“Dad sends his love. He’d have come too but, what with his bad leg.” She sat down opposite. Method tried to look away, tried not to make eye contact, nevertheless, his mother leaned forwards, controlled the nerves in her voice, and she asked him what she had come here to ask. “The papers have said some horrible things about you but it’s all lies isn’t it? Tell me it’s not true.” “What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story.” Method replied with a low, sinister register, “F. Scott Fitzgerald said that.” “Ashamed?” she whimpered, “You mean…?” For the briefest of moments, as Method moved his head under the overhead spot-light, his mother caught a glimpse of his haggard face. Puffed up black bags. Wrinkles. She wondered if he’d always looked that old? Then she heard the subtle crackle of burning tobacco leaves and she tutted. He never used to be a smoker. Method blew smoke at the glass, before withdrawing from the spotlight, back to the shadows. ​“Please Timothy, talk to me.” ​“My name is Method!” he snapped back violently, “How many times?” She nodded sheepishly. It’s probably normal, she supposed, when a writer has a pen-name they want their family to call them by that name so that their ears can grow accustomed to the moniker. Still, she found it hard. ​“But I thought everything was going so well for you? Signings and readings around the world. TV interviews. You remember Mr Singh who owns the chemist where I get your Dad’s medication? He saw you on Parky and recognised you. He asked me if it was you. I said yes, proudly. Then he asked me to get your autograph. Said he’d put it on the wall in his shop and…” she paused, having veered off topic, to pick up her loose thread, “…I just don’t understand what’s gone wrong.” Method took a long drag. For a split-second the glowing embers illuminated his cheek and with it, the tell-tale tramlines of tears. ​“It was all I ever wanted. ‘Course it was…but I paid my thirty pieces for it, didn’t I?” A catch in his throat and a subtle sniff suggested he wasn’t so aloof after all and although it was a while before he spoke again – his mother waited patiently – when he did, his tone lightened. He was finally ready to open-up. ​“Do you know where I got the name Method?” ​“Well, it’s funny you should ask that because the other day on This Morning, Holly and Phillip were interviewing that tall comedian that your Dad likes. You know. The one with the suit. What’s his name? Well, whatever his name is, he was saying that it actually wasn’t his name anyway. He had to change his name years ago when he first started out because there was someone else who already had that name. Apparently, actors all have to get this Equity license thingy and they won’t let two actors have the same name. So, I thought it must be something like that but for writers.” ​“Jesus, Mum. No!” he said, fleeting distain in his voice, “although…it’s weird you should mention actors.” ​“Hugh Dennis!” she interrupted excitedly. ​“Do you want me to tell you or not?” ​“Sorry my darling. Go on.” ​“Four or five years ago…When my writing career was stagnant…Honestly Mum, there were so many times I thought about jacking it all in. I wrote and I wrote and I worked two part time jobs to cover bills but no matter what I did, the publishers weren’t buying my manuscripts and whenever I called my agent it was like she couldn’t put the phone down quick enough.” Method lit another cigarette from the smouldering stub of the last one. ​“So, I re-read everything I had ever written. Everything. Every story, every pithy line scrawled on a napkin, every paragraph on a paper scrap until I found out what was missing. It was my characters. They were shallow. Two dimensional. I didn’t know them at all. That’s when I had a kind of epiphany. Some of the best actors in the world are what they call method actors and when they are learning a new character, they try to become that character through every facet of their life. They eat what that character would eat. Buy the things they would buy, from the shops that they would shop in. When they talk, whenever they talk, they are talking as that character. Then, when it comes to actually playing the role, they know exactly who the character is and how they’re supposed behave.” Two deep puffs. He breathed the smoke out slowly. ​“It seemed so obvious. So simple. I just took the next logical step and I became the world’s first method writer. That’s why you don’t see me when I’m writing. You wouldn’t even recognise me if I did call. I’ve embodied every major character for years now. Twelve books!” ​“But…not all of them?” As soon as the implication of his confession clarified, the madness in Method was plain to see. ​“All of them. Day-to-day I go by the name Method, but I’m also Reckless and Carswell, the world-famous detectives, and Mary Harper, the murderous house-wife from ‘B is for Bludgeon’, and Julian Hearn who killed three hostages in a botched bank robbery, and of course, hailing from my most successful series, the serial killer known only by the nickname the tabloids gave him, I am The Smoking Strangler!” Method stubbed out his cigarette exaggeratedly while his shellshocked mother tried to smile away the nausea she felt. She shuffled anxiously in her chair, not sure if she should run away in fear or climb over the glass barrier to hug and comfort her son. Suddenly, the thick atmosphere was cut through, as a wall-mounted buzzer emitted a short, sharp alarm. ​“That’s time!” shouted the prison guard, “Everybody out.”