A Ladder to the Sky

1. September

It was the early autumn of 2000 and we were marking our fifth wedding anniversary by going out to dinner. We’d only recently arrived in Norwich and were still unfamiliar with the city but you’d done a little research and reserved a table at a restaurant in Tombland that, you told me, had received a positive review in a local newspaper. You looked very handsome that night, I remember, wearing a dark blue jacket with a crisp white shirt underneath, the two top buttons open to reveal a glimpse of your chest. You’d spent the afternoon at the gym and your face had a glow that reminded me of why I’d always found you so irresistible.

I had only been to East Anglia once, when I interviewed for the job, but you had been three times, first to give a talk to the creative-writing students at the university where I would now be working and, later, to take part in a couple of literary festivals.

‘Milk-fed calf’s intestines with the mother’s milk inside,’ you said, taking great delight in reading out a rather distasteful item from the menu.

‘They don’t go out of their way to make it sound appetizing, do they?’ I said.

‘Oh, I don’t know. Could be worth a try.’

‘I think I’ll have the sea bream,’ I said.

‘Coward.’

A candle flickered on the table between us and, after we ordered our meals and the wine arrived, you unexpectedly mentioned that you loved me. I could see the flame reflecting in your iris and your eyes appeared so moist that, for a moment, I thought you were going to shed a tear. I’d only ever seen you cry once, after our fourth miscarriage, when we started to realize that things were never going to work out for us on that front.

Of course, you wanted children very badly. You were clear about that from the start and it was something that made you extremely attractive to me. I did too, although perhaps not with the same intensity of feeling. I suppose I’d always assumed that I’d have them one day and so it had been simply a question of when, not if. Only when I began to understand that it was unlikely to happen did I begin to feel cheated. The miscarriages became increasingly traumatic to me then, four lives mercilessly evicted without warning from what my gynaecologist referred to as my inhospitable womb.

‘Are you excited about the job?’ you asked me after our main courses had been brought, devoured and taken away again and we’d decided to order another bottle of wine.

‘I’m a little nervous,’ I admitted.

‘Of what?’

‘Of the students. That they might consider me a fraud.’

‘Why on earth would you think that?’

‘Because I’ve only published one novel.’

‘Which is one more than all of them combined.’

‘I know, but still. It’s important to me that they don’t feel they’ve wasted their time and money, that if they’d only come a year or two earlier they would have been taught by someone with more experience.’

‘I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to have you. You’re famous, Edith, after all.’

‘I’m hardly famous,’ I said dismissively, although it was true, I was a little bit famous because my debut had been such an unexpected success, both critically and commercially. It had even been adapted for television. But I had never taught on a creative-writing course before, nor had I been a student on one, and I wasn’t entirely sure how to go about it. I’d only applied for the job because it had been three years since the publication of Fear and, even though I was making good progress on my second book, it wasn’t coming together quite as quickly as I’d hoped. I thought a stint in academia, where I would be involved in writing every day but not glued to my computer from morning till night, might help me. And you had been very positive about the idea, putting up no objections to our relocating from London for a year. We could sublet the flat, you said. With the rents in Norwich being cheaper, we might even make some money out of the deal.

‘They might be arrogant,’ I continued, returning to my concerns about the students. ‘Particularly the boys.’

‘Now you’re just being sexist.’

‘No, I’m being realistic. I’m only thirty-one. Chances are that some will be close in age to me. They might feel resentful.’

‘I think you’re worrying over nothing,’ you said, dismissing my anxieties with a wave of your hand. ‘You have to go in on day one with confidence, that’s all. Accept that you’ve achieved more than they have and that they’re there to learn from you. Ignore any condescension.’

‘Maybe you could take the class instead of me?’ I asked with a smile, knowing as the words emerged from my mouth that it had been the wrong thing to say, for you frowned as you took a long drink of your wine. When you returned the glass to the table, your lips held a faint purple stain that, for some reason, put me in mind of a priest I had known as a child whose lips always had the same tint. He used to come to my school to talk about the importance of keeping ourselves pure for our future husbands and had a particular obsession with a red-haired friend of mine who, he claimed, had the devil lurking inside her.

‘They wouldn’t want me,’ you said. ‘They want rising stars, not has-beens.’

‘They’d be lucky to have you,’ I said.

You threw me a look, one that said Please don’t patronize me, and I changed the subject immediately. Christmas was still three months away but we discussed where we might spend the day, with your family or mine, settling on yours. And then we talked about my sister, Rebecca, who had recently gone through a messy divorce. There were two children involved, my nephews Damien and Edward, and this only complicated matters as Rebecca was behaving appallingly towards their father, Robert, making it difficult for him to see the boys and then complaining that he didn’t spend enough time with them. I’d always liked my brother-in-law and wondered why it had taken him so long to leave my sister, who had spent a lifetime bullying people, including me, but I was obliged to take her side. I confided in you, however, that Robert had phoned me the previous evening and asked whether we might meet to talk.

‘To talk about what?’ you asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘He said that he’d prefer not to discuss it over the phone and asked whether he could call over to the flat next week. I told him that we weren’t there any more, that we’d be up here in Norwich for the next eight months, and he hummed and hawed a bit and said that he could always drive up if I had an afternoon free.’

‘I hope you told him no,’ you said.

‘Well, I didn’t know what to say,’ I replied. ‘It was all so unexpected and he just stayed silent on the phone, waiting for an answer.’

‘So you told him yes?’

‘I think I did.’

‘You think you did?’

‘All right, I did.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Edith! If Rebecca finds out you’ve been talking to him, she’ll show up here shouting bloody murder and before we know it she won’t let us see the boys either.’

‘Why should she find out?’ I asked.

‘Because people always do. It’s impossible to keep secrets within a family. Anyway, he’s hardly driving all the way to Norwich for a friendly catch-up, is he?’

‘I don’t know why he’s driving here,’ I protested. ‘Like I told you, he didn’t go into details over the phone.’

‘Well, it will only lead to trouble, I promise you that. He’ll want you to get involved with the custody hearing.’

‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly do that.’

‘Of course you couldn’t! But he’ll ask you to. He’ll want you to talk about all the things your sister has done over the years, about the verbal abuse, about the time she hit him—’

‘Christ, do you think so?’ I asked, for it had been just over a year since I had run into Robert in a supermarket and seen the black eye discolouring his face and, although he denied it, I knew who had given it to him. She used to hit me too when we were children, even when we were teenagers. Vicious, uncontrollable violence that would burst out of her like lava from a volcano whenever she thought our parents were favouring me over her. She only stopped when I started punching back.

‘Well, I’ll worry about it when it happens,’ I said with a shrug.

We grew silent again and I tried to build my resolve to ask you the question that had been preying on my mind ever since I’d accepted the position at UEA.

‘And what about you?’ I asked finally. ‘Have you decided what you’d like to do while we’re here?’

‘To do?’ you said. ‘In what sense?’

‘Well, to fill your days,’ I replied. ‘Are you going to do some writing?’

‘What’s the point? Publishers aren’t exactly beating a path to my door, are they?’

‘You could start something new?’ I suggested.

‘Why would I do that?’

‘Because you’re a brilliant novelist,’ I said, and you looked at me with such a wounded expression that for a moment I thought you were going to stand up and walk out. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I never know what to say when this subject comes up. I hate to hear you sounding so defeated.’

The truth was that I hated how unhappy you became whenever we discussed your stalled career and, although you would have grown angry had you known, I pitied you for it too. But more than anything, it just annoyed me. I wished you would simply accept that things hadn’t turned out as you’d hoped and work to improve them. For God’s sake, you were only thirty-four years old! Most writers are just starting their careers at that age! But things had come so easy to you at the start, hadn’t they? You were only twenty-four when you published your first novel and probably hadn’t been mature enough to cope with the success that Two Germans brought your way. And I think even you would agree that you rushed your second, The Treehouse, which is why it had been such a disaster. Your third book was turned down because it really wasn’t good enough and the three that followed were rejected because by then you were simply throwing ideas at the wall and hoping that one would stick. Which was when you said that you were done with writing for ever. That you’d only ever had one good idea and even that hadn’t been yours, it had been someone else’s story that you’d simply transcribed, receiving praise not for the quality of the book itself but for how you’d exposed a man with a treacherous past.

And yet when I read the books that followed, I could see why they had been met with failure or rejection, for they were utterly devoid of authenticity. And – the worst crime of all – they were boring. But then, you always said that you struggled when it came to thinking up good ideas, didn’t you? That if someone gave you a story, you could write it better than anyone else, but that you needed that basic idea to begin with.

‘You shouldn’t forget that you love writing,’ I said quietly, hoping that you wouldn’t overreact to my words.

‘I don’t,’ you replied, pouring another glass of wine for yourself but ignoring my glass, which was almost empty. ‘I hate it.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘I think I would know.’

‘You hate what writing has done to you, that’s all. How it’s let you down. But the craft itself, I know you still love it. I know you do. From the first day we met you were obsessed with the idea that the world should see you as a writer.’

‘What rubbish,’ you said.

‘I remember you even told me that you thought you might only publish four or five books in your lifetime so the world would take you more seriously.’

‘I never said anything of the sort,’ you said, shaking your head. ‘What kind of narcissistic knob would say something like that?’

‘I remember it distinctly,’ I said, refilling my own glass now. ‘I can even remember where we were when you said it.’

‘Honestly, Edith, if that’s how you see me, then I don’t know why you married me at all.’

‘Well, if you’re not going to write,’ I said, ignoring this remark, ‘then what are you going to do? You can’t just sit around the flat all day staring at the four walls.’

‘I’ll figure something out,’ you said. ‘Someone needs to do the shopping and the laundry and so on.’

A shadow fell across the table and I looked up to see a boy standing there. He was young, in his early twenties, with floppy blond hair. His skin was pale but his cheeks had a slight redness to them. If Eton College had a brochure, which they probably did, he could easily be the cover star.

‘I’m sorry to interrupt you,’ he said, looking from me to you and back to me again. ‘It’s Edith Camberley, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ I said, surprised that he knew who I was. I had never once been publicly recognized.

‘I’m sorry to interrupt you,’ he repeated, toying with a silver ring on the middle finger of his right hand. ‘My name’s Garrett Colby. I’m one of your students. Or I will be, anyway, from next week.’

‘Oh,’ I said, feeling strangely excited. ‘How nice to meet you!’

‘I saw you but wasn’t sure whether to come over or not. I’m sorry to interrupt you.’

‘You’ve said that three times now,’ you remarked, and I threw you a look but you deflected it with a smile, reaching for one of the mint chocolates that had come with the coffees and popping it into your mouth, masticating noisily.

‘It should be an interesting year ahead,’ I said.

‘I must admit I’m quite nervous,’ he replied.

‘What are you working on?’ I asked him. ‘A novel?’

‘Short stories,’ he said. ‘I’ve been writing stories since I was a boy.’

‘But you’re still a boy,’ you told him. ‘You look about twelve.’

‘I’m twenty-two,’ he replied.

‘You don’t even look like you shave.’

Poor Garrett blushed even deeper and I felt sorry for him. I tried to kick you under the table but succeeded only in banging my toe on the leg of your chair.

‘Just ignore him,’ I said. ‘My husband is being ridiculous.’

‘What kind of stories do you write?’ you asked.

‘They’re mostly about animals,’ he said.

‘Animals?’

‘Yes. I’ve been working on first-person stories narrated by… well, animals.’

‘What sort of animals?’ I asked.

‘There’s one narrated by a giraffe,’ he replied. ‘And another by a gorilla. I published one in Granta last year that was narrated by a pelican.’

‘Of course, strictly speaking, a pelican is a bird, not an animal,’ you said.

‘That’s true,’ said Garrett. ‘But I let birds in. Is there a collective noun for animals and birds?’

‘Banimals,’ you said. ‘Birdimals. Animirds.’

‘They sound fascinating,’ I said, although, to be honest, I thought it all sounded a little strange.

‘So, you’re a children’s writer?’ you asked, looking at the boy. ‘Or hoping to be?’

‘No,’ said Garrett, taking a step back, and I could see, for some reason, that he felt insulted by the remark. ‘No, they’re very definitely for adults.’

‘Then why don’t you write about people?’ you asked. ‘Actual human beings. Aren’t you interested in them?’

‘I am, yes, but it’s the relationship between people and animals that interests me most,’ he replied. ‘It’s hard to explain. You’d probably have to read one, to be honest.’

‘Fortunately, that will be my wife’s job,’ you said. ‘Not mine.’

Garrett looked a little upset now, as if he regretted having approached us in the first place, and glanced back towards his own table, where another young man was seated, staring over at us with an anxious expression on his face.

‘And who’s that?’ I asked, trying to lighten the mood. ‘Another student?’

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Well, no. I mean yes, he’s a student but not on the creative-writing course. He’s studying medicine.’

‘Veterinary medicine?’ you asked.

‘No, regular medicine. We met a few weeks ago. We both arrived in Norwich early to settle in. We’re in the same halls.’

‘Is he your boyfriend?’ you asked, and I stared at you, wondering why you were trying to embarrass him, but there didn’t seem to be anything unkind in the tone that you’d used.

‘Sort of,’ said Garrett, growing a little more confident now. ‘We’re not sure yet. Anyway, I didn’t mean to interrupt you.’

‘You’ve said.’

‘I just wanted to say hello.’

‘I’m glad you did,’ I said. ‘I’ll look forward to seeing you on Wednesday.’

He smiled and nodded. The expression on his face as he walked away was one of humiliation crossed with disappointment. I turned to remonstrate with you but before I could open my mouth he’d returned.

‘I’m sorry to interrupt you,’ he said.

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ you said, looking away in irritation.

‘It’s just’ – and now he was looking at you, not me – ‘didn’t you used to be a writer too?’

I felt a sudden spasm in the pit of my stomach, like someone had just pushed me from a great height and I was tumbling down, unable to grab hold of anything to prevent me from falling.

‘What do you mean used to be?’ you asked.

‘It’s just that when I knew Miss Camberley was going to be the course tutor—’

‘Please call me Edith,’ I said.

‘I read her novel. Or re-read it, I should say. And then I looked up some interviews with her and they mentioned your name. It’s Maurice Swift, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right,’ you said.

‘I think I read your novel too.’

‘Which one?’

‘Two Germans.’

‘You think you read it?’

‘When I was in school, I mean. I think I borrowed it from the library.’

You smiled a little. ‘But you’re not sure?’ you asked. ‘It might have been something else? It might have been Murder on the Orient Express, for example? Or War and Peace?’

‘I’m fairly certain it was Two Germans. It’s just that I can’t really remember what it was about, that’s all.’

‘Well, it was about two Germans. The clue is in the title, you see.’

‘Yes, of course. I suppose what I mean is that I can’t remember the plot.’

‘Well, never mind,’ you said. ‘There wasn’t much of one, anyway.’

‘And are you working on a second book?’

‘My husband’s second novel was published in 1991,’ I said.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Garrett. ‘I must have missed it. So you’re working on your third, then?’

You breathed in deeply through your nose and then exhaled. For a few moments, I felt as if the entire restaurant had turned to dust. ‘I’m afraid I never talk about work in progress,’ you said. ‘And my wife and I are celebrating our wedding anniversary so perhaps you would be so kind as to stop apologizing for interrupting us and just fuck off.’

I looked down at the table. I couldn’t apologize to the boy because to do so would have been to take his side over yours. But I felt badly for him. He gave a slight laugh, as if the whole thing had been a terrific joke, but walked away without another word, returning to his table and his maybe-boyfriend.

‘Did you have to?’ I asked, looking across at you. ‘I haven’t even taught my first class yet and already you’ve alienated one of my students.’

‘Arrogant cunt,’ you said, waving a hand in the direction of the waiter for the bill, and I knew, even as you said it, that you were being deliberately vague as to whom you were referring, Garrett or me.

You see, Maurice, you might not have been very good at coming up with ideas for your books but no one could ever have denied that you had a way with words.

2. October

Three weeks into term, I was reminded of an incident that took place during our first year together. The catalyst for the memory was a short story submitted to workshop by one of my weaker students detailing an unpleasant encounter between two old friends, many years after their estrangement. The story itself was not very good and received a negative reception in class. Garrett, the boy you tried to humiliate during our anniversary dinner, was particularly harsh, which disappointed me for I had hoped that his shyness might mask a degree of empathy, but in fact it was simply a cover for the brutal ambition that would reveal itself as the year went on.

But the student’s story is neither here nor there. It simply recalled to me the time, a few months after we started dating, when I accompanied you to a literary festival in Wales. It hadn’t taken long for me to become infatuated with you and the opportunity to present myself in public as your girlfriend boosted my hopes that ours would not be a casual relationship but something more long term. I’d been to literary festivals before, of course, but always as a reader and had never found myself in the secret rooms where writers and publishers gathered in advance of their events. As I was sketching out ideas for my first novel at the time and wondering whether I would ever find myself part of this world, the experience was an exciting one.

There was still some time before your event was due to begin and, as we sat with a glass of wine, I noticed how you kept glancing towards the entrance from where, every few minutes, another writer would appear. You offered waves to some, ignored others, and a few came over to say hello, but then I noticed your eyes open wide and your face fall as you leaned forward, reaching for the programme that sat on the table between us and flicking through it for the schedule of the day’s events.

‘Fuck,’ you said, as your finger stopped on a listing.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘It can’t be nothing. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

It was obvious that something was wrong. I looked around and noticed an elderly man staring in our direction, an expression on his face that I’d never witnessed before. It seemed to combine humiliation, regret and acceptance all at once. He came towards us slowly, walking with the aid of a stick.

‘Maurice,’ he said in a strong New York accent when he reached our table. ‘It is you, isn’t it?’

‘Hello, Dash,’ you replied, standing up to shake his hand. ‘It’s been a long time.’

‘Just over five years. You haven’t changed much. A little older, of course, but still as handsome as ever.’

