The Thirteenth Tale

by Diane Setterfield

It is the hand of an invalid.

the way I snorted

Until you wake into a dream where you are at once a pen flying over vellum and the vellum itself with the touch of ink tickling your surface.

listen babes, I dont think this is normal

thereafter the hieroglyphs resolved themselves quickly into characters, then words, then sentences.

me after reading anything from fragmentary a fifth sixth and seventh time

I once did an interview for the Banbury Herald.

dive straight in I love it. no muss no fuss.

Strange chap they sent me. A boy, really. As tall as a man, but with the puppy fat of youth.

this person sounds like my brothers dad. not a compliment.

The moment I set eyes on him, I thought, ‘Aha, what’s he after?’

you got him granny, sit now countdown is about to start

What succour,

sure, I know what that means

Just because they always ask the same questions, it doesn’t mean we have to give them the same old answers, does it? I mean, making things up, it’s what we do for a living.

no because this would be me as a writer

towards a prettier story than the one they had their eye on.

oh do tell

A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth.

so true, no press is bad press n all that shite

Vida Winter

life winter

whatever did he expect?

i know right, why would he do such a thing

The watery

flashbacks to watery bowels *stares at sjm*

Tell me the truth.

he asked for the truth?? god* why didn’t you say that before???? scientifically unfounded

It’s not easy for someone of my talent to produce a story like that.

I love her shamelessness honestly

I had killed it.

you broke him, vida la viva

growing inside me, dividing and multiplying.

they’re called cells, they do that don’t worry about it babes

the word of God,

bibliography????

the unheeded detritus

the what now???

To contemplate the exquisite arc of the eye, the broad, smooth sweep of the cheekbones, the impeccable line and proportions of the nose, is to marvel that the randomness of human variation can produce something so supernaturally perfect as this.

I’m too common for this

This woman, I remember thinking, as I gazed at her green, unseeing eyes, does not have a soul.

buuuurn

why should she want to tell it to me?

I also want to know

But mostly it is just Father, me and the books.

so like, how do you stay open? surely the scant few customers isn’t enough to break even- ig unless the building is owned and paid off.

you see the shop is, in financial terms, just a sideline.

oh well there we go then

In French, German, Italian, even occasionally Latin.

oh we stan a polyglot

I don’t pretend reality is the same for everyone

because, and hear me out, reality is relative

A is for Austen, B is for Brontë, C is for Charles and D is for Dickens.

and here I learnt my abcs with ants on my arm

The shop was both my home and my job. It was a better school for me than school ever was, and afterwards it was my own private university. It was my life.

so jealous right now

my Charlemagne?

AND THE RIVER ALWAYS FLOWS SO IF YOU GO I WILL KNOW BY THE RAIN MY CHARLEMAGNE

My father noticed the direction of my reading. He came home from fairs and sales with books he thought might be interesting for me.

can my family take note

also-rans,

dictionary count: 4 (unnecessary really but I could not figure out what she meant)

disinter

dictionary count: 5

dilettante,

dictionary count: 6

For someone now dead once thought these words significant enough to write them down.

so if I wrote a book about how the bee movie is a criminally underrated piece of cinema (something I feel very passionately about) you would find something worthwhile in it? noted ✍️

People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases.

well fuck me and my fear of mortality

Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice,

like han solo frozen in carbonite

It is a kind of magic.

okay freddie mercury

For it must be very lonely being dead.

I am begging

reticence,

dictionary count: 7

So here is my story.

Margaret’s lore: unlocked

The next-door house was exactly like ours but reversed, and the backwardness of it all made me feel seasick

truly the worst thing about semi-det housing

Yes, that wolf would have the house down with a mere whistle, and the three of us would be breakfast in no time.

what a morbid child

I had a twin.

not where I anticipated this going honestly

My twin was dead.

oh shitttttttttt

coagulation of light. Something peculiar to me that set empty space vibrating. My pale shadow.

so many words so little brain space

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Good girl.’

so mom resents her because she’s alive and twinny mctwinnerson is dead

I couldn’t be bothered to make a meal. A cup of cocoa would do.

me fr

In the night glass was a face so pale you could see the blackness of the sky through it. We pressed cheek to cold, glassy cheek. If you had seen us you would have known that were it not for this glass, there was really nothing to tell us apart.

I’m so confused is she seeing her twin or her reflection????

I who had never been told the truth, but left to discover it alone and in secret.

so did she just never confront her parents ????

wrapped in my dressing gown,

that’s how you know she’s British