The Iago Complex
For fans of Donna Tartt, dark academia, and the quiet horror of being understood too well.
Here’s something a little different. It’s completely fictional, but writing it let me slip back into Malta for a while.
A lot of the story takes place at my old sixth form, Junior College (JC), and the Valletta Campus, where I graduated with my MA in 2015 (eek). JC always felt unusually free compared to other sixth forms; no uniforms, and enough trust to let us wander off between lectures.
My fellow Maltese will probably remember White Arrow, the slightly seedy bar nearby where you could play pool, drink an excellent hot chocolate, and somehow buy single cigarettes for cents while definitely underage.
I also vividly remember the owner being arrested after a police raid uncovered five kilos of cannabis resin on the premises. Good times. Enjoy!
Part I
In September, the heat settles over Malta like a heavy, humid duvet. Sweat doesn’t evaporate but rather clings to tanned bodies, clothing, hair. The sea itself is too close to body temperature for locals, but holidaymakers still find relief in that salty cradle.
Built in the 90s, the Junior College was well-equipped for serious learning, but not so much for such luxuries as air conditioning, so Room 212 was punctuated with three fans working overtime to cool the collection of sticky teenagers plus one lecturer. He and the baked air were trapped in the classroom, working through the finer points of Othello with a bunch of greasy, over-sexed teenagers who would much rather be hanging out on some corner drinking 3 euro boxes of wine.
The highly visible vein in the top right corner of his shiny head throbbed. 20 more minutes of this, and he would be free to feed the cats behind the school and return home to the sanctuary of cool silence he had curated over decades alone.
He gathered his papers, tapped them onto the desk twice, slipped them into a worn leather bag, and snapped the batter brass clasp shut. Just one stop in at the teacher’s lounge for some photocopies and he would be home free. While he respected some of his colleagues, the lounge was a cesspit of gossip and tomfoolery, not much better than the canteen during the lunchtime rush. He did his best to avoid getting involved but some of his peers insisted on drawing him into their drivel.
“She’s doing a reading tonight, you know. Valletta Campus—shall we grab a drink before or do you want to meet there?”
“A drink sounds good. Incredible to see how far she’s come! Makes you proud to be Maltese.”
“There he is. Alistair! Alistair–she was one of your students wasn’t she? Leila Sinclaire?
“Well, yes. Her real name is Mifsud, you know. Silly name she’s chosen.” A name engineered for English tongues.
“Oh that is just amazing. Number one on the UK charts, all over BookTok and she got that amazing review in The Times! You must be over the moon.”
Before he had time to figure out a neutral response, or digest the word ‘booktok’, Ms. Abela bulldozed in. He’d never been so grateful for her garrulous nature.
“Are you coming to the reading tonight? I’m sure she’d love to see an old teacher! Not that you’re old of course I just meant–”
“I’m not sure. I have some lesson planning to do and papers to grade. I’ll do my best.” He offered a weak smile, anything to get him out of this conversation and into his flat. Grading papers sounded like a rollercoaster ride in comparison.
“Oh, well we’re going to The Pub before the event kicks off so do join us if you can!”
He thanked them and quickly left the room, sweat beading on his brow and photocopies yet to be made. Rushing down the hall, stepping closer to freedom. That’s when he saw it from the corner of his eye; her face, smiling the smile of a young bestselling author down at him. Piercing through her nose that reminded him of a bull and arms crossed over her body at a ¾ angle. Hair, bottle black, cascading down her shoulders.
The corridor seemed suddenly narrower. He loosened his tie though it made no difference. Sweat gathered beneath his collar, beneath his arms, along the ridge of his spine. The building’s heat had turned invasive somehow.
He looked away from the poster and immediately snapped back to it. Marginalia. Even the title irritated him. Smug. Self-aware. The kind of title reviewers described as ‘razor-sharp’.
He became aware of his pulse in his jaw. Ridiculous. It was only heat. Too little water. Too much black coffee. Still, as he continued down the corridor, he found himself calculating the distance between Junior College and Valletta Campus. Whether parking would be impossible at that hour. Whether there might still be seats left at the back.
Part II
“Iago sounds more insecure than evil to me.”
Thea was one of his better students, the kind who actually gave a damn about real literature. She had room to grow, but a good mind for him to work with. She seemed the kind of kid whose need for approval grew with the difficulty of the lecturer.
“Explain that a bit more.”
“Well, he keeps looking for proof that he…matters? More than the person he envies. He doesn’t necessarily want Othello’s life, he wants Othello to stop existing as proof that he’s like, ordinary.”
He felt, perhaps irrationally, that something in him had been recognised–exposed. He smiled.
“That’s a very modern interpretation.”
He wrote the sentence down anyway. Not for the first time, he felt the small electric pleasure of encountering something he wished he’d written himself.
Over the years he had filled entire notebooks this way: fragments from office-hour conversations, unusual turns of phrase lifted from essays, observations overheard in corridors and bars and tutorials. He told himself it was pedagogical. A caring lecturer noticing promise.
Still, some of the phrases survived long after the students’ faces had blurred.
Part III
Mahler’s Symphony no.5 crackled to life on the well-worn turntable. The needle arm required a small, practised correction before settling into the groove. He performed this adjustment automatically now, with the tenderness of someone straightening a collar on a corpse. Today, even the records seemed affected by the weather; yellowed sleeves bowed slightly outward in the humidity, as though the sea had seeped into them too.
He poured himself a whiskey on two ice cubes and settled into the curves of his recliner–the only seat not covered in a plastic cover and the only one that generally saw human activity. He picked up the book on his side table as though it might bite; it showed up one day in his cubicle at work, wrapped in brown paper with his name scrawled on in red marker.
