After a few hours of forecasting our phenomenal success one minute and dismal failure the next, I dragged myself back home to look after my mother. The chemotherapy and regular bombardments of radiation left her fatigued all the time, she had lost weight and some of her hair, and moved around the house by groping the walls. It was clear the body she was inhabiting was fast becoming uninhabitable. The only pleasant surprise was my father, who actually turned out to be not that dissimilar to a human being, and one of the nice ones too. He became kind to my mother, loving, and supportive at a level far deeper and more committed than either she or I had expected of him. So did I really need to linger there all the time? Now that I had been in the world, every fiber of my being revolted at the idea of spending another second in that miserable town. That’s why you should never make an unbreakable bond. You never know what the fibers of your being are going to feel like doing later on down the track.

Those weeks of waiting were an intricate and elaborate torture. I’d always known there are 1,440 minutes in a day, but during those three weeks I felt them, profoundly. I was as jumpy as naked wires. I could nibble, but I couldn’t eat. I could close my eyes, but I couldn’t sleep. I could stand under the shower, but I couldn’t get wet. The days stood their ground like monuments to timelessness.

Somehow, magically, the day of publication arrived. At three in the morning, I caught a bus into the city. On the way I had the smug feeling that I was a famous person who had sat down in a public place and was only waiting for someone to turn around and scream, “Hey! There’s so-and-so!” That was me: I was So-and-So. It felt good.

A city is a strange place for dawn. The sun just can’t seem to make any headway in the cold streets, and it took two hours to get sunny. I walked down George Street past a crowd of partygoers falling over each other and kissing and cursing the unwanted arrival of daytime. They sang in my face as they walked by, a drunken song, to which I did a little dance that must have been OK because they all cheered me. I cheered them back. It was cheery.

Dymocks bookshop had promised to put a copy in the window. I was two hours early. I smoked some cigarettes. I smiled, just for something to do. I pushed the crescent moons of my fingernails down into the fingers. A thread from my shirt took me through from eight to eight-thirty. Then, at a few minutes to nine, a woman appeared inside the shop. I don’t know how she got in. Maybe there was a back entrance. Maybe she slept there overnight. But what was she doing in there? She was just leaning against the counter, as if she were a customer. And then, why was she messing around with the cash register? Why was that important now? When bookstores have a new book to put in a window, that should be the first priority. It’s obvious!

She got down on her knees and cut open the lid of a cardboard box with a knife. She took a handful of copies and walked toward the window. This was it! Stepping up on the little podium, she placed the copies on an empty stand. When I saw the books, my heart fell out.

This is what I saw:

The Handbook of Crime, by Terry Dean

What’s this? What’s this? I had to take a closer look. Terry Dean? Terry Dean! How the hell did this happen? I ran to the doors. They were still locked. I banged on the glass. The woman inside the shop peered at me from the other side.

“What do you want?”

“That book! The Handbook of Crime! I have to see it!”

“We don’t open for another ten minutes.”

“I need it now!” I shouted as I pounded on the door. She muttered a cruel insult under her breath. I think it was “book lover.” There was nothing I could do. She wouldn’t open the door. I ran back to the window and pressed my eyeballs against the glass. I could see the front cover. It said, in color with a star around it,

A book by fugitive Terry Dean- written on the lam!

I couldn’t work it out. Nowhere on the cover was there any mention of Harry. Shit! Harry! He’d…A steel door slammed shut inside my head. My brain wouldn’t let me think about Harry. It was too perilous.

On the nose of nine o’clock the store opened and I rushed inside, grabbed a copy of The Handbook of Crime, and flicked through it frenetically. The “about the author” section was entirely different. It was Terry’s life story, and the dedication said simply, “To Martin, my brother and editor.”

Stanley had double-crossed us! But how? I’d never mentioned that I was Terry’s brother! I pushed some money at the clerk and ran out of the store without waiting for change. I ran all the way to Stanley ’s office. When I burst through the front door, he was standing at his desk, talking on the phone, saying, “No, he can’t give an interview. He just can’t. He’s a fugitive, that’s why.”

He hung up and beamed at me triumphantly. “The phone’s been ringing off the hook! There’s a shit storm! It’s better than I ever anticipated!”

“What have you done?”

“I guarantee every copy will be gone by this afternoon. I’ve just ordered another fifty thousand to be printed. First day, and it’s a hit!”

“BUT TERRY DIDN’T WRITE IT!”

“OK, come on, Martin. The cat’s out of the bag. I know you’re Terry’s brother. You tried to keep that secret from me, you naughty boy. Actually, believe it or not, you know what put me onto the idea? My fucking ex-wife! She recognized you from the papers. It hit her a couple of hours after she left that day and she called me, demanding to know what I was publishing with Terry Dean. Then it hit me. Of course! It was so obvious! Harry West was a pseudonym for Terry Dean! It’s not clever like an anagram or anything, but it is bullshit. Problem is, pseudonyms aren’t going to sell books, my friend. Not when the author is as famous as your brother is!”

I moved closer to Stanley ’s desk, wondering if I was strong enough to pick it up and squash him with it.

“Listen to me, you dopey bastard,” I growled. “Terry didn’t write it! Harry did! Oh my God! Harry! Harry is going to explode!”

“Really. And who is this Harry?”

“He was Terry’s mentor.”

Stanley looked at me curiously for a long time. “Come on, mate, give it up.”

“I’m telling you. You’ve fucked up! Harry’s going to go on a rampage! He’ll tear us all to pieces, you idiot!”

Stanley ’s face looked as if it were tossing up between smiling and frowning and finally settled for an uncomfortable combination of the two. “Are you serious?”

“Deadly serious.”

“You’re saying, then, that Terry didn’t write this book?”

“Terry can’t write his name in the snow with his piss!”

“Really?”

“Really!”

“Oh,” Stanley said, before burying his face behind a pile of papers. He picked up a pencil and started scrawling something. I went over and ripped it out of his hands. This is what he’d written: “Oops!”

“Oops! Oops? You don’t know! You don’t know Harry! He’ll kill me! Then he’ll kill you! Then he’ll kill Terry and then he’ll kill himself!”

“Why can’t he be first?” Stanley cried absurdly. He stood, buttoned up his jacket, unbuttoned it, and sat down. He finally had the sense to panic.

“Didn’t you think of at least checking my story? Didn’t you think to find out about Harry?”

“Now, hang on…”

“Call them back!”

“Who?”

“The press! The publishers! Everyone!”

“Now, wait a tic!”

“Do it!”

“I can’t!”

“But it’s a lie!”

“Sit down. Calm down. We have to think about this. Are we thinking? Let’s think. OK. Think. Are you thinking? I’m not. I don’t have a thought in my head. Stop looking at me for a second. I can’t think when someone’s looking at me. Turn around. I mean it, Martin, turn around.”

Reluctantly, I half swiveled my body so I was facing the wall. I wanted to smash my head against it. I couldn’t believe it! Here was Terry again! Taking center stage again! What about me? When was it going to be my time?