‘Thank you,’ you said, smiling, and as it became obvious that he was not going to walk away, you invited him to sit down, which he did, pushing me a little to the side as he took the seat opposite you. You both sat silently for a moment, simply staring at each other, and as things began to grow awkward I introduced myself and he shook my hand, offering his name too. Of course, I recognized it. I hadn’t actually read any of his books, although I’d always meant to as he’d been publishing for decades and had a good reputation.

‘Did you two read together somewhere?’ I asked, looking from one to the other. ‘Is that how you know each other?’

‘Oh no,’ said Dash. ‘Maurice would never share a stage with someone as long in the tooth as me. No, we met many years ago when he was still trying to get his foot on the ladder. Seville, wasn’t it?’

‘Madrid,’ you said.

‘That’s right, Madrid. Erich Ackermann was receiving an award of some sort, I think—’

‘It wasn’t an award,’ you told him. ‘It was just a lunch.’

‘My goodness, your memory!’ he said, bringing his hands together, and I noticed thick liver spots on both that discoloured the skin. ‘You remember it as if it were only yesterday. Can you remember what we ate too?’

You smiled at this but said nothing.

‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘Maurice and I met that afternoon and became firm friends. For a time, anyway. He lived in my apartment in New York for… how long was it, a year? Eighteen months?’

‘Less than that,’ you replied. ‘Ten months at most.’

‘Well, all right. We won’t quibble over minor details. Interesting days, as I recall. We went everywhere together, we were quite the odd couple.’

‘Not exactly a couple,’ you said, interrupting him.

‘I introduced him to everyone who was worth knowing. We dined with Mrs Astor, spent a weekend with Edmund on Fire Island, travelled to the Amalfi Coast to spend a night with Gore and Howard. We even went to Jets games together, didn’t we?’

‘But you hate sport!’ I said, turning to you in surprise.

‘But I love it,’ said Dash. ‘And Maurice was very… what’s the word I’m looking for? Obliging. A most obliging boy indeed. Up to a point, anyway.’ He paused for a moment and gave a deep sigh. ‘But then his novel was published and he was far too busy to bother with me any more!’

‘That wasn’t it,’ you said coldly. ‘I was travelling a lot and—’

‘As I say, you were very busy. Have you ever read Erich Ackermann, my dear?’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t read books by fascists,’ I said.

‘Why ever not? There’s not much left to read if you ignore them. Writers are all fascists. We like to control the discourse and crush anyone who dares to disagree with us.’

‘Are you here for an event?’ you asked, before I could engage with this observation.

‘Yes, I have a new novel out. Didn’t you know?’

‘No, what’s the title?’

‘The Codicil of Agnès Fontaine.’

‘Sorry, I haven’t heard of it.’

‘It’s been widely reviewed.’

You shrugged your shoulders. ‘Well, I’ll make sure to pick up a copy at the festival bookshop and you can sign it for me.’

‘I remember the first time I signed a book for you,’ he said, leaning forward. ‘It was very early in the morning in New York and you were staying in a hotel with Erich, doing whatever it is you did for him in those days. Do you remember?’

‘No,’ you said.

‘Well, I do. I read your second book, by the way,’ continued Dash. ‘What was it called again? The Garden Shed?’

‘The Treehouse.’

‘Not quite as good as Two Germans, was it? I wonder what poor old Erich made of it.’

‘Well, he was dead by the time it came out, so I doubt he made anything of it.’

‘Of course he was,’ said the American. ‘He died alone in Berlin, didn’t he? I read somewhere that he’d been dead a week before anyone discovered the body. One of his neighbours complained about the smell. Such a sad end to an illustrious career.’

‘I thought you didn’t rate him?’

‘Whatever gave you that idea?’

‘The hundreds of criticisms you made of his work when we knew each other.’

‘Oh no,’ he said, looking appalled by the accusation. ‘No, I admired Erich greatly. His novels will be remembered, I think. And the scandal will fade away. The poems will last too.’

‘He always said they were ill advised.’

‘He was wrong about that. But then he was wrong about a lot of things, wasn’t he?’

Before you could reply, a young volunteer came over and said that she was there to escort Dash to his event. He stood up carefully, taking a long time to adjust his body to the vertical and to grip his stick just so, and then looked down at us and smiled.

‘Well, I might see you later, Maurice,’ he said.

‘Unlikely,’ you replied. ‘After my talk, we’re catching the next train back to London.’

‘Probably for the best,’ he replied, before waving a hand in the air as he turned his back on us. ‘Goodbye, my boy. I daresay we won’t meet again.’

I watched him as he walked away and felt torn between laughter and confusion.

‘Cantankerous old swine,’ you muttered. ‘He was in love with me once.’

‘Really?’ I asked.

‘It does happen.’

‘Well I, of all people, know that,’ I said, smiling at you. ‘You let him down easily, I hope?’

‘It’s all so long ago, I can barely remember. Anyway, what time is it? Let’s take a walk around the site. I wouldn’t mind having a look in the bookshop.’

I nodded, following you as you stepped outside. Dash Hardy died shortly afterwards, didn’t he? I remember reading about it in the newspaper over breakfast one morning and feeling shocked that someone who had sat with me so recently could have hanged himself in his Manhattan apartment. You read the article too but said nothing about it, although you were rather quiet throughout the day, as I recall.

One month in, and Norwich was proving a positive experience. My initial fears about teaching creative writing had dissipated as the students seemed both respectful and hard-working. Only one, a Polish girl named Maja, gave me reason for concern. Due to visa difficulties, she’d arrived late on campus, missing the first two weeks of class, and it seemed that she was struggling to fit in. She was working on a novel that had the most bizarre premise – Adolf Hitler solving crimes in post-First World War Germany – and any critical comments made of her work left her in a state of fury. At the same time, she was making little attempt to engage with the work of her classmates, and so I took her aside, asking whether I could help in some way, but she seemed offended by my question and I quickly backed off. I confided in you and your first instinct was to ask me how her English was.

‘Her English is perfect,’ I told you. ‘There’s no issue there at all.’

‘I only ask because, if she’s struggling with the language, then maybe she feels she can’t contribute as much as the others.’

‘No, it’s not that,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure what it is, if I’m honest. She just seems to hate everyone, me included. I don’t know why.’

I wanted to discuss this further with you, to seek your advice, because I suspected that there was trouble brewing with Maja, but you were reading a novel that had been shortlisted the previous autumn for The Prize and I could tell that you were growing increasingly enraged by it. It was a long novel, more than five hundred pages, and I knew that the author, Douglas Sherman, had published his first book the same year that you’d published Two Germans. I remember you telling me how you’d enjoyed touring together in the early days, two handsome young novelists with assured futures, the literary world falling over itself to embrace you both. But since then, Douglas had published four more novels, each one better received than the previous one, and his stature had grown considerably while you, of course, were flailing.

‘I don’t know why you keep reading that,’ I said. ‘It’s masochistic behaviour.’

‘Because I never don’t finish a novel once I’ve started it,’ you replied. ‘It’s a rule of mine.’

‘Not me,’ I said, collapsing on to the sofa and glancing towards the pile of class scripts sitting on the coffee table but making no effort to reach out for one. ‘Life’s too short. As far as I’m concerned, a writer gets one hundred pages and, if they can’t keep my attention during that time, I move on.’

‘Ridiculous,’ you said.

‘Don’t call me ridiculous.’

‘I wasn’t calling you ridiculous. I was calling that policy ridiculous. You can’t say you’ve read a novel unless you’ve read it cover to cover. Yes, perhaps you’ll be bored at the start but what if it gets better and suddenly everything that went before falls into place?’

‘Whatever,’ I said. ‘But I still think it’s a mistake, considering your history.’

‘You make it sound like we were lovers.’

‘Particularly when you’re feeling so—’

‘When I’m feeling so what?’ you asked, putting the book aside and staring at me. You parted your legs a little and gripped the sides of the armchair and an image of Lincoln on the Mall came into my mind.

‘When you’re feeling so lost,’ I said.

‘What makes you think I feel lost?’

‘Don’t let’s do this,’ I said, looking past you and through the front window, where a black-and-white cat had climbed on to the mantel and was staring in at me. He raised a paw and pressed it against the glass and, for one surreal moment, I thought he was beckoning me to him, like one of those maneki-nekos that sit in the windows of Chinese restaurants.

‘Do let’s,’ you said, enunciating each word. ‘Go on, Edith, tell me why you think I feel lost.’

‘Because you’re not writing.’

‘We’ve been over this.’

‘Which is why I said that we should talk about something else.’

You remained silent for a long time, eventually conceding with a sigh. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Sorry, Edith. I shouldn’t be such a prick. None of this is your fault.’

‘You don’t have to apologize,’ I replied.

‘I do, actually. Here we are in this nice flat. You’re the one working, earning the money and writing at the same time, and I sit here doing nothing but complaining. I’ll try to be better, I promise.’

‘Well,’ I said, with a smile. ‘That would be nice. You could start by painting the bedroom. The colour in there gives me a headache.’

‘All right.’

‘And fixing the railing on the staircase up to the flat would be helpful. Have you noticed how shaky it is?’

‘Or I could read those scripts,’ you suggested, nodding at the pile on the coffee table. ‘And write up some notes for you?’

‘Why would I want you to do that?’ I asked.

‘So you don’t have to read them yourself. I assume they’re all rubbish.’

‘They’re not, actually. And they’re my students’ work. They’re relying on me to come to class prepared. I have to read them; otherwise how could I possibly advise them?’

‘It was just a suggestion,’ you said. ‘How is your book coming along, anyway? Are you getting much done?’

‘I think it’s going quite well,’ I said.

‘How far along are you now?’

‘Close to the end of this draft.’

‘And how many more lie ahead?’

‘One? Maybe two at most?’

‘And then I’ll get to read it?’

‘Not till it’s published, sorry.’

You scowled. I knew you didn’t like that I refused to share my work with you in advance, but I had explained why many times. I respected your opinion, of course I did, but I loved you too and I didn’t want a novel to come between us. If you thought it was awful, after all, you might not tell me. And if you thought it was good, then I might find your praise insincere.

‘So how long?’ you asked. ‘Before you turn it in, I mean?’

‘Four or five months, I’d say.’

‘Well, I won’t push you on it,’ you said, standing up and coming over, raising my chin with your index finger and kissing me gently on the lips but holding the kiss for a long time, so long that I felt the need to pull away before you suffocated me.

A few days later, during class, there was a tap on the door, and when it opened I was surprised to see my brother-in-law Robert standing there with an apologetic smile on his face. The students turned to look at him, displeased by the interruption, and for some reason I found myself blushing.

‘Sorry, Edith,’ he said. ‘Am I disturbing you?’

‘Well, we’re in the middle of class.’

‘Could I just have a quick word?’

I stepped out into the corridor, feeling a little flustered as I closed the door behind me. ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. ‘Is it Rebecca? The boys?’

‘No, no,’ he said quickly. ‘No, it’s nothing like that. Everyone’s fine. I just needed to speak to you, that’s all.’

I stared at him, feeling a mixture of pity and irritation. ‘Well, I can’t right now,’ I told him, nodding back in the direction of the workshop. ‘We’ve only just started.’

‘That’s all right, I can wait.’

I nodded and gave him directions to the graduate students’ bar, saying that I’d meet him there at five, and later, when I arrived, I was glad to see that he’d chosen a table in the corner where we could talk quietly.

‘So, how are you, anyway?’ I asked.

‘Miserable. And you?’

‘Tolerable.’

‘And Maurice?’

‘He’s fine. He’s been incredibly supportive of me coming here. I couldn’t have done this without his help, to be honest.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ said Robert. ‘I’ve always envied you the—’

‘The what?’ I asked, uncertain how that sentence was going to end.

‘Well, the love that you share. It’s obvious to everyone how good you are together.’

I felt incredibly touched by this remark and, to my surprise, felt tears form behind my eyes.

‘I assume you’re here to talk about Rebecca,’ I said, looking up again at last.

‘Yes. Have you talked to her lately?’

‘Not much,’ I admitted. ‘I went over to see her shortly before we left for Norwich but I haven’t heard from her since then.’

‘So you’ve met Arjan, then?’

‘Well, he was there,’ I said. ‘So, yes.’

‘What did you think?’

I glanced across the room to the tables where my students were drinking and laughing and, as much as I loved Robert, I longed to be in their company, talking about writing, rather than sitting here, caught up in a family drama.

‘He seems friendly enough,’ I said. ‘It does feel a bit soon for her to be shacked up with someone else, of course, but he was quite pleasant, I thought. I’m sorry, I know you probably want me to say something else but—’

‘Actually, no,’ he said, interrupting me.

‘No?’

‘No, he’s living with my two boys so of course I’d prefer if he was a good guy. I’ve met him myself, you know. I wanted to hate him but couldn’t. Rebecca will grow bored of him in time, though.’

‘I think so too,’ I said. ‘Look, do you want me to be honest? Arjan is… well, he’s fit, isn’t he? And young. But he’s too nice. Either she’ll get tired of him or he’ll get sick of her bullying and walk away. I suspect that beneath the kind façade there’s a strong backbone, and anyone who gets caught up with my sister would need one of those.’

‘You don’t think that I have a backbone?’

‘That’s not what I said.’

‘It’s what you implied.’

I put my glass down and reached out to take his hand. As I did so, I noticed my angry Polish student Maja glancing over at me. She knew that Robert wasn’t my husband, of course, and perhaps she was wondering why I was touching him.

‘I’m not your enemy, Robert,’ I said quietly.

‘No, I know. I’m sorry.’

‘So look, why don’t you tell me why you came to see me?’

‘To ask a favour.’

‘All right.’

‘I want you to talk to Rebecca for me.’

I closed my eyes for a moment. I’d hoped that wasn’t what he was going to say. ‘Do I have to?’ I asked.

‘I need you to. She won’t take my calls any more.’

‘Well, what do you want me to say to her?’

‘You could start by asking her why she won’t take my calls any more.’

‘And after that?’

‘I hadn’t thought that far ahead.’

‘Oh great,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

‘I think we need an intermediary of some sort.’

‘Perhaps. But do you really think I’m the best person for the job? She hates me.’

‘She doesn’t hate you.’

‘Oh, come on.’

‘She may not be your biggest fan, but—’

‘She told me that she thought my novel was shit. I believe her actual phrase was a work of blush-making vulgarity. The words are emblazoned on my memory.’

‘She’s jealous of your success, that’s all.’

‘Good, I’m glad.’

‘You should take it as a compliment.’

‘Well, I don’t.’

‘Edith, please. She won’t let me see the boys.’

‘Well, that’s not fair,’ I admitted. ‘But shouldn’t you just speak to a solicitor? Wouldn’t that be easier? Find out what your rights are?’

‘I don’t want to go down that road just yet,’ he said. ‘The moment we start getting legal is the moment that things get completely out of hand. I want to appeal to her better nature.’

‘Ah, you see, that’s where you’re making your mistake.’

‘I just think if someone could tell her how important it is to me to be a good father, how important it is for me to be a positive influence on the boys, then she might behave a bit more—’

‘Like a human being?’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

I sighed. It was obvious that Rebecca was treating Robert appallingly. I was going to say as much but that’s when the door to the grad bar opened and you walked in.

You glanced around, your gaze settling on the students, and you scanned the group, expecting to see me among their number. Only when you looked around the rest of the room did you notice the two of us together and you raised an eyebrow in surprise before walking over.

‘Robert,’ you said, throwing an arm around him. ‘This is a surprise.’

‘Yes, I called in on Edith’s class unexpectedly. Things have been a bit rotten at home, as you know. I thought I could do with a little advice.’

You nodded and asked what we were drinking before making your way to the bar. I could sense in the way you carried yourself that you weren’t happy, and I immediately felt uncomfortable, unable now to concentrate on what Robert was saying. I looked in your direction but you had your back to me. Our eyes met in the mirror behind the bar, however, and there was something in your expression that made me feel guilty, as if I’d let you down in some way.

I wasn’t quite sure what I’d done wrong but I knew that, whatever it was, you would hold it against me for a while yet.

3. November

It wasn’t my idea to invite you to talk to the students and, if I’m honest, I assumed that you’d refuse anyway. No, this particular notion had been dreamed up by Maja, who approached me after class one day, claiming not only to be a great fan of Two Germans but even more of The Treehouse, which I thought a peculiar statement. I promised to put it to you but warned her that you were unlikely to say yes. To my surprise, however, you agreed immediately.

A date was set and I spent that morning reading the stories that had been submitted for workshop later in the week and feeling a strange anxiety at the pit of my stomach that I found hard to understand. You came to my office around three thirty, the first time you’d been there, and spent your time examining the books that had been left behind on the shelves by the writer whose maternity leave I was covering. You took a few out and made disparaging comments about their authors.

‘Is that a new shirt?’ I asked as we made our way towards the classroom shortly before your talk was due to begin. ‘And new jeans? Have you bought all new clothes for today?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ you said, and I looked away from you because you were blushing and seeing people embarrassed has always made me embarrassed too. They were new clothes, of course. I couldn’t decide whether the fact that you were making such an effort for a group of aspiring writers was endearing or pathetic. Did you want to impress them that badly?

When we walked in, I noticed how the students – my students – looked at you with more reverence than they’d ever shown towards me. I don’t think I’m being paranoid, Maurice, when I say that it was as if they believed that, finally, a real writer had come to speak to them, simply because you happened to have a penis. Even the girls, who all liked to pretend that they were such staunch feminists, looked at you with more respect than they ever did me. Especially the girls, actually.

I began by introducing you, mentioning the names of both your published novels, and made some predictable joke about how easy it had been to persuade you to visit as we were sleeping together. Without any preamble, you reached for a copy of The Treehouse – you always favoured it over Two Germans – and read from a section of the book near the centre, where a young boy collapses through the floorboards of the titular building and hangs there for most of the afternoon until a passing farmer arrives to save him. When you were finished, they applauded ecstatically and I could see from the expression on your face how much their approval meant to you.

‘I’m not going to ask Maurice any questions,’ I said when they quietened down. ‘I already know everything there is to know about him.’

‘Not quite everything,’ you said, to laughter.

‘So, I’ll leave it to all of you instead.’

Maja started the questioning, as I knew she would. She had spent the entire reading staring at you, as if you were the Second Coming of Christ, and it was obvious from the expression on her face that she found you highly attractive. I’d like to say that she was undressing you with her eyes but it would probably be more truthful to say that she was stripping you naked and falling to her knees to fellate you. I can’t recall what she asked but I remember you took her question as simply a starting point for a monologue about the current state of the literary world, which, in your view, was appalling. I tuned out, thinking about where we might go for dinner afterwards. And yes, I allowed my eyes to rest on one of the boys, Nicholas Bray, who was very young but very cute and who I’d fancied from the start.

Several more questions were asked before Garrett Colby raised his hand and you turned to him with a look that said you recognized him from somewhere but couldn’t quite remember where.

‘I wondered whether you could tell us what you’re working on at the moment,’ he asked, and you shook your head.

‘No, I don’t think so,’ you told him. ‘As I told you before, Garrett, I prefer not to talk about work in progress. Just in case.’

‘Just in case what?’

‘Just in case someone steals my idea.’

‘But an idea is just an idea,’ he countered. ‘You could outline The Great Gatsby for us all right now and it’s not as if any of us could just sit down and write it.’

‘No,’ you agreed. ‘But still, I’d prefer not to.’

‘Of course, this leads us to a bigger question, doesn’t it?’ said Garrett.

‘Does it?’

‘Yes. The concept of literary ownership itself, or even literary theft. Of whether our stories belong to us at all.’

‘I don’t quite see what you’re getting at,’ you said, but I could see where he was going and wondered how he had the nerve. Looking back, it was pretty rude of him to treat a visiting writer like this, let alone one who had achieved the success that you’d achieved.

‘Well, take Two Germans,’ continued Garrett. ‘It wasn’t really your idea, was it? You were simply telling Erich Ackermann’s story and presenting it as a work of fiction.’

‘But it is a work of fiction,’ you insisted. ‘Not everything in that book is exactly as Erich detailed it to me. I took what he told me about his own life, embellished some details, ignored a few others. There were several things he told me about Oskar Gött, for example, that might have influenced the reader’s opinion of that character, but I chose not to write about them as I had a very particular idea of how I wanted to present the relationship between the two boys.’

‘What sort of things?’ he asked.

‘I’d rather not go into all that,’ you said. ‘Once I start down that road I become obliged to talk about every aspect of the story and to separate Erich’s personal history from my own creation. Ultimately, it’s a novel and you should treat it as such. Don’t expect facts in fiction. That’s not what novels are about.’

‘Then what are they about?’ asked handsome Nicholas, piping up now.

‘I’ve often wondered that myself,’ you said with a smile. ‘I don’t really know, if I’m honest with you. I only know that I enjoy reading them. And writing them.’

‘So you are working on something new, then?’ asked Garrett, persistent little Garrett.

‘I said so, didn’t I?’

‘No, you said that you never talk about work in progress.’

‘Exactly.’

‘But there is a work in progress, then? It’s just that it’s been such a long time since The Treehouse.’

Sitting next to me, I could feel you growing uncomfortable in your chair, and you took a long time to answer.

‘You’re the one writing the children’s book about the talking animals, aren’t you?’ you asked eventually.

‘It’s not a children’s book,’ replied Garrett. ‘The whole thing’s an allegory. It’s not the fact that the animals speak that matters, it’s what they have to say. Like in Animal Farm.’

‘You’re comparing your work to Orwell’s?’ you asked, laughing now.

‘No, of course not,’ said Garrett, growing a little more flustered. ‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘It’s what you implied,’ interrupted Maja.

Garrett rolled his eyes and delivered a loud sigh. The two students had clashed several times in workshop and Maja seemed to take pleasure in bringing him down to earth.

‘Look, some novels take a long time to write,’ you said, getting back to the original question. ‘When it’s ready, it will be ready. Until then I don’t have a lot more to say on the subject other than I hope to publish it within the next…’ You paused for a moment and stared up towards the ceiling. ‘Within the next two years.’

I turned to look at you and tried to keep the surprise off my face. But I was delighted that you were thinking in these terms at last. Perhaps Norwich, I decided, was having a positive effect on both of us.

There were a few more questions and then we all retired for a drink to the grad bar, where you ordered pizzas for the students and made sure to spend a little time with each group, as if you were doing them a tremendous favour by granting them your wisdom.

‘Have you read any of it?’ asked Nicholas, my crush, coming over to where I stood by the window and handing me a glass of white wine.

‘Any of what?’ I asked.

‘Your husband’s new novel.’

I shook my head and took a moment to appreciate his good looks. He was about eight years younger than me – twenty-three – with short dark hair that looked impossibly clean and a boyish face. I imagined that when he was a child he would have been a Just William sort, always getting into mischief but confident that no one could possibly stay angry with him for very long.

‘No,’ I said, deciding not to say that I had only learned of the existence of a new novel at the same time as the rest of them had. ‘No, he doesn’t let me read anything while he’s working on it.’

‘Does he think you’re going to steal it too?’

I laughed and shook my head. ‘I doubt it,’ I said, feeling that I had to make up for my unfaithful thoughts by defending you. ‘Although that’s not such a bad idea. He’s a much better writer than I am.’

‘Do you really think that?’ he asked.

‘Yes, of course,’ I said, and I think I did believe it at the time. But maybe that was just because you’d already been published when we met and so I’d looked up to you ever since. ‘Why, don’t you?’

‘No, not at all,’ said Nicholas, looking me directly in the eye. ‘Quite honestly, I think you’re in a different league. Or you will be someday.’

Despite the tension that seemed to be developing between us during those weeks, my work, at least, was going well. I was getting closer to the end of a draft of my novel and felt sure that I’d have something presentable by late spring. The occasional email from my agent and editor kept my spirits up, although I still refused to tell them anything of the story, preferring for them to respond to it in its finished state rather than having any preconceptions about it. They seemed content with this and my days were filled with teaching, reading and writing. I could get used to this, I thought, wondering whether a more permanent position might open up at the university soon that would allow me to stay on for a few more years. I liked the idea of writing a third novel, a much shorter one, in an intense period of creativity.

UEA was holding its autumn literary festival during November, a series of curated interviews in one of the theatres on a Tuesday night, and although you generally avoided such events you suggested that we go together to hear Leona Alwin be interviewed by the novelist Henry Sutton. A few years earlier, Leona had been sent a proof copy of Fear and had been kind enough to read it, offering a line of support that was used on the jacket, something that had impressed you, for you’d always been an admirer of her books.

In the late afternoon, I came home to change and, as I made my way up the staircase to our flat, the handrail shook in my hand and I stumbled, tripping forwards, preventing an injury only by throwing my hands out to cushion my fall.

‘Jesus Christ,’ I muttered as I stood up and, when I opened the front door, you emerged from the spare room that I used as my study.

‘What was that noise?’ you asked.

‘I fell over,’ I said. ‘I thought you said that you were going to fix that handrail? One of us is going to break something if we’re not careful.’

‘Sorry. I forgot,’ you said, helping me inside while I rubbed my bruised shin. ‘Are you all right? You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?’

I shook my head as I brushed myself down. ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘What were you doing in there, anyway?’

‘In where?’

‘In my study?’

‘Your study?’ you asked, raising an eyebrow. I could hear the petulance in my voice and tried to control it as I didn’t want to ruin the evening ahead. But it was my study and we’d always referred to it as such. On the rare occasions when you used your laptop you always did so at the kitchen table.

‘The study, then,’ I said.

‘Nothing,’ you told me, stepping past me into the kitchen and turning on the kettle. ‘I was looking for a pen, that’s all. Anyway, I thought the plan was to meet on campus later?’

‘I needed a shower,’ I said. ‘I’ve been running around like a lunatic all day. I won’t be long and we can walk in together.’

Before going towards the bedroom to undress, however, something made me go into the other room to look around. Glancing towards my desk, I could see a few pens lying there, and when I placed my hand on top of the desktop computer, ignoring the part of my brain that told me to leave well alone, it was warm. My first thought was that you had been using it to access pornography. Had I disturbed you in the act? I moved the mouse to wake it from sleep and checked the search history but there was nothing incriminating there, only searches that I’d made myself over the previous few days. Perhaps it had simply been the sun, I thought. After all, due to the positioning of the house, the study could become oppressively warm during the afternoon.

The reading and interview went very well. Leona Alwin combined erudition with a wonderful sense of humour, talking about her work and the work of others with real insight. You seemed dazzled by her and, as the lights came up, you turned to me with the sort of enthusiasm that I hadn’t seen on your face in a long time.

‘Isn’t she terrific?’ you said, and I nodded in agreement as you took my hand. We walked across the courtyard towards the reception being held in the registry building. Once inside, we sipped champagne, waiting for an opportunity to introduce ourselves to the guest of honour. Out of the blue you reached forward to kiss me and it wasn’t just a peck, it was a real kiss, our lips parted and as your tongue entered my mouth I felt a warmth spreading through my body that reminded me how I had never wanted a man as much as I continued to want you. When you pulled away, you had a mischievous expression on your face. You leaned in and I thought you were going to kiss me again but no, you simply whispered in my ear:

‘Let’s go somewhere and fuck.’

My eyes opened wide in surprise and I put a hand to my mouth to stop myself from laughing aloud, but the idea, the spontaneity of it, aroused me instantly. I looked around at the increasingly busy room. ‘We can’t,’ I said. ‘We’d be caught.’

‘So what?’ you said, taking me by the hand and leading me down a corridor, where we tried a few doors, all of which were locked. I glanced back in case we were being followed but no one was going to leave the main party while Leona was still holding court. We turned the corner into a dead end with just two office doors, one on either side. I tried one and you tried the other but neither would open.

‘Out of luck,’ you said.

I looked at you, grabbed your arm, and smiled.

‘What?’ you asked.

I stepped back into the corner and you raised an eyebrow. I didn’t know what I was doing, it was terribly risky because there were about a hundred people gathered at the end of the hallway, but I knew that I had to have you right then or I would go mad.

‘Here?’ you asked.

‘Here,’ I said, and you came towards me and pressed me against the wall, reaching under my dress to pull my underwear down as you unzipped your trousers. It was only a matter of seconds before you were inside me and, as we fucked, we looked into each other’s eyes and your hand wrapped itself lightly around my throat, your thumb pressing hard against my carotid artery. When we came, we came together. It was intense and sexy and when we were done we stared at each other, our lust somehow amplified now rather than quenched. A few moments later, we tidied our clothing and returned to the party, giggling like teenagers.

The first person we met as we walked through the doors was Leona Alwin herself and, although I would have liked to go to the bathroom to clean up before talking to her, there was no way we could just ignore her. I introduced myself, embarrassed by what I was sure was the smell of sex that enveloped us, but she didn’t appear to notice it. Instead she seemed overjoyed to meet me.

‘Oh, of course,’ she said enthusiastically. ‘You wrote that wonderful novel!’

‘You’re very kind,’ I said. ‘And very generous. Your endorsement was really helpful.’

‘I’m sure it did very little,’ she said, waving my gratitude away. ‘Good work will always out, that’s what I believe. It was one of the finest debuts I’d read in years.’

‘It’s really admirable that someone of your stature is so interested in the work of new writers,’ I said.

‘Well, I try to keep up,’ she replied. ‘I can’t bear ageing novelists who refuse to bother with the young. Most of them seem to think that they’re the only ones worth reading, you see, and that literature as we know it will come to an end when they publish their final book. Well, the men do, certainly. Can you imagine a seventy-five-year-old white Englishman with twenty novels under his belt reading a debut by a twenty-eight-year-old black girl of Caribbean descent? It would never happen. They’d much rather tell the world that they’re re-reading all of Henry James in chronological order and finding him a little smug.’ She turned to you then, Maurice, and I knew by the way you were standing that you were waiting for her to recognize you.

‘Lovely to see you again, Leona,’ you said, reaching forward, and, I think, surprising her by kissing her on both cheeks. ‘That was a wonderful talk.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Mr…?’

‘It’s Maurice,’ you told her then, rearing back a little, and the expression on your face changed as quickly as it had when I had stood at the end of the corridor and invited you to fuck me. ‘Maurice Swift.’

‘Well, it’s nice to meet you too, Mr Swift. Are you Edith’s boyfriend? Oh no, her husband. I can see your wedding rings. How long have you been married? You must be very proud of her!’

You stared at her and said nothing for a few moments. I could see the horror of what was about to happen but couldn’t think of any way to prevent it.

‘We met at the Edinburgh Festival a few years ago,’ you said.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ said Leona, touching your arm and looking quite embarrassed. ‘You’re a writer too, then? I didn’t realize.’

‘I’m Maurice Swift,’ you repeated, your tone making it clear that you could not have been more astonished if she’d said that she’d never heard of William Shakespeare.

‘My husband wrote Two Germans,’ I said, but it was obvious from the look on her face that she’d never heard of it.

‘Well, that’s wonderful,’ she said. ‘Congratulations. And how is it doing for you?’

‘It was published eleven years ago,’ you said.

‘Oh, of course it was. I remember now.’ She wasn’t very good at lying. ‘You must forgive me, Mr Swift. I’m as old as the hills. There are days when I can barely even remember the titles of my own books.’

‘No, that’s not true,’ you said coldly. ‘I heard you in there. You’re completely on the ball. You’ve just never heard of me or my books, that’s all. It’s fine, I don’t care. There’s no particular reason why you should have.’

Leona smiled awkwardly and turned back to me, asking me how my next book was coming along, and I offered a few platitudes, but the conversation was ruined. I wanted to leave, to deal with whatever mood you would be in now and just get past it. I suspect Leona wanted to get out of there too for she quickly moved on to someone else and we were left alone again, the rush of our recent sex vanished now, instead replaced by the humiliation that had been rained down on you.

‘Shall we go?’ you asked, and I nodded, draining my glass and rushing to catch up with you as you led the way out of the door.

Do you remember what happened when we got home, Maurice? You’ll say that I’m exaggerating but I remember it clearly. We barely spoke in the taxi but once we were in the front door and up the stairs you pulled me to you and started kissing me again. But there was none of the romance of earlier; instead you spun me around, pulling my underwear down roughly, and before I could make any protest you were inside me again. I cried out but you forced your way deeper into my body, and I held myself up, telling myself that this was what I wanted, this kind of passion, this kind of impulsiveness, even though it seemed as if the desire we’d felt earlier had been replaced now by cruelty and spite. As if you weren’t fucking me at all, but punishing me.

‘Twice in one night,’ you said when you were finished, smiling at me. ‘Who said romance is dead?’

I turned around to face you, trying to smile, desperately wanting to look as if I’d enjoyed it so that I could convince myself that I had. And then my legs seemed to give way beneath me and I slid down to the floor, where I stayed for a few minutes while you went into the kitchen to pour yourself a beer.

4. December

When my mother broke her arm slipping on some ice, we decided to go to my family after all, instead of yours, for Christmas and I got the impression that you were relieved about that. Although I knew that your parents had never particularly liked me – your mother blamed our miscarriages on my writing, telling you time and again that you should not ‘let’ me work, while your father refused to accept that I was English, insisting that my skin colour meant I was an immigrant, regardless of the fact that I was born in Hackney – I was willing to put up with their outdated gender stereotypes and casual racism if it meant not having to be around my sister. But eventually my conscience got the better of me and I knew that I couldn’t leave my mother to cater for herself, Rebecca and the boys without some help, particularly when I had barely seen her since September.

The smell of pigeon peas, plantain, cush cush and candied yams that drifted through the air brought me instantly back to my childhood. My parents had arrived in England from the Caribbean in the early 1960s and, when we were kids, the whole family returned there once every couple of years to see the relatives they’d left behind. I felt out of place there, though, more at home in England, which was the only home I’d ever known, despite the fact that the children in school, and even some of the teachers, had no hesitation in using racial epithets against me.

We went into the living room with glasses of wine and I made my way over to the shelf by Mum’s reading chair, where she kept her library books, and as I scanned the titles I was surprised to see a copy of The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal.

‘Look,’ I said, holding up the cover, and you glanced over and smiled.

‘I wouldn’t have thought that was your sort of thing, Amoya,’ you said, turning to my mother. ‘All that boy-on-boy action.’

‘Well, I didn’t realize that it would be so full of sex when I borrowed it,’ she replied. ‘But I’m rather enjoying all the rudeness. Now that Henry’s gone, reading about sex is the closest I ever get to it. Speaking of which, you know that Rebecca is bringing Arjan with her, yes?’

‘I didn’t know it for a fact,’ I replied. ‘But I guessed she would. Have you met him yet?’

‘I have,’ she replied cautiously, for she loved Robert just as much as I did and didn’t want to appear disloyal. ‘It’s very difficult to know what to say, isn’t it? None of this is his fault, after all, and he does seem like a very nice man.’

‘Where’s he from?’ you asked, for you hadn’t come with me the day I’d visited him and Rebecca and had shown scant interest in him in the meantime. ‘India or somewhere?’

‘Eastern Europe, I think. Latvia or Estonia. One of those places.’

‘And what does he do?’

‘He’s an actor. Or trying to be. He’s younger than Rebecca, though, which should come as no surprise. And very good-looking.’

‘Well, if you’re going to cheat on your husband and then leave him,’ you said, ‘I suppose there’s no point doing it for someone old and ugly.’

Afterwards, we all tried to blame the argument on what Mum delicately referred to as Arjan’s not quite perfect grasp of English, but of course there was much more to it than that.

Rebecca, Arjan and the boys arrived laden with Christmas presents. Too many, I thought, as if she was trying to prove something through her generosity. Damien and Edward both had new phones, which seemed ridiculous, considering they were only nine and seven years old, and she had bought me one of my favourite perfumes but had forgotten to remove the Heathrow duty-free sticker from beneath the box.