At seventeen, Emily Richard is hungry to be taken seriously. When she meets her brilliant mentor at sixth form, she feels seen in a way she never has before. He opens doors—books, ideas, possibilities. He tells her she’s destined for more.
Years later, Emily is a writer living in London. Success has given her everything she once wants. But when she returns home to visit family in Malta, the past returns too. Because some debts can’t be paid off. And some mentors don’t just shape you. The take from you.
The blurb drew something between a sigh and a groan from his withered body. The glowing author reviews felt like an attack on his own failure. Some trendy author of a queer romantasy–an absurd bastardisation of genres–series remarked: “Sinclaire writes with the unnerving intimacy of someone willing to wound herself on the page.”
He recalled the too-polite rejection letter.
Ultimately, however, we found ourselves held at a distance from the novel’s emotional life.
What struck us most was an inconsistency in intimacy throughout the manuscript. [...] Several readers commented that the strongest passages seemed to belong almost to a different book altogether…
Contemporary publishing seemed increasingly infatuated with exposure. Woundedness performed beautifully now. Publishers wanted authors young enough to photograph well, damaged enough to market honestly, and pretty enough to push on the cesspit known as social media.
Of course, he’d read it. Cover to cover, first expecting caricature wrapped in the words of an inexperienced writer. He looked for–longed for–parts to criticise, tear apart, contradict, but instead found it perceptive. Not wholly fair, perhaps, in his view, but parts of it verged on brilliance. He returned to the passage that had left him choking on his Macallan.
He moved through talented young people like a reaper through tall grass, scythe held aloft, convinced that recognition itself entitled him to ownership.
A memory surfaced like a diver coming up too fast. A university open mic years ago. Him, reading from his manuscript while Emily stood with friends near the back beside the fire exit.
At first she looked flattered. Then gradually grew still. The chapter had been full of her. Her grandfather’s salt-stiff apartment. Her fear of becoming provincial. The story about learning to float before learning to swim.
Things she had told him slowly, over months, in the softened voice of someone who still believed attention was a form of care. He remembered the exact moment she realised what she was hearing. She stopped showing him her work not long after that.
He reads the paragraph again, and again, like some giddy teenager in the glow of a text from their latest infatuation. The words undressed him, exposed him in a way he had never felt before. The recognition disgusted him partly because it felt so accurate.
No one—not even his wife toward the end—had ever looked at him with such ruthless clarity. The record clicked softly in the silence after finishing, needle trapped at the centre groove. He let it continue far longer than necessary.
Part IV
He took a stabilising breath before slipping into the courtyard. Some people, he recognised: colleagues, students past and present, a couple of local industry bigwigs. Others were distinctly that–other. A pick-and-mix of accents, and from the conversations he eavesdropped on, publishing folk from London. The idea that people had travelled for her disgusted him.
A waiter handed him a welcome drink. Real champagne. Not prosecco. He found this more offensive than he should have.
“Alistair! You came!” Ms. Abela had a talent for materialising, loudly.
Mercifully, he didn’t have time to respond, because someone from her little publishing gang was ushering everyone to their seats. The reading was about to begin.
She walked onto the stage to applause that seemed to embarrass nobody except him. Black dress. Heavy boots. Silver rings flashing beneath the lights as she adjusted the microphone. Older now, obviously, but not diminished. Sharpened.
He kept waiting for her eyes to land on him and expose him instantly, publicly, like a fire-and-brimstone priest naming sins from the pulpit. But she moved calmly through the introduction, thanking organisers, publishers, booksellers. Entire ecosystems now existed around her success. Then she began to read.
Not the passage he feared, but something quieter. A scene between the protagonist and her mentor after school, discussing poetry while fluorescent lights hummed overhead. The room laughed in the right places. Shifted in discomfort at others. Then came the line:
“Some people teach literature because they love humanity. Others teach it because books are the closest they have ever come to intimacy.”
The audience responded with that soft collective sound readers make when they encounter something painfully true. His throat tightened. Allergies, he told himself. And then, impossibly, she looked directly at him. Not with emotion or accusation. Just knowingly.
“There are people here tonight,” she said, closing the book gently, “who will recognise parts of this story.”
His stomach dropped.
“Not because the novel is factual,” she continued, “but because certain kinds of people recur.” Laughter again. Some of it nervous this time.
The reading moved on. He barely heard the remainder of it. By the end, applause filled the courtyard while he sat motionless, palms damp against his knees, feeling as though some internal structure had been quietly removed from him.
Afterwards, people queued immediately for the honour of meeting her, getting her signature. She signed patiently, warmly, occasionally leaning over for photographs, or rather, selfies.
He considered leaving now that he felt safe in the crowd. Truth be told, he’d almost stood once mid-way through the reading with the intention of disappearing into the crowd. Then her voice:
“Sir.”
He turned. Up close, she smelled faintly of tobacco and expensive perfume. Older than he remembered, certainly, but with the same unnerving steadiness in her gaze.
“I wondered if you’d come.”
He opened his mouth but found nothing waiting there. She noticed the copy of Marginalia tucked awkwardly beneath his arm.
“Would you like me to sign it?”
The humiliation of this nearly winded him. Still, he handed it over. Why did he come? She uncapped the same red marker from years ago.
“Publishing’s small,” she said conversationally while writing, not looking up. “People talk, and talk…”
His chest tightened.
“I didn’t tell them because I wanted revenge,” she continued. “I told them because men like you depend on silence to survive professionally.”
He stared at her. She snapped the book shut, and smiled politely, returning the book to his hands.
“Thanks for everything, sir.”
She turned and strutted towards the desk, stacked with books ready for her crimson mark. Inside the cover, beneath the bold title print, she had written:
