PENGUIN BOOKS
Praise for How I Live Now
‘A crunchily perfect knock-out of a debut novel’ – Guardian
‘This is a powerful novel: timeless and luminous’ – Observer
‘That rare, rare thing, a first novel with a sustained, magical and utterly faultless voice’ – Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
‘Intense and startling … heartbreakingly romantic’ – The Times
‘A wonderfully original voice’ – Mail on Sunday
‘Readers won’t just read this book, they will let it possess them’ – Sunday Telegraph
‘It already feels like a classic, in the sense that you can’t imagine a world without it’ – New Statesman
Praise for Just in Case
‘A modern Catcher in the Rye … written with generosity and warmth but also with an edgy, unpredictable intelligence’ – The Times
‘Unusual and engrossing’ – Independent
‘Intelligent, ironic and darkly funny’ – Time Out
‘Extraordinary’ – Observer
‘No one writes the way Meg Rosoff does – as if she’s thrown away the rules. I love her fizzy honesty, her pluck, her way of untangling emotion through words’ – Julie Myerson
Praise for What I Was
‘Rosoff’s most perfect novel … It’s already a classic’ – Sunday Times
‘Thrilling and sensitively told’ – Observer
‘This exquisitely written novel, complete with amazing twist, is the “teenage” book of the year’ – Irish Times
‘A wonderfully warm, witty, intelligent and romantic story with a terrific whiplash in the tail. Textured, nuanced, dramatic and atmospheric,
What I Was feels like a future classic’ – Daily Telegraph
‘Gently haunting’ – Metro
‘Compelling and all-encompassing … Sucks the reader whole into its universe’ – Time Out
‘One of the best plot twists in a novel to be found this year’ – The Herald
‘A beautifully crafted tale that seems, like its protagonist, both enduringly old and fluently new’ – Los Angeles Times
Praise for The Bride’s Farewell
‘Exhilarating … Every sentence is crafted and weighted with beauty’ – Amanda Craig, Times on Saturday
‘An engaging, impeccably written novel’ – Independent on Sunday
‘A poetically charged romance, full of thorny emotional dilemmas … compelling’ – Marie Claire
‘Rosoff’s writing is luminously beautiful’ – Financial Times
‘A wildly inventive romantic adventure’ – Red
‘It’s not often that one comes across a book as richly detailed and layered as this … perfect’ – Daily Telegraph
‘A highly polished gem’ – The Scotsman
‘This exquisitely written journey into freedom, love and womanhood makes literature out of the pony tale’ – The Times
‘The Bride’s Farewell is a book that lingers in the mind’ – Irish Times
‘Pure Rosoff’ – Guardian
Praise for There Is No Dog
‘A wild, wise, cartwheeling explanation of life, the universe and everything. Given the glorious, eccentric, spectacular cock-up that is Planet Earth, the Creator can only have been a slack, male adolescent with a short attention span and an unruly sexual organ. I don’t know why no one has worked this out before. It makes a whole lot more sense than particle physics. And, unlike Big Bang Theory, it’s funny’ – Mal Peet
Books by Meg Rosoff
HOW I LIVE NOW
JUST IN CASE
WHAT I WAS
THE BRIDE’S FAREWELL
THERE IS NO DOG
megrosoff.co.uk
meg rosoff
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
puffinbooks.com
First published 2011
Text copyright © Meg Rosoff, 2011
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders. The publishers would like to hear from any copyright holders not acknowledged.
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-141-92369-7
To Paul and Sally G,
without whom there
would be no dog.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm
destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up
to the heavens, ‘Why, God? Why me?’ and the
thundering voice of God answered, ‘There’s just
something about you that pisses me off.’
Stephen King
1
Oh glorious, most glorious glorious! And yet again glorious!
The sun spreads warm and golden on Lucy’s face and arms. Pale new leaves unfurl so fast she can almost hear the little sighs they make as they open. Birds tweet and twitter their social networks, like city workers seeking potential mates. A few tipsy clouds punctuate the sweet blue sky. The world reels, drunk with happiness.
Lucy nearly laughs out loud. What a wondrous day. The most wondrous day ever, since the very beginning of time.
She doesn’t realize how much she herself adds to its perfection. Is it the summer dress printed with roses, which the breeze catches and flips up against her legs? Or merely the fact that Lucy is as perfect as a rose herself, a flower newly opened – so perfect, you can imagine the sun breaking every rule of impartiality to beam down upon her, alone.
What heaven, she thinks. What bliss! Whoever is in charge of the weather today has (for once) achieved perfection.
Her step is light. The distance from bus stop to work is short. She smiles, a half-grown girlish womanish smile that illuminates her lovely features. The sun paints soft highlights on her cheekbones and well-shaped mouth, sets her pale hair alight. She dreams about the summer months to come, the bright conversations, the long pink evenings, the possibility of love. Her youth, her smile, her happiness all combine, at this moment, to make her the most irresistible woman on Earth.
A young man walks some distance behind her. If he hadn’t already made up his mind not to fall in love – with her or anyone else, ever again – he might run to catch her up. Instead, he slows his step and turns away, disliking her, for not very good reasons of his own.
Lucy fairly skips along, joyous. She passes a fountain and leans over into the spray, delighted by its sparkling rainbows. Then she straightens and resumes her walk, humming a little prayer, which is not so much a prayer as a hope, a private incantation: ‘Dear God,’ she prays, ‘I should like to fall in love.’
But wait … what’s this? Such luck! God (who almost never bothers listening to his people) overhears her prayer. Lucy’s prayer!
Transported by her loveliness, he decides to answer it himself.
What a miracle! How much more than glorious! God, himself, is about to fall in love.
2
‘Wake up!’
God is dreaming of water. In his dream there is a fountain, and a naked girl, and (of course) there is him. The water is warm, the girl willing; her flesh is soft. He reaches out a hand to caress her breast, curls his fingers instead round one slim arm …
‘Wake. Up.’ An edge of impatience accompanies the request.
Oh, Christ. It’s that dreary Mr B – his assistant, private secretary, God’s very own personal bore. And surprise surprise. B’s spectacles have slipped down to the end of his nose and he has his sourpuss face on.
God is awake. He cracks open one eye. ‘What?’
‘Go to the window.’
His head hurts. ‘Just tell me.’
‘Get up. Feet on the floor. Walk to the window. Look outside.’
With a huge sigh, a brain thick and slow as pudding, the boy sits up, swings his legs on to the floor, stands, sways for an instant and runs one hand through his hair (which he can tell, with annoyance, has all migrated to one side of his head, as if he’s been standing in a high wind). Groaning, he turns and pads wearily to the window, his feet bare and cold. The rushing noise is louder than it was. To his surprise, there is water where the streets used to be and for a moment he feels quite relieved that his bedroom is not on the ground floor of the building. ‘Water,’ he says, with interest.
‘Yes, water.’ Mr B’s manner is mild, but he trembles with unexpressed feeling.
God struggles to make sense of the scenario. Why is there water in the streets? Did he make this happen? Surely not. He’s been sleeping.
‘Look over there.’
He looks.
‘What do you see?’
Off the bedroom is a large bathroom, complete with toilet, sink, white marble tiles, large rolltop bath.
Bath.
The bath! God remembers now; he was running a bath and then, as he waited for it to fill, he lay down. Just for a moment. He must have fallen asleep. And while he slept, dreaming of that beautiful girl, the girl in the fountain, the bath overflowed.
‘Oh.’
‘Oh? Just oh?’
‘I’ll turn it off.’
‘I’ve turned it off.’
‘Good.’ The boy heads back to bed, collapses.
Mr B turns to God with his customary combination of resignation and rage. ‘I don’t suppose you’d like to do something about the mess you’ve made?’ Outside the window water rolls through the streets.
‘I will,’ he mutters, already half asleep. ‘Later.’
‘Not later, now.’
But God has pulled a pillow over his head, signalling (quite definitely) that there is no point going on at him.
Mr B fumes. God is dreaming of soapy sex with his fantasy girlfriend while the rest of the world drowns in the bath. His bath.
It is always like this. Day after day, year after year, decade after decade. And on and on and on. Mr B (more than a personal assistant, less than a father figure – a fixer, perhaps, facilitator, amanuensis) sighs and returns to his desk to go through the mail, which (despite being dealt with on a daily basis) has a tendency to pile into vast teetering towers. He will choose one or two prayers and make an attempt at urgent action. He does not show them to God, for the boy’s ability to concentrate is minimal at best.
Occasionally a voice leaps out from the torrent of prayers and moves him by simple virtue of its sincerity. Dear God, I should like to fall in love.
An undemanding little prayer. From just the sort of sweet girl he would like to help, in the first place – by making sure God never lays eyes (or anything else) on her.
But God has a bloodhound’s nose for a gorgeous girl, and before Mr B can hide the prayer the boy is out of bed and peering over his shoulder, snuffling at the prayer as if it’s a truffle, practically inhaling it in his anxiety to get his hands on …
‘Who is she?’
‘No one. A dwarf. Short, hairy, old. A troll. She grunts, she snores, she stinks.’
But it’s too late. He’s seen her. He watches Lucy in her thin summer dress as she walks through the dappled morning light – his light – her round hips swaying, her pale hair aglow. She is exquisite. Flawless.
At that exact moment, there is a blinding flash of light. It is so intense that for a moment the world disappears.
‘I’ll have her,’ says God.
When Mr B manages to open his eyes once more, the expression on God’s face makes his heart sink. It is twelve parts moony love, eighty-three parts sexual desire, and ten and a half million parts blind determination. Oh, please, Mr B thinks, not a human. Not another human.
He is filled with despair. God’s passion for humans always leads to catastrophe, to meteorological upset on an epic scale. What is wrong with the boy that he can’t get it up for some nice goddess? Why, oh why, can’t he pursue a sensible relationship, one that will not end in disaster?
Mr B could weep. Attempting to talk God round is as useful as trying to reason with a squid. He will pursue Lucy until his lust wears out, or until some vast geological disturbance erases her from the Earth. Mr B has seen it all before. Earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes. God’s unique inability to learn from his mistakes: yet another wonderful trait he’s passed on to his creations.
Happy now, the boy drifts back to bed, where he dozes, conjuring filthy scenarios around the girlfriend he hasn’t yet met.
3
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Only it wasn’t as simple as that. The preferred candidate for God withdrew at the last minute saying he wanted to spend more time with his family, though privately everyone suspected he was having second thoughts. You couldn’t really blame him. Earth was badly positioned – miles off the beaten track in a lonely and somewhat rundown part of the universe. At a time of high employment, not many top-level candidates were willing to take on a tiny unproven planet, not to mention the whole creation rigmarole, which, when done properly, could be a real headache.
The job posting had attracted barely a handful of candidates – most too young or too old, the rest so under-qualified that they never made it to interview. The only serious applicant, a middle-aged man known as candidate B, had a solid but unexciting record in middle management; when he appeared before the board to state his credentials, his quiet, somewhat professorial manner failed to generate enthusiasm. Agreement could not be reached.
The hours ticked by. With a deadline upon them, the committee required a decision. But the administrator was going through a messy divorce, and the team that should have been sorting out Earth’s management was busy with other projects. The final day of the tender arrived with no one to take the position. Tempers frayed, minds wandered and at last one of the board members offered the job as part of a bet on a not very good game of poker. The player who won, promptly turned it over to her feckless teenage son. Bob.
Bob’s credentials (non-existent) did not impress. But the general sense of exhaustion and indifference was such that no one could really be bothered to argue. And, anyway, he might turn out to have great potential. Stranger things had happened.
What swung the deal at last was the suggestion of a sort of coalition – between the unproven son and that stuffy old codger, Mr B. It being so late in the day, everyone expressed enthusiasm.
‘All in favour?’