‘If I’m honest,’ said my sister, sitting back in the armchair with a glass of champagne, ‘I would have preferred to stay at home this year instead of coming here.’

‘Well, you could still go back,’ I told her. ‘The roads will be quiet at this time of day and we could always do you up a doggy-bag.’

‘My schedule has been simply crazy,’ she continued, ignoring me. ‘Two weeks ago, I was actually in three different countries over three different days. Absolutely exhausting.’

‘Which countries?’ I asked. ‘England, Scotland and Wales?’

‘No,’ she snapped. ‘England, France and Italy, if you really want to know.’

‘I’m not sure England counts, dear,’ said Mum. ‘I mean, you do live here, after all.’

‘Of course it counts. It’s a country, isn’t it?’

‘So, tell us a little about yourself, Arjan,’ you said, turning to him, and I could see that you were uncertain whether to be on his side yet or not. He was ten years younger than my sister, who had only recently turned thirty-eight, and very handsome with a muscular frame and beautiful skin. Of course, that also made him six years younger than you.

‘What would you like to know?’ he asked politely.

‘You want to be an actor, is that right?’

‘Oh no,’ said Arjan, shaking his head.

‘That’s what we were told.’

‘I don’t want to be an actor,’ he said. ‘I am an actor.’

‘Right,’ you said. ‘Of course.’

‘I’ve been acting all my adult life.’

‘And are you in something at the moment?’

‘Not right now, no.’

‘Resting, I suppose,’ you said, nodding your head. ‘I hear a lot of actors do that. Well, it’s not as if you have to wait on tables, is it? Not with the money Rebecca earns.’

‘Actually, I don’t take any money from Rebecca,’ he replied with a certain dignity. ‘I get enough work to pay my way.’

‘Arjan has just been cast in a major new television series,’ said Rebecca. ‘He’s going to play a serial rapist who dismembers his victims afterwards and dines on their internal organs. So who knows where that will lead?’

‘Wouldn’t you prefer to work in film or the theatre?’ you asked, an edge coming into your tone now.

‘I’m happy to take whatever work comes my way,’ said Arjan, taking no obvious offence from your condescension. ‘Maybe I’ll get some film work in the future but that doesn’t happen for everyone. As long as I get to keep acting, I don’t mind.’

‘Yes, but I’m sure you didn’t grow up hoping to be a serial rapist. It’s not exactly Shakespeare, is it?’

‘Anthony Hopkins played something like that in The Silence of the Lambs, didn’t he?’ I asked. ‘And he won an Oscar for it. What was he called again?’

‘Hannibal Lecter,’ said Mum. ‘Hannibal the Cannibal.’

‘I couldn’t sleep after watching that,’ said Rebecca with a shudder.

‘Actually, I played Laertes for six months once,’ said Arjan.

‘Really?’ you replied, raising an eyebrow as if you didn’t believe him. ‘In whose Hamlet?’

Arjan frowned, clearly confused by the question. ‘Shakespeare’s,’ he said.

‘No, I meant who played Hamlet?’ you said with a derisive sigh, and when he named the actor you shook your head and claimed that you’d never heard of him, even though I knew you had. We’d watched him in a mini-series not so long before and both thought he was rather good.

‘I’ve done some other classical theatre too,’ said Arjan. ‘I played Perkin Warbeck at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, and Bonario in Volpone at the Edinburgh Festival. And last year I played McCann in The Birthday Party, although I didn’t get great reviews for that.’

‘Oh yes?’ you asked, smirking. ‘Why was that?’

‘The critics said I was too young for the part. It’s meant for a much older man. Someone your age, I think.’

I was taking a drink of my wine when he said this and almost snorted it out when I saw the expression on your face.

‘Well, I’m not an actor,’ you said, after a lengthy pause. ‘I prefer to create the words, not just stand on a stage and parrot them like a… like a…’ You struggled to finish the simile.

‘Like a parrot?’ suggested Rebecca, delighted by how her lover had scored such an easy victory over you.

‘Actually, I read your novel,’ continued Arjan, and it seemed that he’d built up his confidence now. We both looked up to see which one of us he was talking to.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘You didn’t have to.’

‘I didn’t read it because I was meeting you today. I’d already read it before I met Rebecca. Maybe two years ago? I liked it very much.’

‘What did you like about it exactly?’ you asked, and I turned to look at you, surprised by the question. Were you trying to catch him out in a lie, was that it?

‘I liked the story,’ he replied. ‘I liked the characters. And I liked the way it was written.’

‘Could you be a little more specific?’ you asked, and I felt my stomach sink, certain that, having given such a bland response, the chances were that he couldn’t be. ‘You see, it’s always helpful for a writer to know which passages particularly impressed a reader. We’re such bad judges of our own work.’

He looked at you silently for a few moments and I could see that he knew you were trying to take him down a peg or two. You held each other’s gaze before he turned back to me, placing his wine glass down on the table.

‘The moment where the girl takes her uncle’s car,’ he said. ‘And she’s been drinking and crashes into a ditch. The doors, they were…’ He thought about it. ‘What’s the word? They couldn’t open the doors because they were squashed between two trees, yes?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I liked the tension in that scene. And when she climbed into the back seat to escape. I did something like that myself once. Took my uncle’s car, I mean, without him knowing. And I was in a crash. The girl I was with, a girl I liked very much, she was badly injured. And she never forgave me.’

‘What happened to her?’ I asked.

‘The windscreen smashed and hundreds of slivers of glass went into her face. She needed a lot of surgery.’

‘And did it work?’ I asked. ‘The surgery, I mean?’

‘Yes, but there were still some scars. Anyway, I liked this passage very much. You write about fear very well.’

‘Well, that is the title of the novel, after all,’ you muttered irritably. ‘Fear.’

‘Yes, but the novel isn’t really about that, is it?’ continued Arjan. ‘In fact, I think the novel has very little to do with fear. In my view, it’s about bravery.’

‘You’re very perceptive,’ I said. ‘Not everyone recognizes that.’

‘I wouldn’t be too flattered,’ said Rebecca. ‘As an actor, Arjan is obviously very interested in literature, so he reads a lot.’

‘Something tells me that when you were in school, you were the boy who always came to class well prepared,’ you commented, and I threw you a look, annoyed by your peevishness.

‘I suppose I was,’ admitted Arjan, refusing to rise to your bait. ‘I wanted to pass my exams and to—’

‘Yes, yes,’ you said, dismissing him now with a wave of your hand.

‘Rebecca tells me that you used to be a writer too,’ said Arjan, and I winced at his choice of words.

‘I beg your pardon?’ you said.

‘She says that you wrote a novel once,’ he replied.

‘I’ve written two actually,’ you told him, and Six, I thought.

‘There must be some competition between you then?’ he asked, looking back and forth between us, and I shook my head.

‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘Nothing like that. My husband has been publishing much longer than I have and is highly respected. I’m pretty new to it all.’

‘And yet your book was such a success,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I admitted, for once wanting to accept the compliment. ‘Yes, it was.’

‘It’s your use of the past tense that bothers me,’ you said.

‘I don’t understand this?’ said Arjan, narrowing his eyes.

‘You mentioned that I used to be a writer. I didn’t used to be anything. I am.’

‘Just like I’m an actor,’ said Arjan. ‘Perhaps you’re resting too. I hear a lot of writers do that. Anyway, I look forward to reading your next book. Eventually, I mean. If it finds a publisher.’

Before you could respond to this, Mum came in and clapped her hands to tell us that dinner was ready. I don’t think I’d ever been so happy to see anyone in my entire life.

Later, I found you brooding in the hallway, staring at some old family photographs. I felt a rush of anxiety that you were angry with me but this eased when you smiled, leaned forward and kissed me.

‘How about next year we don’t go to your family or mine for Christmas?’ you suggested. ‘We could go away on holiday instead. Somewhere hot. Just the two of us.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ I said. ‘How are you doing, anyway?’

‘Fine,’ you said. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘You were very quiet during dinner.’

‘I was eating.’

I hesitated for a moment, uncertain whether I should bring this up or not. ‘You know Arjan wasn’t trying to be rude to you,’ I said at last. ‘He was probably just—’

‘I don’t give a fuck about Arjan,’ you said. ‘There’s something sort of tragic about him, don’t you think?’

‘No, not really,’ I said.

‘You don’t think he’s a bit deluded?’

‘In what sense?’

‘His dreams of making it big in Hollywood.’

I said nothing for a moment, wondering whether you actually believed this or had simply decided to spin his remarks to fit your own design. ‘Actually, I thought he seemed quite realistic about his future,’ I replied finally.

‘You fancy him, don’t you?’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Please tell me you’re joking,’ I said, hating where this conversation seemed to be leading.

You stared at me for the longest time and then broke into a wide smile. ‘Of course I’m joking,’ you said. ‘Lighten up, Edith! It’s Christmas!’

I pulled away from you but, before I could say anything, the doorbell rang and I heard Mum call out to me from the living room, asking me to answer it.

‘Excuse me,’ I said, trying to move around you, but you were pressing me against the wall. ‘Maurice, you’re in my way,’ I said, raising my voice a little, and now you stepped a little to the side, just enough to let me pass, and I walked towards the front door and opened it. Standing outside, the light from the overhead bulb shining down on him as it snowed, was Robert. He was wearing a grey overcoat that looked brand new and the sort of scarf that could only have been a present from his mother. He’d had a haircut too. The style was a little too youthful; it would have looked good on someone ten years younger but, on him, it seemed a little desperate.

‘Hello, Edith,’ he said. ‘Happy Christmas.’

‘Robert,’ I said, standing back a little, surprised to see him there. ‘Nobody mentioned that you… Is Rebecca expecting you?’

‘I may have forgotten to tell her that I would be stopping by.’

‘Right.’ I stood there, staring at him, uncertain what I should do next, which was when you appeared behind me.

‘Hello, Robert,’ you said.

‘Maurice.’

‘You look cold, mate.’

‘Well, I’m freezing my bollocks off, actually. Can I come in?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I replied. ‘Do you think it’s a good idea?’

‘Of course you can,’ you said, opening the door wider. ‘You’re still family. Come in.’

I stepped aside as he walked into the hallway, taking off his coat and scarf before reaching forward to give me an awkward kiss on my cheek. His cold lips made me shiver a little. ‘You haven’t been drinking, have you?’ I asked. ‘You’re not here to cause any trouble?’

‘I’m perfectly sober,’ he said. ‘I had lunch with my mother and didn’t touch a drop of alcohol as I wanted to drive over to see the boys.’

‘They’re just in there,’ you told him, pointing towards the living room.

‘They’re quite tired,’ I said. ‘They’ve been playing all day and practically ate their body weights over dinner.’

‘Robert,’ said a voice from behind me, and I turned around to see my sister standing there, her face a mask of annoyance. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

‘Happy Christmas,’ he repeated, stepping forward to kiss her too, but she backed away and held her hands in the air as if to keep a careful distance from him.

‘Don’t happy Christmas me,’ she said. ‘I asked you a question. What the fuck are you doing here?’

‘Full of the season of goodwill, I see.’

‘Robert, I—’

‘I wanted to spend a little time with my sons,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Is that a criminal offence?’

‘No, but we already spoke about this. They’re yours all day on the twenty-seventh.’

‘But it’s not the same thing, is it?’ he said. ‘I missed out on seeing them opening their presents this morning. That’s the first time I haven’t been there for that.’

‘Well, I was there. And so was Arjan. So everything was fine. They didn’t need you. They didn’t even mention you, actually.’

‘Rebecca, that’s just cruel,’ I said, and she turned on me now, pointing her finger in the air and telling me to keep my nose out. She was a little drunk and her tone brought me back to our shared childhood, when she would turn on me without any warning and the scene could rapidly descend into violence. The memory frightened me.

‘I just want to see my children,’ said Robert quietly. ‘Can I go in? Please?’

‘No, you cannot,’ she said. ‘If you go in there now, you’ll only get them all excited again when I was planning on putting them to bed soon. It would be best if you just left.’

‘But Rebecca, he’s come all this way,’ I protested. ‘Surely a few minutes wouldn’t—’

‘Oh, here we go,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘You always take his side, don’t you?’

‘I’m not taking anyone’s side,’ I said. ‘But it’s Christmas Day, after all.’

‘See?’ she said, turning to Arjan, who had joined us in the hallway but was standing back a little, looking uncertain what his role, if any, in this conversation should be. ‘This is what I have to put up with. No one ever supports me.’

‘I’m honestly not looking for an argument,’ said Robert calmly. ‘Hello, Arjan, how are you?’

‘I’m well, thank you,’ replied Arjan. ‘And you?’

‘Never better,’ he said. ‘I had a slight head cold earlier in the week but it seems to have—’

‘Can we please stop with the small talk?’ asked Rebecca, raising her voice now.

‘You want to take a little cold and flu medicine,’ you said. ‘This time of year, if you catch something it can lay you out for days.’

‘I have some Nurofen, if that would help,’ said Arjan.

‘Thanks, Arjan,’ said Robert. ‘But I think I’ll be all right for now.’

‘Well, I can give you a couple to take with you if—’

‘Arjan!’ roared Rebecca, and I jumped a little. ‘Can you…’ She stopped talking, closed her eyes and breathed in deeply through her nose. It was the kind of thing I imagined a therapist might have told her to do in moments of stress.

‘It’s only right that I see my children,’ said Robert. ‘Even Edith thinks so.’

‘I asked you to leave Edith out of this,’ you said, stepping forward and putting your arm around my shoulders.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Sorry. But look, shall I just go in, Rebecca, and say hello? There’s no point in us all standing out here in the hallway.’

Before she could reply, Damien, the eldest of my two nephews, came out into the hallway and gave a whoop of delight when he saw his father standing there, running towards him and throwing his arms around his legs. A moment later, Edward appeared, following suit, and the two boys immediately started telling him about the various presents they’d received, taking him by an arm each and dragging him into the living room to show him their toys.

‘Sorry,’ said Robert as he passed Rebecca, failing to keep the note of triumph out of his voice. ‘I promise I won’t stay long. An hour, tops.’

‘I am not having this,’ said Rebecca as soon as he had disappeared inside and closed the door behind him. ‘If he thinks he can just show up here whenever he likes and—’

‘Perhaps if you organized proper visiting times for him,’ I said. ‘From what I understand, you’re being terribly difficult.’

‘Oh, shut up, Edith. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘But you’re addressing all of us, Rebecca,’ you said. ‘So it’s not unreasonable that your sister should offer an opinion.’

‘You’re on his side too, then, are you?’ she asked. ‘What a surprise! Look, it’s over between us and I don’t want him hanging around all the time, is that so difficult to understand? The boys belong to me and—’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ I said, throwing my hands in the air. ‘The boys don’t belong to anyone! And if they did, they would belong to both of you!’

‘They belong to me,’ she insisted, ‘and they need to be left alone to adjust to the new reality of their lives.’

I couldn’t take any more of this nonsense and followed Robert into the living room and slowly, one by one, you, Rebecca and Arjan followed too. Robert was true to his word, staying only an hour, and had it not been for the boys’ tears when he finally left, it would have been a perfectly pleasant visit.

It was only later that night as I was falling asleep that a line from the argument popped into my head. Something that you had said to Robert.

I asked you to leave Edith out of this.

When did you ask him this, Maurice? Because it wasn’t while we were standing there. Did you call him after he came to see me at UEA? Or did you take a train to London and not tell me anything about it? And what else were you doing during those months that I knew nothing about? All things considered, you’ll forgive me if I sound a little suspicious.

5. January

The new term got off to an exciting start with two pieces of news, one a cause for celebration, the other a source of scandal.

The former was the announcement by Garrett Colby that he’d secured a publishing deal over Christmas for his debut collection of short stories, The Voices of Animals. He told us as we settled down for our first workshop, during which he himself was due to be critiqued, and the reactions of the other students ranged from delight to envy to disbelief to a sort of carefully controlled fury.

I weighed up whether or not to tell you but decided that I should. You would find out eventually and wonder why I hadn’t mentioned it myself. But I waited until a couple of days later, when we were having dinner and you seemed to be in a good mood. That evening, I’d come home and been a little frustrated to find you working in my study again. You pointed out that it overlooked the garden rather than the street and that you needed peace in order to write and, besides, I was on campus throughout most of the day, so what did it matter?

‘You’re in very good spirits,’ I remarked as we ate. ‘Your work must be going well.’

‘Very well,’ you said cheerfully. ‘You know that moment when you realize you’ve got a firm grasp on your book and know exactly where it’s going?’

‘Sort of.’

‘That’s how I’m feeling right now. Writing a novel is a war and I think I’m winning at last.’

‘I’m really glad to hear that,’ I replied. ‘So are you going to give me some clue as to what it’s about?’

‘Afraid not,’ you said, shaking your head and grinning like a mischievous child. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

‘I’m hardly in a position to,’ I said. ‘It’s not as if I’ve been willing to tell you about mine.’

‘Exactly,’ you said. ‘You must be getting close to a final draft, anyway?’

‘Another six weeks or so. And you?’

‘Around the same.’

‘What?’ I asked, staring at you in astonishment. ‘But you’ve only been working on it since November.’

‘I know, but it’s just coming together a lot more quickly than I imagined. These things can happen. Anthony Burgess wrote A Clockwork Orange in about three weeks, you know. Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying in six.’

‘Well, that’s wonderful,’ I said, unsure whether it was or not. I couldn’t even conceive of writing a novel in so short a time, but I was aware that you’d often worked in sustained periods of creative intensity.

‘Actually, I have some news too,’ I said carefully, praying that my announcement wouldn’t destroy your positive mood.

‘Oh yes?’ you asked. ‘What’s that?’

‘You remember Garrett Colby?’

‘The children’s writer with the talking animals?’

