately succeeded by relief. “Won’t they have chosen it by now?”
    “They have, Dudley.”
    This revived his frustration, though mostly with her. “What are you telling me about it for, then?”
    “You’ve won.”
    “I’ve . . .” She must think he was gaping with no worse than disbelief or shock, but the heat wasn’t just all over him, it was rendering his mouth as dry as his fists were clammy. “What’ve you done?” he spluttered.
    “I don’t pray much, but I used to pray every night you wouldn’t stop writing because you didn’t like me reading the story you tore up. I was sure you hadn’t really, but don’t hate me, I couldn’t help looking for new ones. I only wanted to see I hadn’t destroyed your talent.”
    Dudley’s voice felt harsh as a mouthful of sand. “You’ve been reading my stories.”
    “I did, and when I heard about the competition I wanted to tell you to send one. I was afraid you might tear them up instead if you knew I’d seen them.”
    “So you . . .” The rest of his words seemed incapable of crossing the desert of his mouth. “You . . .”
    “I sent one in. Under your name, of course, since you hadn’t put it on.”
    She seemed actually to be waiting for gratitude. “Which story?” he forced himself to ask.
    “The one that had me on the edge of my seat and scared I mightn’t finish it before you came back from seeing your girlfriend. About the man with the phone on the train.”
    If he hadn’t pretended to have a date he would have been at home. The irony made him stagger as he lurched to his feet. “You’re not going to harm anything,” she cried.
    “Stay out of my room or I will,” he shouted as he slammed his door behind him.
    He dragged handfuls of encyclopaedias off the shelf and dumped them on the bed. For the first time he saw that the length of plywood against which they had been resting wasn’t quite the same colour as the wall. It was always in shadow, and nobody who hadn’t been searching his room would have noticed. As he lifted the last volumes down, the strip of wood fell flat on the shelf, releasing the typescripts it hid. He saved them from sprawling on the floor and separated them on the bed.They were all there, including “Night Trains Don’t Take You Home”.
    He took a breath that smelled of hot stale paper, and gave the door a slam that he hoped would make Kathy’s head throb as badly as his own was throbbing. “You only said you’d sent it,” he yelled from the stairs. “You were trying to make me think it’d have to be published, weren’t you? Did you honestly think I’d agree—”
    His mother was pushing an envelope across the table at him. The top left-hand corner bore a bright blue masthead. Upside down it resembled an unequal pair of sharp blades preceded by two bits of gibberish. He righted it to see a large M lending its support to both ersey and outh. “Open it,” his mother urged.
    He ripped it open so savagely that she recoiled. Inside were two copies of a contract to publish “Night Trains Don’t Take You Home”. Perhaps she was afraid he would tear them up; she began speaking as