A Ladder to the Sky

by John Boyne

he had heard the young man rising in the night as he went about the business of ambition.

‘That line from Villette,’ said Dash quietly. ‘How does it go? Where is the use of caring for him so very much? He is full of faults.’

Writers are all fascists. We like to control the discourse and crush anyone who dares to disagree with us.’

The pile arrived four times a year and there was often very little in it worth stealing, but once in a while he came across a moment of brilliance that justified his decision to set up the magazine in the first place.

he felt, for the first time in his life, as if he was not the most attractive person in the room.

I knew them and they knew me and, anyway, we were all at it. We drank together, had countless spats, made up, pretended to take pleasure in each other’s successes and to commiserate over each other’s failures. What mattered was that I mattered, that I was taken seriously.

Something had shifted in my relationship with Theo since the previous afternoon. Although I had been using him all along and was prepared to continue with my plan until I had achieved my goal, I had begun to feel that it might be helpful to me to unburden myself of some of my regrets along the way. Perhaps it would dismiss Daniel’s ghost from shadowing me. Somehow, I felt a kindred spirit in this young naïf and I felt that he might actually understand why I had done some of the things I’d done. And that he might forgive me. But in order to do that, I needed to be honest with him. Obviously, there was only so far I could go without giving myself away entirely, but I wondered whether I could minimize some of my crimes and still command his respect.

I needed his forgiveness, not his condemnation.

I was obviously drunk. I giggled when I got inside. So, this was what self-destruction felt like.