‘He’s not a children’s writer,’ I said with a sigh. ‘You’ve been told this before. Many times. They’re adult stories.’

‘With talking animals.’

‘Murakami has lots of talking animals in his books,’ I said. ‘As does Bulgakov. And Philip Pullman.’

‘Yes, but you can’t compare that little twat to any of them,’ you said.

‘Don’t call him that. It’s not nice.’

‘You don’t like him any more than I do.’

‘I know, but still.’

‘Fine,’ you said, laughing a little. ‘I’ll be nice. What about him, anyway? Has he had a breakthrough of some sort? Decided that his novel needs some trees that can dance the tango or a few lamp posts that can juggle while singing show tunes?’

‘No. Actually, he’s sold them.’

‘What do you mean, sold them? Sold what?’

‘Sold the stories. As a collection.’

You put down your cutlery and looked at me with an incredulous expression on your face. ‘You don’t mean to an actual publisher?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Jesus Christ.’ You stared across the room, refusing to meet my eye, and I could see that you were allowing yourself a few moments to digest this information and decide how to react to it. ‘Who bought them?’ you asked when you finally looked back.

‘You won’t believe this,’ I said. ‘But it was Rufus.’

You didn’t even blink. ‘Not my Rufus?’ you asked.

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ I replied. ‘If that’s how we think of him.’

I had only met Rufus Shawcross twice, and briefly on both occasions. The first time was only a few weeks after I’d started dating you and I was waiting in the lobby of your publishing house while you met with him in his office upstairs. Afterwards, you came down together and I could tell by the expression on your face that things hadn’t gone well, but you couldn’t avoid introducing me. I liked him immediately. He was exactly my idea of what an editor should look like: button-down shirt, thick-rimmed glasses, floppy hair, boyishly handsome, looking like he needed to shave about once every second month. The second time was several years later, after you’d had all those novels rejected and effectively been dropped. We’d run into him in a health-food store on Glasshouse Street and the whole thing had been terribly awkward. You’d pretended to be friendly but everything you said was clearly intended as an insult and he seemed upset by your rudeness. For my part, I was simply embarrassed. I knew the poor man had taken no pleasure in turning down your novels, but he’d had no choice. After all, they weren’t any good.

‘He must have lost his mind,’ you said, trying to sound chipper, but I could tell that it was taking every fibre of your being to stop yourself flinging our bowls at the wall and watching the food slowly trace a furious, misunderstood path down the paintwork.

‘He’s actually quite good,’ I said.

‘Rufus?’

‘No, Garrett.’

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Maurice, you haven’t even read him,’ I pointed out. ‘You don’t know.’

‘I didn’t go down on the Titanic either but I know that it wouldn’t have been a pleasant experience,’ you said, shaking your head. ‘Fucking Rufus. Did you hear what he got? The advance, I mean.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘He didn’t mention it.’

‘It probably wasn’t very much.’

It was, actually. He’d been offered one hundred thousand pounds for the story collection and a novel to follow. But I chose not to tell you that.

‘Well, good luck to him, I suppose,’ you said, after a lengthy pause filled with a barely concealed frenzy of anger.

I sighed. A pleasant evening together had disintegrated yet again. I wasn’t sorry that I’d brought it up but I wanted to let it go now. Looking back, I wonder if I wanted to hurt you by telling you Garrett’s news. You had hurt me, after all. You had hurt me physically. Perhaps I wanted revenge. For even if you’d played it cool and pretended that whatever happened with my students held little meaning to you, I knew that you would brood over it for weeks.

‘Something else happened today,’ I said after a prolonged silence, ready to tell you the second piece of news. ‘One of my students got thrown off the course.’

‘Really?’ you said, sitting up straight now. ‘Who?’

‘Do you remember Maja Drazkowski?’

You frowned. ‘Which one is she?’

‘When you came to talk to the students, she was the one who looked like she’d rather fuck you than listen to you speak.’

‘You’ll have to narrow it down.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ I said, laughing.

‘Yes, I remember her,’ you admitted. ‘What happened? Why did she get cut?’

‘Plagiarism,’ I replied.

‘You’re kidding!’

‘No.’

‘Who did she plagiarize?’

‘No one I’d ever heard of, to be honest. A story that had been published in the New Yorker three or four years ago.’

You stood up, gathering the bowls and plates, and began carrying them over to the sink to rinse them off before putting them in the dishwasher. When I rose to help, you placed a hand on my shoulder and told me to stay where I was, that I’d had a busy day and should relax.

‘How was she caught out?’ you asked.

‘The tutor who was marking my group recognized it. Apparently, he’s quite a fan of the New Yorker and keeps all his back issues. She was called in this morning, presented with the evidence, and the stupid girl said it was nothing more than a coincidence.’

‘A five-thousand-word coincidence?’ you asked, laughing.

‘Well, exactly. That was never going to fly. Anyway, she gave up that defence quickly enough. Within a couple of minutes the tears were flowing and she was telling us how she felt she didn’t belong on the course, that she couldn’t compete with the others. I could have written something, of course, she told us, but it wouldn’t have been good enough and I refuse to give in sub-standard work. I just refuse.’

‘But she’s happy to give in someone else’s work?’ you said.

‘That’s what I said! And then she just started crying again. Anyway, the whole thing went on for an hour and became rather tedious, and when we reached the point where she started telling us how her uncle used to make her sit on his lap when she was a little girl and she wondered whether this was what led to such behaviour on her part—’

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’

‘I know. We told her that our only concern was her academic work and that she had lost our trust.’

‘So you kicked her out?’

‘Well, we told her that we would be referring the matter to the dean of students, but that she couldn’t attend any more classes until the situation was resolved. Then she threw a fit and told us that she wanted to drop out, effective immediately, that I was the worst teacher in the world and that if she’d written Fear, she would have eaten it page by page rather than let anyone read it. Aren’t you embarrassed by it? she asked me. All that clichéd writing, the one-dimensional characters, the trite resolution. I’d be mortified if I’d written it. And I couldn’t help myself. I said that maybe she would one day, since she had such little scruple about stealing other people’s stories.’

‘Ha!’

‘Yes, that shut her up. She flounced out then and later this afternoon I got an email from my department head saying she’d formally resigned from the course and I was to inform the other students.’

‘Well, it sounds like she got what she deserved,’ you said. ‘Plagiarism is the greatest crime any writer can commit. But you shouldn’t blame yourself for any of this.’

‘Blame myself?’ I asked, turning to you as you loaded the dishwasher. ‘Why on earth would I blame myself?’

‘You shouldn’t,’ you replied. ‘That’s what I’m saying. It’s not your fault.’

‘No, I get that,’ I said. ‘But if I were to blame myself, in error, I mean, what would I be blaming myself for?’

‘I don’t know,’ you said. ‘Perhaps she felt you were putting her under too much pressure? Or felt that she couldn’t write in the environment that you’d created? She’d be an idiot to think any of that, of course. Which is why I’m saying don’t blame yourself.’

‘But I don’t,’ I said in frustration. ‘At least I didn’t until you suggested that I shouldn’t.’

‘Good,’ you said, coming over and kissing me on the forehead. ‘Then we’re in agreement. Now, I think I’m going to take a walk, if you don’t mind. That stew was a little heavy, don’t you think? And I need to think about tomorrow’s work. I’m reaching a crucial stage in my novel and need to arrange my thoughts clearly in my head.’

And before I could say anything, or offer to accompany you, you’d taken your coat from the hook and were gone.

Blame myself? I thought. Why the fuck would I blame myself?

Three days later, I was shopping in Market Place when it started to rain and I took shelter in the Sir Garnet pub. I don’t usually sit in bars on my own in the middle of the afternoon but I had the new Anne Tyler in my bag and thought I might just settle down with a glass of wine and relax for a while. I’d finished my drink, the rain had stopped, and I was trying to decide whether I should order another or leave when a familiar face walked past the window, noticed me sitting inside and waved. I waved back and a moment later the door opened and in he came.

It was my crush. Nicholas Bray.

‘Hello, Edith,’ he said, smiling at me, and I liked the dimples that appeared in his cheeks. ‘Is this how you spend your afternoons when you’re not teaching? Drinking alone?’

‘Not usually, no,’ I replied, not wanting him to think that I was some sort of lonely alcoholic in my spare time. ‘I was shopping, you see, and the rain—’

‘I was kidding,’ he said, sitting down opposite me before standing up again. ‘Oh, sorry. I suppose I should ask whether you want company before assuming that you do.’

‘Please,’ I said, indicating the seat. ‘I was thinking of having a second, actually. You’re welcome to join me if you like.’

He went to the bar and ordered a pint for himself and another wine for me, and when he sat down we clinked glasses and he told me off for not looking him in the eye as I did so. ‘In some countries,’ he said, ‘you can be barred from pubs for such behaviour.’

He was wearing a tattered denim shirt that was open halfway down his chest and a white T-shirt underneath. His sleeves were rolled up and, for the first time, I noticed that he had a tattoo on the underside of his right arm. Two letters: EB.

‘My aunt’s initials,’ he told me when I asked what they signified. ‘She brought me up after my parents died.’

‘What happened to them?’ I asked, for I didn’t know that he’d been orphaned.

‘A car crash,’ he said with a shrug. ‘It’s okay, I was only three at the time. I don’t really remember them. Anyway, my aunt – my dad’s sister – took me in. She’s a social worker. She doesn’t have any kids of her own. She took care of me.’

We talked a little about his work then, about how it was coming along, and soon enough it was my turn to go to the bar and order a round. I brought back some peanuts as I was worried that I would get drunk too soon and switched to lager so I wouldn’t find myself drinking an entire bottle of wine on my own.

Soon, our defences were down and I asked him to fill me in on the class gossip.

‘What sort of gossip?’ he asked.

‘Well, who’s sleeping with who, and so on.’

‘I don’t think there’s been too much of that,’ he said, narrowing his eyes a little as he considered it. ‘You’ve probably noticed that there isn’t a lot of sexual tension in workshop.’

‘Yes, that’s been very disappointing,’ I said, flirting shamelessly with him now, enjoying the freedom just to look at his beautiful face. ‘When I was a student we spent half our time in each other’s beds. I hoped there’d be a few broken hearts at least, followed by classroom recriminations and walk-outs.’

‘There’s still six months to go,’ he replied. ‘We could surprise you yet. Anyway, the one girl that all the boys fancy is completely unattainable.’

I thought about it, running through each of the female students in my mind, uncertain who he might be referring to.

‘Who’s that?’ I asked, and he simply smiled and took a long drink from his pint, keeping his eyes fixed on mine.

‘Oh, please,’ I said, blushing a little but utterly delighted. ‘I doubt anyone is thinking of me in those terms. I’m old enough to be… well, a big sister to most of the boys in the class. What about you? Have you been seeing anyone?’

He shrugged, then shook his head. ‘No one special,’ he said. ‘No one from our workshop, anyway. I guess I’ve been focussing on my work.’

‘Fair enough,’ I said.

‘Can I ask how long you and your husband have been together?’ he said.

‘We got married five and a bit years ago,’ I told him. ‘And we were dating for a few years before that.’

‘He’s incredibly handsome,’ said Nicholas, and I nodded.

‘He is,’ I said. ‘Why did you say that? You don’t fancy him, do you?’

‘No,’ he replied. ‘I’m straight. But I mean he’s just obviously very good-looking.’

‘I couldn’t agree more,’ I said, waving towards the barman for another round.

‘I think Garrett fancies him,’ he said.

‘Really?’ I said, surprised. ‘He and Maurice have met a few times and there always seems to be some sort of mutual loathing going on there.’

‘He’s only acting that way because he wants to get into his pants. You know he’s driving us all crazy right now? Telling us that we aren’t to think of him any differently now that he’s going to be a published writer.’

‘And do you?’ I ask.

‘No. I thought he was a cock before and I think he’s a cock now. Just a soon-to-be-published cock, that’s all.’

I laughed but didn’t disagree. A part of me knew that it was wrong to be spending so much time drinking alone with one of my students but, if I’m honest, I didn’t care. I was enjoying the sense of freedom he offered me, the feeling of being twenty-three again and dreaming of a writing career. The more we drank, the more attractive he grew and when he leaned back in his chair at one point to produce a dramatic yawn, his T-shirt rode up, displaying a lower belly that was covered in fine, dark hairs. Just looking at them made me imagine what he might look like if he stripped that T-shirt off.

Perhaps he guessed. Perhaps, after our first couple of drinks, he’d wondered whether our afternoon might end with us going to bed together. After all, I’d alluded to such things already. Because when we finished our next drinks, he asked me whether I wanted another or whether I might like to go somewhere else.

‘Like where?’ I asked him.

‘Like my place,’ he said, without an ounce of self-consciousness. ‘I only live a few minutes away.’

I shrugged. I didn’t want him to think that I was in any way shocked. ‘To fuck, you mean?’ I asked him.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘If you want to.’

‘Tell me it hasn’t always been your fantasy to fuck your teacher.’

‘You wouldn’t think that if you’d seen the teachers I had in school.’

‘Why don’t we just… walk down the street and get a little air?’ I said, standing up, and soon enough we were outside, feeling the disorienting effect of sunshine on our eyes when we were both a little drunk. We strolled around St Peter’s Street and on to Goat Lane but didn’t speak the entire time. The anticipation was making me incredibly aroused and I had no clear idea what I was going to do next, whether I would in fact go to bed with him or whether I might turn around on his doorstep, place a hand against his chest and say something like You’re very sweet, Nicholas, but there’s no way this could end well for either of us. It felt as if I were watching myself from above, like I was a character in a film about to make a bad choice that would inevitably lead to catastrophe, but when he finally stopped outside a door and put a key in the lock, I felt an extraordinary longing to follow him inside and let him do anything he wanted to me.

He turned around, saw the expression on my face, and offered a half-smile.

‘That’s a no, isn’t it?’ he said.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Wrong time, and all that.’

He shrugged. I could tell that he wasn’t going to beg. He did, however, lean forward and kiss me and I kissed him right back and, I don’t mind telling you, Maurice, that boy knew how to kiss.

‘I’d better go,’ I said, turning around, and as I walked back down the street I knew he was watching me and that felt good.

When I got back to the flat, stumbling on that bloody handrail again, which you still hadn’t fixed, I had a long shower and later, when we were sitting on the sofa together watching a movie, I found that I was barely thinking about the events of the afternoon at all. Come Wednesday, there was no awkwardness between Nicholas and me and he seemed so untroubled by the whole thing that I began to wonder whether I had simply imagined the flirtation and the kiss.

6. February

In early February, the department head, George Canter, dropped into my office to discuss some student issues and while he was there I took the opportunity to ask him whether I might be able to stay at UEA for a few more years.

‘Of course we’d be delighted to have you, Edith,’ said George. ‘And if a job should come up, then we could certainly discuss it. Although for legal reasons, we might have to advertise it formally. But even if we did, I think it would take a strong candidate to defeat you. Particularly since you’re already in situ, so to speak. Just so I know,’ he added, ‘when are you hoping to publish your second novel?’

‘I plan on delivering it by April,’ I said. ‘And all going well, I hope that it’ll be out by next spring.’

‘Well, that will certainly help too,’ he said. ‘It looks good for the faculty to be actively publishing. The students need to see that we’re doing as well as teaching.’

There was a knock on the door and you poked your head in. This was only the second time you’d visited my office since our arrival in Norwich and you looked ridiculously cheerful as you glanced from me to George and back again.

‘Not interrupting, am I?’ you asked, stepping inside. ‘Hello, George, how’s things?’

‘Maurice,’ he said, standing up and shaking your hand furiously. ‘No, we were just finishing up. I was telling Edith that, even if she does have to apply for the job, I think I could say, without prejudice, that her application will be favourably received.’

I saw the expression on your face harden as you digested this piece of information. Of course, I hadn’t yet spoken to you about staying on at UEA and had no idea how you might feel about it. But you didn’t pursue the conversation and, when George finally let go of your hand, you leaned down to kiss me on the cheek with a ‘Hello, gorgeous’ that was completely out of character for you.

‘Hello yourself,’ I said. ‘What brings you here?’

‘Some good news,’ you replied.

‘Perhaps I should leave you both to it,’ said George, edging towards the door.

‘No, stay,’ I said, for in that moment I felt as if I didn’t want to be left alone with you, when you might ask me what we had been discussing before you arrived. ‘There were a couple of other things I wanted to talk to you about.’

‘All right,’ he replied, sitting down again, and I could see that you looked as irritated by his continued presence as he was made uncomfortable by it.

‘So what’s the good news?’ I asked, looking in your direction and trying to ease whatever tension lay between us.

‘It’s about my novel,’ you said.

‘You haven’t finished it!’

‘No, not quite. But I wanted to be certain that I was on the right track so I sent the opening few chapters to someone in the industry.’

‘Who?’ I asked.

‘Peter Wills-Bouche,’ you replied.

‘The agent?’ said George, looking up, clearly impressed. Everyone knew who Peter Wills-Bouche was. To be represented by him was to be considered part of literature’s elite, whether you were a Nobel Prize-winner – he represented three – or a debut writer.

‘I’m glad you sent it, Maurice,’ I said. ‘He’s exactly the sort of agent you deserve. But I imagine it will be a while before you hear back from him so let’s not get too excited just yet.’

‘But that’s the thing,’ you replied. ‘He phoned this morning, just after I got back from the gym. He wants to meet me.’

‘You mean he’s read it already?’

‘He said that he took it home with him last night, only intending to read a few pages, but ended up showing up two hours late for his daughter-in-law’s birthday party because he couldn’t put it down.’

‘You’re kidding!’ I said, opening my eyes wide in a mixture of astonishment and delight.

‘He said that these were the best opening chapters of any novel that he’d read in the last ten years.’

‘But Maurice, that’s wonderful,’ I said, jumping up to embrace you, feeling genuinely thrilled on your behalf. ‘I’m so proud of you.’

‘Thank you,’ you replied, grinning from ear to ear.

