The White Tower by Dorothy Johnston Read Free Book Online

protest, it would seem, was too late for Niall Howley.
    . . .
    I tried to will myself into Niall’s shoes. I liked live theatre. During my adolescence and early twenties, going to plays and performing in them had been a kind of lifeline for me. I’d delighted in the chance to be somebody else. But this highly structured yet ad lib theatre of the internet left me cold.
    To become so obsessed by a fantasy that you lost the ability to step outside it—that was on one side. On the other were Niall’s break-up with his girlfriend, his relationship with his parents, and his work—I knew nothing yet about Niall’s work situation, or his relationships with people at the hospital.
    Moira Howley’s instructions to me had been straightforward. Do the computer stuff. Find out about the MUD, uncover its secrets and explain them. But I felt that, if I was to understand what had happened to Niall and why, it was just as important for me to investigate his physical life in Canberra. Moira hadn’t objected so far, but would she go on paying me to do that?
    There was a risk, in any kind of theatre. It wasn’t just you, alone with your imagination. You were dependent on other people for the make-believe to hold. There was a time—I was around sixteen—when I planned to make acting my career. When friends of my mother asked me what I was going to be, I replied defiantly, ‘An actress’, knowing how my mother disapproved. She considered my choice frivolous, and did not think I had the talent. Looking back now, I don’t think so either. But who knows? I stuck with it long enough to begin to understand the simultaneous delight and danger of losing myself in a part, giving myself to it, not wanting to come back.
    What had happened to Niall when that place of the imagination, his inner, yet shared sanctuary, had been destroyed? Perhaps the question I needed to ask first was what part he himself had played in the destruction.
    Memories of my youthful aspirations gave me some kind of connection to Niall. I didn’t want to think about this much, or question it, in case it fell apart. I needed some tendon or connective tissue to the person, otherwise Moira Howley’s son was just an outline on a screen, or a pulpy mass at the bottom of a wall.
    . . .
    On Saturday morning, I printed out the email correspondence and put it in an envelope to take to Moira. My reason for choosing Saturday was that I wanted to meet Bernard Howley, Niall’s father.
    I knocked on the Howleys’ front door and waited on the porch, Niall’s computer balanced in my arms with the envelope on top of it. Ivan had examined the hard drive, but had found no files or documents except for the castle scene.
    Moira let me in. She blinked as though her eyes hurt and it was an effort to focus on anything. I followed her into the living room, where I put Niall’s computer on the floor. She stood waiting, clasping and unclasping her hands.
    Bernard Howley walked in, startling me though I was expecting him.
    He shook my hand with unsmiling gravity, looked me up and down, and asked me how long I’d been in the computer business.
    Erring on the generous side, I told him three years.
    I hadn’t known what to expect, probably not a man who wore his grief as openly as Moira’s, but not someone so closed and immediately hostile either.
    Bernard’s hair was silver grey, neatly cut and combed. He wore a shirt and tie under a beige hand-knitted vest. His trousers looked freshly ironed, and his shoes were polished.
    He said stiffly that he would like a few words alone with me before I left, then, with a disdainful glance at Moira, turned to go. He closed the door behind him with a small, sharp clap.
    I reminded myself that Moira had hired me, and I’d be working for her until she told me otherwise. I could stare Bernard down, or whatever else it took.
    Moira sat abruptly on one of the