‘Yes, well done, you,’ said George, standing up and shaking your hand again. ‘You must be thrilled.’

‘I knew that one day you’d find your way back,’ I said. ‘I’ve always believed in you, you know that, don’t you?’

‘I do, Edith,’ you said, and the warmth in your expression made me recall the happiest times of our years together. ‘And I appreciate it, I really do. You’ve been the one person who’s always believed in me. Even when I haven’t always believed in myself.’

I smiled. When you shone your light on me, it was still impossible not to feel the wonderful glow. ‘So presumably he’s going to take you on, then?’

‘Well, I assume so, yes, but let’s not count our chickens just yet. That’s why I called in here. I’m taking the train up to London in about an hour to meet with him. He said he’d like to meet today, before I show it to anyone else. I’ll know more after that.’

‘Gosh, he is keen!’ I said.

‘Seems like it.’

‘Maybe we’ll even end up publishing our books around the same time,’ I said. ‘That would be fun, wouldn’t it?’

‘Oh God, let’s not,’ you said, rolling your eyes. ‘No, we should wait to see what’s happening with my book first and then you can have a word with your publisher to ensure that our dates don’t clash. Makes more sense that way, don’t you think?’

‘Well,’ I replied, feeling my heart sink a little. I’d been working on my novel for three years, after all, and didn’t want to delay its publication for any reason. Also, I didn’t see why your work should suddenly take priority over mine. ‘I’m not sure, but we can always—’

‘I’d better go,’ you said, glancing at your watch. ‘I don’t want to miss my train. I just wanted to see the expression on your face when I told you!’

‘Maybe we should be asking you to apply for a job here,’ said George, and I glared at him in disappointment. ‘It’s a real asset to the university when we have up-and-coming writers in our faculty.’

You laughed and shook your head. ‘I don’t think I quite fit that description, do you?’ you said. ‘I’m a little more established than that.’

When I returned home that evening, I found a letter waiting on the mat that infuriated me. I read it carefully several times then forced myself to wait until the first rush of temper had passed before picking up the phone to call Rebecca.

‘I got your letter,’ I said without any preamble when she answered, trying to control the anger in my voice. ‘Or rather, your solicitor’s letter.’

‘Oh good,’ she said. ‘The sooner we get the ball rolling on this, the better. I was very lucky to get an early hearing. Some couple reconciled so an appointment opened up. Don’t you think these people should stop being so fickle? Anyway, their loss is my gain. I assume you’ll be able to make it?’

I held the phone away from my face for a moment and stared at it furiously, as if the handset were somehow responsible for my sister’s insufferable behaviour.

‘You don’t actually think I’m going to do this, do you?’ I asked.

There was a long pause. I wondered whether she was truly surprised by my response or simply pretending to be. ‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘Why wouldn’t you?’

‘Let me just read out what your solicitor wrote,’ I said to her. ‘It is our contention that Robert Gelwood lacks the essential skills needed to be a father to the miners, Damien and Edward Gelwood. As you have been a witness to his erratic behaviour since the birth of both children, we are requesting that you testify to his fragile state of mind, his unpredictable temperament and his lack of parental responsibility. We further hope that you will support our position that the children be placed in the sole custody of their mother, Rebecca Camberley-Gelwood.’

‘It’s such legalese, isn’t it?’ said Rebecca, giggling a little. ‘Even you could write better than that.’

‘It’s not the wording that I object to,’ I said. ‘Although, by the way, you might want to tell your solicitor that minors is spelled with an o. As far as I know, Damien and Edward aren’t being sent a few miles underground every day to dig for coal.’

‘Oh, don’t be so pedantic, you know what he meant. Is that all that’s bothering you?’

‘No, it’s the fact that I don’t believe for a moment that Robert is an unfit father.’

‘Of course he isn’t,’ she agreed. ‘Actually, he’s a very good father.’

‘Then why on earth…?’ I paused and pinched the top of my nose to control my annoyance. ‘Seriously, Rebecca, if you think that, then why are you going to court to say otherwise? And why do you want my help?’

‘Because he won’t let me take the children,’ she said.

‘Take them where?’

‘To America.’

‘Why are you going to America? Do you mean on holiday?’

She gave an exasperated laugh, as if she couldn’t quite believe that she had to explain something so obvious to me. ‘No, we’re moving there.’

‘Who’s moving there? And why? And since when?’

‘Oh my God, Edith. So many questions! It’s like having a conversation with Miss Marple. Arjan, the boys and I are all moving there for his television show. To Los Angeles – can you believe it?’

‘Well, that’s good news for him, I suppose,’ I said. ‘But what about the boys? What about their schooling?’

‘They do have schools in America, as far as I understand.’

‘Yes, with metal detectors on every doorway to hold back the shooters.’

‘Oh, don’t exaggerate.’

‘And what about their friends?’

‘They’ll make new friends.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me about any of this before?’

‘Sorry, I thought I had. Well, I told Mum, so I assumed she’d pass it on.’

‘Actually, no. This is the first I’m hearing of any of it. What did Mum say?’

‘She was very upset. She started going on about how much she was going to miss the boys growing up and blah, blah, blah. I told her, Mum, there are such things as aeroplanes! You can come and visit whenever you want! Although don’t get me wrong, Edith. I don’t literally mean whenever she wants. We’ll probably be quite busy with a new social circle so please don’t think that either of you can just show up unannounced.’

‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me personally. I’m going to miss the boys too. So will Maurice. You know how fond he is of the children.’

‘Well, you don’t have to worry too much. It’s not for a couple of months yet and there are so many things to be sorted out this end before we even think of booking flights. But, you see, Robert is being a complete pain about the whole thing. He’s refusing to let the boys go and, since we currently have joint custody, I’m not allowed to leave the country with them without his permission.’

‘That’s perfectly reasonable,’ I said. ‘What father would want to be separated from his sons?’

‘He’s so bloody selfish,’ said Rebecca. ‘He always has been. If you ever have children, I hope you’ll think twice before putting Maurice’s name on the birth certificate. It gives men all these rights that you could otherwise keep from them and, let’s face it, when have they ever put us first on anything? Not that that’s really something you’ll need to worry about. You’re career, career, career all the way, aren’t you? We’re so different in that respect. I’ve always had such a deep maternal streak.’

I almost laughed. Not just at the insensitive nature of her remarks – she knew about the miscarriages, after all, or at least about some of them – but at her assumption that our marriage would end in failure, just as hers had.

‘Look,’ I said. ‘You can’t expect me to testify that he’s a bad father when he’s not. I won’t do it.’

‘Why not? I don’t think it’s unreasonable for a person to offer her first loyalty to her sister.’

‘I think, in this situation, my first loyalty should be to the boys. And whether I think they should be separated from a loving and selfless father. What’s their view on this, anyway? I presume they don’t want to leave Robert behind?’

‘Oh no, they’re up in arms,’ she told me. ‘They don’t want to leave England. But that’s neither here nor there. I’m not going to be dictated to by a nine-year-old and a six-year-old.’

‘Edward is seven,’ I pointed out.

‘Oh, shut up, Edith,’ she said. ‘Look, all I need is for you to sit down opposite a judge and say that Robert has a terrible temper, that he’s called the boys a few beastly names and that he’s threatened to hit me on occasion, that sort of thing.’

‘I’m not going to do that!’ I cried.

‘It won’t take more than an hour or so. Then you can get back to your book or your students, or whatever it is you do to fill your days.’

‘Rebecca, I’m not going to lie in court. Especially about something so important. For one thing, it’s perjury. I could go to jail.’

‘Lots of people have written books in jail. Look at Jeffrey Archer.’

‘I’m not sure Jeffrey Archer is someone on whose career I want to model my own.’

‘Don’t be such a snob. He’s sold millions of books all over the world, which is more than you’ve ever done. Anyway, you’re not going to go to jail, you’re just being melodramatic. Just stick to your story and no one will be able to prove that you’re lying. If you don’t help me on this, then there’s a good chance that custody arrangements will remain exactly as they are and we won’t be able to leave. And this is Arjan’s big chance, after all.’

‘Can’t he just go on his own?’

‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘No, I wouldn’t allow that. Our relationship would never survive such a distance. He’d probably meet someone else over there. Hollywood is full of bimbos, all with their eyes on the main prize.’

‘I’m sorry, Rebecca,’ I said, trying to adopt as firm a voice as I possibly could. ‘But I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to perjure myself, I’m not going to lie about Robert and I’m not going to put my nephews’ futures in jeopardy. Sorry, but no.’

‘I can’t believe how selfish you’re being,’ she said after a lengthy pause.

‘Try,’ I said.

‘Edith, you’re the only one I can ask. It’s too much to ask of a friend and, besides, I don’t really have any friends. They all seem to have slipped away over the years, for some reason. Jealousy, I expect. Women have always been jealous of me. Well, you should know that better than anyone. No, it has to be you. A family member.’

‘The answer’s no,’ I repeated. ‘And I’m sorry, but I have to go now.’

‘But—’

‘Sorry, Rebecca. Let’s talk soon.’

And I hung up, waiting expectantly for the phone to ring again. But, to my relief, it stayed silent. I wondered whether I should call Robert and tell him what she’d asked me to do but decided against it, wishing that I could be left out of the whole thing entirely. Looking back now, that’s one of my biggest regrets. If I’d simply phoned him up and recounted this conversation, even agreed to sign a statement to this effect for his solicitor, everything in his life might have turned out differently.

Although it wouldn’t have made any great difference to mine, I suppose.

When you returned from London the following evening, you were almost hysterical with happiness. You phoned me from Thorpe Station to ask where I was and I told you that I was on campus, in the grad bar, where one of my students was celebrating her birthday. I expected you to ask me to leave and meet you in town for a drink but, to my surprise, you said that you’d jump in a taxi and meet me there.

You arrived around twenty minutes later, striding towards our group as if you owned the place, and when I stood up you wrapped your arms around me, kissing me passionately, and I immediately felt embarrassed by such a public display of emotion.

‘So how did it go?’ I asked, dragging you away from the group so we could talk in private.

‘Brilliantly.’

‘He likes it, then? He wants to represent you?’

‘He had the contract all ready for my signature when I arrived.’

‘That’s wonderful, Maurice.’

‘He claimed that he’d always been an admirer of my fiction, particularly The Treehouse.’

‘Ha,’ I said. ‘I bet that pleased you.’

‘Well, yes,’ you replied, frowning a little, and I realized immediately that I’d said the wrong thing. ‘It did, as it happens. It’s always been a far subtler work than Two Germans. We had a long conversation about my career to date and he feels that this is the right novel to relaunch me. He wants me to say that I’ve been working on it for seven years, just to increase the sense of the book’s importance.’

‘But you’ve barely been working on it seven months,’ I said.

‘I know, but look, I’ll say whatever needs to be said. It’s the novel that matters. Getting it out there. Bringing readers to me. To it, I mean.’

‘The truth matters too, though, surely?’ I said.

‘Oh, come on, Edith,’ you replied, rolling your eyes. ‘It’s only a little white lie. It hardly matters. He’s putting it out to auction in a couple of weeks’ time. He thinks it’s going to be the most sought-after novel of the year.’

‘Jesus, Maurice,’ I said. ‘What the hell have you written?’

You shrugged, as if the act of writing something that was provoking such interest was rather simple, really. ‘Just a novel. That’s all.’

‘It sounds like it’s more than just a novel,’ I said. ‘It sounds like it’s something very special.’

‘Well, I hope so, yes.’

‘And did he talk advances?’

‘He did. He thinks it’ll be high. He even said…’ You paused and shook your head. ‘Well, no, I don’t want to jinx it.’

‘Go on, tell me.’

‘It’s silly, it doesn’t matter.’

I punched you playfully on the arm. ‘Tell me,’ I insisted.

‘He said he’d put his house on it that I’ll win The Prize next year.’ My eyes opened wide. ‘Are you kidding me?’

‘That’s what he said. But look, there’s no point thinking about things like that right now. Awards are neither here nor there. You know things like that don’t matter to me in the slightest.’

Which was a total lie, of course, because you’d read every book ever shortlisted for The Prize throughout its history. You were practically its unofficial historian. Even making it on to the longlist had been your life’s ambition and, the previous year, when Douglas Sherman had come close to winning, you’d almost lost your mind in bitterness and envy.

‘In a way, it would be like the completion of a circle, wouldn’t it?’ I said, thinking about this. ‘If you were to win, I mean?’

‘How so?’

‘Well, Erich Ackermann won for Dread. And that’s where things started for you. With Erich’s story.’

‘Poor Erich would roll in his grave if my name got added to his on the honour roll,’ you said, but I could see that you were pleased by the idea. ‘Oh, Garrett,’ you said, leaning forward and raising your voice so the students were forced to pause in their conversations and look our way. ‘I haven’t seen you since you got your deal, have I? Edith told me all about it. Congratulations, you must be thrilled.’

‘Thank you,’ said Garrett, smiling happily as he brushed the hair out of his eyes. ‘I didn’t expect to be published so young. I never really saw myself as a prodigy.’

‘I’m sure you didn’t,’ you said. ‘I don’t think anyone would have predicted that you’d ever find a publisher. But they do say there’s a boom in children’s writing at the moment, don’t they? And that’s where the money is too, from what I understand.’

‘It’s not a…’ began Garrett, and I could see that he was doing all he could to stop himself from roaring this at the top of his voice. I knew you were just taking the piss out of him and I had to bite my lip to stop myself laughing.

‘Yes, we know it’s not a children’s book,’ shouted Nicholas, throwing his arms in the air in frustration. ‘Jesus, Garrett, why don’t you just get that printed on cards and hand them out to people every time the subject comes up?’

‘It’s vital that we get children reading,’ you continued. ‘Then when the little monsters grow up they’ll read books by Edith and me and some of your colleagues here. We actually owe people like you, Garrett, a debt of gratitude.’

‘And what about you, Maurice?’ asked Garrett, who was never one to back down from a fight. ‘Will you be joining me on the festival circuit, or is that all a thing of the past for you?’

‘I don’t really do children’s festivals,’ you said.

‘You don’t really do adult festivals either any more, do you?’ he asked. ‘It’s been so long since Two Germans. I know there was that other little book after that – what was it called again? The Cubbyhole? Something like that? – but as far as I understand, that’s best left unmentioned.’

‘Actually, my husband has just sold his latest novel,’ I said, stretching the truth a little, but it seemed clear that this was only a matter of weeks, if not days, away.

‘Really?’ said Garrett, his face falling a little. ‘An actual novel or just an idea?’

‘An actual novel,’ you replied, smiling. ‘Full of sentences and paragraphs and chapters.’

‘Well, good for you,’ he replied. ‘Are you going to tell us what it’s about or is it a state secret?’

‘I thought I’d go for something really original,’ you said. ‘Animals that can’t talk. Like in real life, you know? No, I’m just kidding, Garrett. Don’t look so annoyed. If you don’t mind, I won’t tell you the story right now. You can read it when it comes out, if you like. I’ll make sure to get my publisher to send you a copy. But let’s not talk about all this right now. It’s someone’s birthday, yes? Shouldn’t we be celebrating?’

And we did celebrate. And when we got back to our apartment, we celebrated again, just the two of us. A celebration that was only slightly marred when you asked what George had been talking about the previous morning when he’d said about my applying for a job and I was forced to tell you that I’d been thinking of staying on at UEA. But you said no, that it was important that we get back to London when your book came out, as it was important that you be in the heart of things.

‘I’m sure you’ll find another teaching job there,’ you said. ‘From what I understand, you might have found your true calling in the classroom.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, although for the life of me I didn’t know what I was thanking you for.

7. March

When I woke that Tuesday morning, how could I have known that everything I had worked for since I was a girl, every dream and ambition that had found its way into my heart, would be stolen from me by nightfall?

It seems ironic in retrospect but I remember opening my eyes to the sun pouring through the curtains and feeling an overwhelming sense of well-being. A few days earlier, I’d finished my novel and was finally ready to show it to my editor. Unlike when I completed Fear, which you’d encouraged me to submit to agents despite my doubts about its merits, I felt a measured confidence in this one and had even decided on a title, The Tribesman. I knew it still needed some work but, I felt, not an enormous amount. It would certainly be ready by the end of the academic year, which had been my original plan when we’d arrived in Norwich.

It had already been an exciting week. Two days earlier, Peter Wills-Bouche had sold your manuscript for an astonishing four hundred thousand pounds to one of the most prestigious publishers in London and it was currently on submission with five American publishers. To my surprise, you’d been quieter than usual over recent days, less ebullient than I might have been in your position, and I worried that your distance sprang from anxiety or a sense of anticlimax.

I could hear you in the shower as I climbed out of bed, opening a window on to the bright, clear morning and reaching my head outside for a moment to breathe in the air. As I did so, however, I felt an unexpected convulsion in my stomach, and it was all that I could do to run to the kitchen sink before I threw up. I kept my head over the porcelain for a minute or two until the retching came to an end. Feeling shaky, I sat down at the kitchen table, placing a hand against my forehead. My skin was slick with perspiration and, a moment later, I touched my stomach and then felt the tenderness of my breasts. I knew the symptoms only too well; I’d been pregnant four times already, after all. And now I was pregnant for a fifth.

A rush of conflicted thoughts shot through my head simultaneously. How would this affect the publication of both our books? No, I’m being disingenuous. I wondered how it would affect the publication of my book. Would I carry the baby to term or lose it like I had lost the others? Where would we live? I liked Norwich and wanted to stay at the university but even if I could convince you that we were better off there than in London there was no way we could stay in a small flat with a broken staircase. The idea of trying to get a pram up and down the stairs several times a day was ridiculous. I’d kill both myself and the child. We’d have to find somewhere else.

I said nothing to you about any of this when you emerged, fully dressed, slipping past me wordlessly as I made my way towards the bathroom.

‘Edith?’ you said, perhaps surprised by my silence. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Fine,’ I replied, not turning around. I guessed my face was still pale and sweaty. ‘Just desperate for the loo, that’s all.’

When I was showered and dressed, you were already gone, a note left on the pillow saying that you’d be out for the day and would see me that evening. No mention of where you were going, but I assumed it was the library in the centre of town. You’d been spending a lot of time there recently as you worked on your rewrites. I didn’t give it much thought as I made my way to the pharmacy at the end of the road, where I bought a pregnancy test then took it back home.

The line turned blue. The line had always turned blue for me. I was incredibly fertile, we both were, but my inhospitable womb, as my gynaecologist described it, was still the enemy.

‘Please let her live,’ I said quietly, uncertain whether I was addressing God, my womb or the universe itself. ‘Let me keep this one.’

And somehow, I felt absolutely certain at that moment that the child would survive and that we would be a family.

Later, when the doorbell rang, I was both surprised and annoyed to see Rebecca standing outside. It was the first time that she’d visited me in Norwich and, naturally, she hadn’t bothered to call in advance to say that she was coming.

‘I’m not actually visiting you,’ she said as she sat down, pushing the students’ scripts off the seat and on to the floor as if they were worthless things.

‘It feels like you are,’ I said. ‘I mean, you’re here, after all.’

‘No, I’m only passing through. I had a meeting in King’s Lynn this morning and, as I was driving through Norwich on my way home, I thought I’d stop by to tell you what a terrible sister you are.’

‘Marvellous,’ I said, feeling my heart sink and wishing that we had one of those video cameras at the front door so I could see who was outside before admitting them. ‘Would you like a coffee before you list all the reasons or are you happy just to get started?’

‘No, I would not like a coffee,’ said Rebecca. ‘And if I did, I would go to a coffee shop.’

‘Well, there’s one at the end of the road,’ I said.

‘I’d go there because you’d probably poison me.’ She sat back and looked me up and down as if she were trying to figure something out in her head. ‘I don’t know what I ever did to you,’ she said.

‘Really?’ I asked, already fed up with this conversation. ‘Not a single idea? When you look back to our childhood, there’s nothing there that rings any bells?’

‘I was such a kind and loving sister. Always attentive to your needs.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. You were horrible to me from the day I was born.’

‘What rubbish. Your problem, Edith, if you don’t mind me saying so, is that you’ve always thought you were superior to other people. Morally superior, I mean.’

‘Not to all people, no,’ I said. ‘Just to you.’

‘You see? I come here to visit and all you can do is—’

‘You’ve already made it clear that you didn’t come to visit. Look, I’m assuming this has something to do with Robert.’

‘In a way. You should have backed me up, Edith, it’s that simple. So when the shit hits the fan, remember: all of this is your fault.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Just that it would have been a lot easier for everyone if you had done as I asked. And, you know, Robert could have come to the States to see the boys whenever he wanted. Now, that won’t be so easy. You see, you’ve actually hurt Damien and Edward more than me. It’s they who’ll suffer.’

‘So you’re still going ahead with the move to Los Angeles?’

‘Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I?’

‘And Robert’s allowing that?’

She smiled, as if it were clear that she knew something that I didn’t know and was desperate for me to ask, but I was determined not to.

‘Look,’ she continued, ‘despite the fact that you’ve been such a terrible sister to me, I want you to know that you’re welcome to visit us whenever you want. I won’t hold your actions against you.’

‘That’s very forgiving of you,’ I said.

‘I know. And if you want to say goodbye to the boys, then you should probably make plans to do so. We’ll be leaving in the next few weeks.’

‘But how is this even happening?’ I asked. ‘The last time we talked you said that Robert was refusing to let you leave the country. What’s changed?’

‘Nothing’s changed. He’s still putting up as many barriers as he can.’

‘So you’re just going to leave anyway? You’ll probably be breaking all sorts of laws if you do, and then he’ll hire a lawyer, you’ll be dragged back, thrown in jail and he’ll be given full custody. Surely you don’t want that?’

She smiled and shook her head. ‘Oh, he’ll need a lawyer all right. But not for the reason you think. Robert,’ she added, leaning forward with a triumphant smile on her face, ‘is about to receive a very nasty shock.’

‘What sort of a shock?’

‘A visit from the police.’

‘Why will the police be calling on Robert?’ I asked. ‘What’s he done?’

‘Kiddie porn,’ she said, clapping her hands quickly like a child. ‘On his computer.’

I stared at her. ‘No,’ I said, feeling sick all over again. ‘No, I don’t believe it. Not in a million years. Not Robert.’

‘Not Robert, no. But on Robert’s home computer.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I put it there.’

I couldn’t speak. I felt my head begin to grow a little dizzy.

‘I have a key to his flat,’ she continued, ecstatic now. She’d obviously been dying to tell someone. ‘I need it to let the children in when they’re staying with him. So I went over one afternoon while he was at work and downloaded hundreds of images. You’d be surprised how easy it is to find them. Then I put them in a file called HOUSEHOLD ACCOUNTS and planted that in a folder on his desktop called OLD WORK. I doubt he ever even looks in there.’

‘Rebecca—’

‘And this morning, I made an anonymous call to Crimestoppers. I pretended that I’d been on a date with him and that he’d brought me back to his place, which is where I saw the images as he shut down his computer. I didn’t give my name or number, just said that I was disgusted by the whole thing and someone should look into it. Well, of course they took his name and address, and I imagine they’ll be following up very soon.’

‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ I asked, when I found my voice again.

‘What do you mean?’

‘That’s… I’ve never heard of anything so…’ I was so flabbergasted by the depths to which she had sunk that I could scarcely find the words.

‘Oh, get off your high horse,’ she said, waving a hand in the air to dismiss me. ‘It means that everything will be all right for me and Arjan.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’ I asked, shell-shocked.

‘Because you asked.’

‘You don’t think I’ll let you get away with it, do you?’

‘But of course you will,’ she said, smiling. ‘What are you going to do, tell the police what I’ve said? First, it’s your word against mine. And second, even if they did believe you, which they won’t, and even if they prosecuted me, which they wouldn’t, it would reflect poorly on you and Mum and the boys—’

‘And their father going to jail for possession of child pornography won’t affect them?’

‘They’ll be far away. In Hollywood!’

‘This is fucking insane,’ I said.

‘Yes, well, as I said, if you want to say your goodbyes—’

‘I’ll go to the police myself,’ I insisted. ‘I’ll swear in a court of law—’

‘No, you won’t,’ she said, standing up.

‘I will.’

‘We shall see. You have a new novel coming out soon, don’t you? Are you sure you want your name linked with a child-pornography scandal? Anyway, I should go, Edith. I still have to drive all the way home. You have my number so, if you want to say goodbye, you can get in touch. Otherwise, perhaps I’ll see you in LA one day? I know the boys would be thrilled if you could visit. You and Maurice, I mean. He was always better with them than you were.’

And with that she simply laughed, took one more look around the room as if the entire set-up was even worse than she’d expected, and left.

A few moments later, the phone rang. And my world really fell apart.

You came home shortly after six o’clock. I’d been sitting on the sofa in the living room for a long time, simply staring into space, although I’d thrown up once again, this time in the hallway by the telephone stand, a mess that I hadn’t even bothered to clean up. All the love and respect that I’d ever felt for you had completely disappeared over the previous few hours and now all I could do was figure out how to leave you and where I would go.

You knew me well enough to realize that something was wrong when you came through the door and, even if you hadn’t, the pile of vomit would have alerted you to the fact.

‘What the hell’s gone on here?’ you asked.

‘I’ve been sick,’ I said.

‘I can see that. You might have cleaned it up, Edith. It’s ghastly. And it stinks out there.’

‘You clean it up,’ I said, and the tone in my voice, so hostile and aggressive, probably surprised both of us in equal parts. You stared at me but said nothing and I could see that you were wondering which of your lies I’d discovered.

‘Obviously something’s wrong,’ you said, making your way towards the fridge, taking out a bottle of beer and flipping the lid off, finishing a good third of it in one draught.

‘You could say that,’ I said quietly.

‘Well, are you going to tell me what it is?’

‘First things first,’ I replied. ‘Our marriage is over, Maurice, and I’m leaving you. Today. This evening. Actually, no,’ I said, wondering why this hadn’t occurred to me earlier. ‘You’ll be the one leaving. I want you to pack your things and get out within the hour. And I’m going to start divorce proceedings against you tomorrow morning.’

You said nothing for a moment, then simply nodded and sat down in the armchair by the window.

‘All right, then,’ you said, trying to sound nonchalant, but there was a tone in your voice that I hadn’t heard before. ‘If that’s what you want, I won’t stand in your way. Any particular reason why, though? I mean, we’ve been married for five years and when I left here this morning everything seemed fine between us. So it would be nice to know what I’m supposed to have done wrong in the meantime. Did I leave the toilet seat up again?’

‘I received a phone call this afternoon,’ I said, turning to look at you, watching as you tried so hard to keep your expression neutral.

‘A phone call from whom?’ you asked.

‘From Peter.’

‘I love phone calls from Peter,’ you replied with a smile. ‘They always contain good news. Have I sold some more foreign rights? Or perhaps a film deal is in the offing.’

‘That wasn’t what he called about. He asked me to pass a message on to you. Apparently, he’d been trying to get hold of you on your mobile all afternoon but it was switched off.’

‘Ah, that’s because I was in Maja’s apartment,’ you said.

‘I’m sorry?’ I replied, uncertain that I’d heard you correctly. ‘Maja?’

‘Yes, Maja Drazkowski. Your former student. You remember her, right? Pretty little thing? Not a big fan of yours! Thinks you’re a bit of a bitch, to be honest, but I’ve told her that she’d like you more if she got to know you. We’ve been having a thing for a few months now, ever since she dropped out of the course, actually. I wouldn’t have told you, but I don’t suppose it matters any more, since you’ve decided to leave me anyway.’

I shook my head and laughed. Surprisingly, I found that I didn’t care very much. In a day filled with surprises, the fact that you’d been cheating on me with a plagiarist was the least of my problems.

‘So are you going to tell me what Peter wanted or leave me to guess?’ you asked, and I turned to you, certain that you could guess.

‘He said that your publisher called and they’re wondering whether you might give the title of your novel another thought. Turns out they don’t like it very much. They want something a little more commercial.’

‘Really? I thought it was rather good.’

‘I thought so too when I came up with it,’ I said, raising my voice now. ‘The Tribesman.’

‘Sweetheart, it’s just a title,’ you said, smiling, and I knew you were rattled, for you’d never once, in all the years of our acquaintance, called me sweetheart or darling or honey or baby or any of those other bullshit words that I’ve always hated so much.

‘It’s more than just a title,’ I said. ‘It’s the whole fucking book! You’ve stolen it from me!’

‘Oh, please,’ you replied with a laugh. ‘I haven’t stolen anything. Don’t be so melodramatic.’

‘Jesus, Maurice, I looked on your computer! I found the file. And the emails to and from Peter. I found my novel there. My novel!’

‘But do novels really belong to any of us?’ you asked, looking up towards the ceiling as if we were engaged in a profound philosophical discussion. ‘Other than to readers, I mean? It’s an interesting question, don’t you think?’

‘That’s what you’ve been doing here all year,’ I said, standing up and starting to pace the floor as the depth of your betrayal hit me. ‘While I’ve been at work, you’ve been sitting in that office, transcribing my book, word for word. And the drafts! You even managed to get some of them on there! I have to compliment you, Maurice. You’ve been pretty good at covering your tracks.’

You opened your mouth to protest but I knew that you couldn’t be bothered to deny it. You’d been caught out. It was easier to change tack.

‘I needed it,’ you said quietly, unable to look me in the eye. ‘I’m sorry, Edith, but I had no story. You know that. I’ve never had a story of my own. I’m just no good at them.’

‘That doesn’t mean you can steal mine!’ I shouted.

‘Look,’ you cried, standing up and coming towards me, frightening me a little as you took me by the arms and I pulled free. ‘No one has to know. Just give me this, Edith, that’s all I ask. If you love me, if you truly love me, then just give me this. The novel is wonderful, by the way. Everything that Peter has said about it is true. It really is a masterpiece and you’re a terrific writer. I’ve got a real shot at The Prize with it. I’ll certainly be shortlisted, I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.’

I stared at you, bewildered, wondering whether you’d lost your mind completely. ‘But then it’s my masterpiece,’ I cried. ‘And it will be my shortlisting!’

‘Does it matter whose name is on it? We’re married, aren’t we? We’re a team. In it for the long haul. What difference does it make to you if I put my name on this one and you start another? I’m better known than you are, after all, and this is my way back into the publishing world. I’ll write something else myself afterwards, I promise.’

‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ I roared. ‘You actually think I’m going to just give you my novel? After all the work I’ve put into it?’

‘Why not?’ you asked, looking confused. ‘Is it really that much to ask?’

‘Because it would be a complete lie!’

‘I think you’re being terribly selfish,’ you said, and I started to laugh, my laughter quickly becoming a little hysterical. I felt as if this couldn’t possibly be happening. I looked at you, you smiled, and I couldn’t help it, at that moment I remembered how attractive I’d always found you, and for a moment I wondered how it would feel to fuck you right there and then, knowing everything about you that I knew now. But of course I didn’t, I turned around instead and left the room, making my way towards the bedroom, where I was going to start packing for you. Before I could get in there, you’d caught up with me at the top of the stairs and had spun me around. The stink of vomit on the floor was overwhelming.

‘What are you going to do?’ you asked, and I could see how pale your face had gone now. The terror you felt that I was going to expose you as a liar.

‘First, I’m going to throw you out,’ I said. ‘Then I’m going to phone my agent and tell her what you’ve done. After that, I’m going to phone your agent and tell him what you’ve done. How you’ve lied to him, made a complete fool of him in the industry. I can’t imagine that he’ll be very happy, can you? It might delay the press release by a few days. Oh, and then I should probably call your publisher too—’

‘You can’t!’

‘Of course I can! Do you actually believe you can get away with saying that you wrote it? You might have created a few drafts on your computer, Maurice, but I have dozens of notebooks, all dated, all filled with notes. You never looked for them, did you? I have so much proof that the novel is mine that it will take about five minutes to show you up for the plagiarist you are. It’s no wonder that you’re fucking Maja Drazkowski, you probably gave her the idea of stealing someone else’s story from the New Yorker.’

‘That’s true, I did,’ you said with a mocking laugh. ‘I didn’t think she’d have the guts to go through with it, though. Although I didn’t say the New Yorker. I told her to pick a much more obscure magazine. Something from some mid-Western university press with about five readers. She slipped up badly there. I mean, the New Yorker. What an amateur.’

‘Christ,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘You’re psychotic.’

‘Not really. I just need to be a writer, that’s all. It’s all I’ve ever needed to be. That and a father. And it’s not as if you’ve been much use to me on that score, is it?’

‘Don’t bring that up,’ I said quickly, feeling a twinge inside myself at what I knew that you didn’t. ‘That’s got nothing to do with any of this.’

‘It’s got everything to do with it,’ you said. ‘You can’t give me a child so surely you can make up for that by giving me a book. I need it, don’t you see that? Without a writing career, what am I, after all? Please, Edith,’ you said, your tone changing slightly now, becoming less aggressive and more beseeching. ‘If you tell anyone, you’ll ruin me. There’ll be no coming back from it. My reputation will be completely destroyed.’

‘Just like Erich Ackermann’s was,’ I said.

‘Erich Ackermann was a Nazi!’ you shouted, losing your temper now. ‘You said so yourself. You can’t compare me to him.’

‘The truth is,’ I said, looking you directly in the eyes, ‘you’re not a writer at all, Maurice. You’re desperate to be but you don’t have the talent. You never did have. That’s why you’ve always attached yourself to people more successful than yourself, pretended to be their friend and then dropped them when they were no longer of any use to you. You must have thought that all your Christmases had come at once when my career started to take off.’

‘Shut up,’ you snapped, your face contorting in anger now.

‘But the thing is, I am a writer,’ I continued. ‘And that book you’ve been passing off to the world belongs to me. I’m everything that you’re not. You’re just a hack. You stole Ackermann’s life, you stole my words. On their worst day, any one of my students has more ability than you.’

‘You’d better stop talking,’ you said, your chin trembling in fury.

‘I want you out, Maurice,’ I said, feeling strong now, stronger than I’d felt since the night you raped me. ‘I want you out right now, do you understand? Unless you want to be here when I start making my phone calls.’

I turned away from you and you pulled me back, spinning me round. As you did so, I felt my ankle twist beneath me at the top of the stairs. I reached out for the railing, that broken railing I’d asked you to fix on so many occasions, but my hand didn’t connect with it. The whole thing felt as if I were moving in slow motion. As if I were watching myself from above while I stared at you, aware that I was about to fall. All I needed was for you to reach out and grab me and I would be safe. I said your name.

‘Maurice.’

I stood there for what felt like an eternity, unable to fall, unable to recover, and that was when I saw the clear resolution on your face. You knew exactly what you had to do to save yourself.

You reached out and, with a gentle, almost loving, tap, pushed me.

8. Now

I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been here. The concept of time loses whatever credibility it had when you’re locked in a coma. It’s been more than a few weeks, though, of that I’m sure. Perhaps a month or two? I’m in no pain, which is good, but nor am I alert to a particular lack of pain. The best I can do is describe it as having a consciousness but no body, no movement or expression. I’m an anthology of thoughts and memories trapped within a static shell. I can see everything around me and yet my eyes refuse to open. I can hear every sound but can’t make myself heard. I’m alone and yet I’m frequently surrounded by people.

There are nurses, of course. They wash me every morning using soft sponges and tepid water. They move my arms and legs, bending them carefully at the elbows and knees, to ensure that my muscles don’t atrophy. They rotate my wrists and ankles, trim my fingernails, apply moisturizers to my skin. They empty bags filled with my excreta and replace them, so I can void again. And yet they seem to forget that I was once alive, that I’m still alive, holding conversations over my inert form that go something like this:

Or this:

Or sometimes:

There are doctors too. They stand over me and check their charts, telling each other where they went for dinner the night before. I’m privy to their most intimate conversations and all I can do is lie here while the machines by my bed breathe for me. Sometimes I sing songs in my head, whole albums even, challenging myself to remember every word of the lyrics.

You visited a lot in the early days and were very good at playing the grieving husband. Sometimes, when we were alone, you would sit next to me, take my hand and speak in a quiet voice that, strangely, I found very relaxing.

‘The university keeps calling me,’ you said. ‘They’ve been very solicitous. They’re desperate to help in some way but, of course, there’s nothing they can do. At one point, I considered asking whether they might like me to take over your classes for you, but I thought they might think that a bit odd.’

Another time, you worked through the page proofs of The Tribesman while sitting at my bedside and told me whenever you were changing one of my sentences for one of your own. I must admit that your corrections were, for the most part, good ones.

I overheard a conversation between you and Nurse 2 one evening when she said that she really admired how well you were holding it together. Not everyone does, she told you. Some people go to pieces, others cause trouble for the hospital, as if the doctors aren’t trying hard enough. You told her that you had no choice, that you were sure that I could hear every word you said and that if I knew how much you loved me, I’d wake up. You said that you hadn’t told me that enough before the accident – your word, not mine – and that that was one of your biggest regrets. Then you started sobbing, she hugged you and I heard myself screaming, literally screaming like a banshee, inside my head. Only the room, of course, was in silence.

Once, you placed a hand on my stomach, quite gently, and told me I’d been pregnant but that the child hadn’t survived the fall. I knew that, you didn’t have to say it. She would have lived too, had you pulled me back rather than pushing me. I can sense her spirit sometimes, but we haven’t made any connection. Not yet, anyway. Soon, perhaps.

A few nights ago, you arrived with someone else. The room was a dark blur then and I couldn’t identify who it was. Eventually, I realized it was a young woman. She leaned over me and whispered in a familiar European accent.

‘Don’t wake up, Edith,’ she said. ‘Don’t ever wake up. Things are just perfect here without you.’

It didn’t take me long to figure out that it was Maja Drazkowski. Are you a couple now? I imagine you must keep it very quiet, as you’d lose all sympathy if anyone discovered that you were fucking one of my students while I was stuck in hospital, showing no sign whatsoever of recovering. She’s a strange choice for you but I imagine you’ll get rid of her once the novel takes off and you’re back in literary circulation. There are much more significant catches out there lying in wait for you. I almost feel sorry for Maja. Almost.

But, of course, you’re not the only one who visits. Mum comes up from London every few days and tries to be strong but ends up in tears. She tells me over and over how much she loves me and recounts happy stories from when I was a child. I want to tell her that I love her too. She brings a friend occasionally, who puts an arm around her and says things like:

She looks well, all things considered, doesn’t she?

and

Shall we stop off for a bite to eat on the way home? I could murder a cod and chips.

Life goes on, I suppose.

Rebecca came only once. She started by smoothing down the bedsheets and clearing up whatever detritus had been left behind on the bedside table. I don’t know why she bothered.

‘Hello, Edith,’ she said, in a normal tone of voice, as if we’d just run into each other on the street unexpectedly. ‘I brought some grapes. Shall I just leave them over here?’

Why on earth she brought grapes is a mystery to me. I wanted to scream, I’m in a coma, you stupid fucking bitch, and I did scream it, in my head, anyway. She sat down and looked around the room, keeping her hands firmly in her lap. I don’t think she wanted to touch any of the surfaces in case she came down with MRSA.

‘Shall I catch you up on the gossip?’ she asked.

No, I thought.

‘Arjan’s arrived in LA and started shooting. He’s loving it. It’s obvious that the show is going to be an enormous hit. I’ve advised him that he should only commit to two seasons because, after that, film companies are going to want to cast him in movies. And if he’s stuck in a long-term contract with a TV show, then that’ll mess things up for us. That happened to the actor who played Magnum. What’s his name? I can’t remember.’

Tom Selleck, I thought.

‘Oh, it’ll come to me. Anyway, it happened to him—’

Tom Selleck, I re-thought.

‘He was offered the part of Indiana Jones but he couldn’t do it because he was locked into his contract and so Kevin Costner got it instead.’

Harrison Ford, I shouted.

‘And I don’t want that to happen to Arjan. Anyway, the boys and I are going over next Thursday – can you believe it? Me! In Hollywood! I suppose you thought that you’d be the one to end up there because of your novels, but no, it’s me! I’ll write, of course, but I can’t see myself coming back here any time soon. I think England will seem so drab once I’m over there.’

And Robert? What about Robert? I wondered.

‘I’m going to let you in on a little secret,’ she said, leaning in and lowering her voice. ‘It’s very hard being without Arjan for even a few days. Sexually, I mean. Honestly, Edith, I’ve never known anything like it. And nor have you, I promise you that. He’s young, of course, and men that age can go all night. With Robert, it was always one quick fumble and lights off. I actually thought that was normal – well, it probably is normal, but it’s not the way things are with Arjan. I wish you were well enough to come and visit us when we move. You’d be green with envy!’

And then, just before she left, she came over and kissed me on the forehead and something damp fell on my nose. A tear? It must have been.

‘Try to wake up, Edith,’ she said. ‘We all miss you.’ And for a moment, I genuinely thought that she meant it.

Soon after this, Robert visited too. There was some commotion about this because he arrived while you, Maurice, were on the ward, and you didn’t want to let him in. The door to my room was open and I could hear the two of you arguing in the corridor.

‘Look, she’s my sister-in-law,’ Robert was saying. ‘And we’ve always got on well, you know that. I just want to sit with her for a little while, that’s all.’

‘I know,’ you said, and I could tell from your voice that, although you were uncertain whether to allow this or not, you were leaning towards no. ‘But the thing is, she can’t hear you anyway, so there’s really no point. And I don’t think you should be here while all these other things are going on in your life. Honestly, Robert, I think Edith would be very disappointed if she knew what you’ve been accused of.’

‘She’d have no reason to be,’ he said. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’

‘Kiddie porn is hardly nothing wrong.’

‘I swear to you I don’t know how it got there.’

‘But that’s what they all say, isn’t it? That a virus got downloaded or someone hacked into their computer. I’ve heard it all before.’

‘But in my case, it’s true! I’ve never… I’ve never been even remotely interested in things like that. Not for a moment.’

‘Actually, Robert,’ you said, ‘if I’m completely honest with you, I don’t give a fuck. Do whatever you want, it makes sod all difference to me.’

‘I’m just trying to explain—’

‘But you’re explaining to the wrong person. It’s not me you have to convince, it’s the judge. When’s the trial, anyway?’

There was a long pause and then Robert spoke again, so quietly that I struggled to hear him. ‘Not for months,’ he said. ‘About seven months from now.’

‘That’s a lot to have hanging over your head in the meantime.’

‘I’ve lost my job too. And as I’m not allowed access to the internet, it’s practically impossible for me to find another one. And even if I could, how could I convince any employer to take me on in my current situation?’

‘I understand,’ you said, and I could tell that you were shrugging your shoulders or looking at your watch, hoping he’d just go away. ‘It’s not really my problem, though, is it?’

‘Edith would believe me,’ said Robert.

‘I doubt it,’ you said. ‘She could be very mistrusting, actually.’

‘How so?’ he asked, and you pulled back. It was as if you were saying that for an invisible audience – me – but knew better than to pursue it.

‘I just want to spend some time with her,’ said Robert plaintively. ‘To talk to her about the boys.’

‘Have you seen them?’

‘No, I’m not allowed. At least not on my own. I have a supervised visit the day before they leave for the States, but that’s it. Thirty minutes. They were interviewed too, you know. By some sort of specialist. To find out whether I’d ever… you know…’

‘Jesus,’ you said, sounding disgusted. ‘For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t believe that of you for even a moment. I’ve seen you with them. I know how much you love them. If you need me to say so, I will.’

‘Thank you,’ said Robert, and I could hear him crying now. ‘That’s very good of you, Maurice. Because I’d never… not in a million years…’

I tried so hard to wake up then. I really tried. I wanted to drag myself out of bed and tell Robert the truth, to tell him how Rebecca had set him up. I couldn’t believe that he hadn’t figured it out for himself, but it was such a monstrous thing for anyone to do that he probably couldn’t even imagine it. Nor could you. But then you never did have any imagination.

‘I’m sorry,’ you told him, steering him away from my room. ‘But look, until this whole mess is cleared up, I’d prefer if you didn’t visit again.’

And that was that. I haven’t seen or heard from him since.

There was another visitor, an unexpected one, and he arrived quite late one evening, long past the time when visitors are usually admitted. I expect he simply came up in the lift – assuming I’m not on the ground floor, which I might be – and waited until the nurses’ station was empty before wandering in.

Nicholas sat by my bed for more than an hour, reading sections from The Go-Between in a quiet voice. I’d told him once that this was my favourite novel and he’d remembered, which was sweet of him. Whenever he took a break from reading he held my hand. He told me that I’d helped him enormously with his work and he hoped that I would recover. He said that the afternoon we’d spent together remained very special to him, that he’d never spoken about it with anyone including, he pointed out, me.

Still, it touched me that he visited. None of the other students did. I wonder what they were doing, what they were writing, who they were reading. I wonder whether any more of them have secured agents or publishers. I won’t be there to read my name in their acknowledgements, will I, Maurice? I bet you take a few of them under your wing, though. That would be just like you. You’ll identify which ones are the most likely to make it and attach yourself to them as a mentor. And they’ll love you for it.

Which brings me to my last visitor, my agent, Adele. She came to see me and cried a little before talking.

‘You were such a wonderful writer,’ she told me. ‘I think you would have been magnificent if you’d had the chance to live longer. I knew when I first read Fear that I’d found someone special, the kind of young novelist that every agent hopes to find. I only wish we’d received something more from you. You told me that you were writing in Norwich—’

I was, Adele.

‘You said you’d been working on a novel for the last two years—’

I was, Adele.

‘But it seems that you weren’t being honest with me, were you, dear? You could have told me the truth. That you were blocked. Frightened about being unable to repeat the success of Fear. Maurice told me everything. How you’d been struggling and felt that a year being around creative young people might help you. But it only made you worse.’

And you believed him, Adele?

‘I hope you don’t mind, dear, but we went through your laptop, looking for something, anything that might be salvageable. But there was nothing. Just notes for stories and all the old drafts of Fear. And a blank Word document titled NOVEL 2. I opened that file with such hope and when I saw that it was empty, that’s when Maurice told me the truth. He was very upset about it, poor man. But at least we have one novel from you, and I’m going to make sure that it stays in print for as long as possible. And, my dear, I don’t know if you can hear me or not, but I think you’d be pleased to know that Maurice himself is about to have a great success. I read a proof copy of The Tribesman last week and it’s simply magnificent. Easily the best novel I’ve read since… well, since yours, in fact. It actually has a little of you in there, I think he must have picked up on some of your style, which is a lovely epitaph.’

If it sounds like me, it’s because I wrote the fucking thing!

‘He’s dedicated it to you as well, did you know that? The first words you see after the title page: To my darling wife, Edith. Without you, this novel would never have existed. Isn’t that lovely? I know I’m not his agent – Peter Wills-Bouche is so lucky to have him on his list – but I’m going to do everything I can to see that the book is a success. It will be his success, of course, but at least it will be a testament to you. For ever.’

Things feel very different today, and I’m not sure why. There have been more nurses coming in and out, and a lot more doctors. Mum was in again earlier, crying, and this time when she left she kept telling me over and over how much she loved me and how she always would. There was a lot of talk between unfamiliar voices, and various checklists were being attended to.

And now you’ve arrived. You’re standing over me, looking down, holding my hand. I can see you, Maurice. Handsome as ever. More handsome, perhaps. Almost everyone else is leaving and now there’s just you and one doctor left and he’s asking whether you’d like a moment alone with me and you say yes.

What is it, Maurice? What do you want to tell me? That you’re sorry? That you love me? That if you could go back in time, none of this would ever have happened?

You lean down and whisper in my ear:

I’m going to be the greatest novelist of my generation.

That’s it? That’s what you wanted to say, you fucking idiot? Jesus Christ! Did you ever love me, even for a moment? You must have, once, because when we met you were the famous one and I had barely started out. There was nothing in it for you then. You must have loved me once. You must have.

You’re calling the doctor back in now and nodding at him. But why? He hasn’t asked you anything. I can’t see him, he’s disappeared to the left of the bed, where the machines are. Where everything becomes too blurry for me to focus.

I can hear switches being turned and the wheezing of an artificial breather as it starts to slow down, and that’s when I realize. You’re turning me off, aren’t you, Maurice? You’re turning me off. You’re killing me. To protect yourself and, more importantly, to protect your novel. My novel. Your novel.

I see you.

You’re reaching down and taking my

that thing at the end of my arm

holding it now

your fingers

ginfers

nifris

I can’t see you any more

there’s no light

no sound

no more words.

Interlude The Threatened Animal

Although the phone call brought unwelcome news, it could not have arrived at a more opportune moment.

Maurice was seated behind his desk on the seventh floor of an office building next to Union Square Park, while Henrietta James, a twenty-eight-year-old writer who had tried and failed to seduce him at the New Yorker Christmas party the previous December, sat opposite, incandescent with rage.

Henrietta, who went by the name Henry Etta James in print, had first come to Maurice’s attention a little over a year before, when his then assistant, Jarrod Swanson, had turned down one of her short stories. He was well aware that submissions to Storī went through a less than rigorous screening process before they landed on his desk, but so many unsolicited manuscripts arrived each month that he simply didn’t have the time to read them all personally, even if he wanted to, which he didn’t. But this led to a singular problem: since most of the magazine’s interns, those who did the bulk of the reading, were graduates of creative-writing programmes, each one was single-minded in pursuit of his or her own publishing deal. They attended literary salons and book launches, and mixed with editors, agents and publicists, identifying their competition through a shared network of covetous hostility. In recent years, several writers who’d been discovered through the pages of Storī had seen their debuts signed up by publishing houses while a couple had even gone on to win prestigious awards, building the reputation of the quarterly magazine considerably. The pie, however, was only so big, and the interns knew that. When a manuscript arrived from someone whose talent they envied or feared, there was always the risk of their rejecting it in order to damage their rival’s chances of claiming a slice. Which meant that the stories that found their way to Maurice were not always the very best ones. But there was little he could do about that.

Occasionally, he wandered into the Trash Can – which was what he called the room in which they kept a copy of every story that had ever been submitted to the magazine – and had a look through the rejection pile, casting his eye over a few pieces there, and that was how he had discovered Henrietta’s story. A little investigative work on his part revealed that Jarrod and Henrietta had been classmates at the New School, where they’d enjoyed an ill-fated romance, and he had turned down her work as revenge for her decision to break up with him on his birthday. Maurice had published the story, which had gone on to feature in that year’s Best American Short Stories anthology, and Jarrod, as far as he knew, was now working in a Foot Locker on East 86th Street.

Henrietta’s debut novel, I Am Dissatisfied with My Boyfriend, My Body and My Career, was due to be published by FSG later that year and was already being touted as a significant work, ‘Bridget Jones meets A Clockwork Orange’. A few weeks earlier, she had submitted a new story directly to Maurice, who had passed on it, a rebuff that precipitated her unscheduled appearance in his office that morning, just when he’d been hoping to relax while watching Rafael Nadal play Andy Murray in the Wimbledon semi-final.

‘Sorry to burst in unannounced,’ she said, charging in and hurling a large carpet bag that even Mary Poppins would have rejected as being unwieldy to the floor, where it landed with a considerable thump. She peeled herself from her coat, scarf and gloves, a curious combination, considering it was July and, outside, New York was melting. The room filled with an unmistakably stale scent of musty body odour. Henrietta, Maurice knew, only bathed on Saturdays, in order to help preserve the planet’s natural resources and today, unfortunately, was a Friday. ‘But I think we need to talk, don’t you?’

‘How lovely to see you,’ he lied, moving his laptop a little to the left so he could keep an eye on the match – Murray had won the first set, but Nadal was leading comfortably in the second – while listening to whatever she was here to complain about. ‘Just passing, were you?’

‘No, I came deliberately, and the journey was horrendous.’ Despite growing up in Milwaukee, Henrietta modelled her speech on Merchant Ivory period films starring Emma Thompson or Helena Bonham-Carter. ‘First, I stood in some frightful dog poo on the pavement and had to return home to change my shoes, which was a terrible bore. Then, while travelling on the 4 train, I was forced to switch carriages as a woman nearby was, quite literally, going into labour and her screams were giving me one of my headaches. Upon changing, I found myself seated next to an Indian gentleman who proposed marriage on the basis of what he called my childbearing hips.’

‘That’s nice,’ said Maurice. ‘Did you accept?’

‘Of course not.’

‘And how did he take it?’

‘No one likes rejection, Maurice. But we’ll get back to that in a minute. Anyway, he seemed to get over it quickly enough. By 28th Street, he had proposed to a young African-American man who did not take his advances with good grace and, by 23rd, to a border collie, who seemed much more interested.’

‘Excellent.’

‘I hate coming into the city. I really do.’

‘Then you should have stayed at home.’

‘No, it was important that we confront this situation face to face.’

‘And what situation is that?’ he asked.

‘Don’t play silly beggars, Maurice. You know exactly why I’m here.’

‘I assume you’ve brought something new for me to read?’

‘Ha! As if I would. After the way I’ve been treated by your magazine? Not a cat’s chance in hell!’ She leaned forward and rearranged the letter opener, stapler and hole-punch on Maurice’s desk so they were perfectly aligned. ‘I don’t give my work to people who despise me.’

‘I don’t despise you, Henrietta,’ replied Maurice. ‘Why on earth would you think such a thing?’

‘Well, you don’t respect me, that’s for sure.’

She reached into her carpet bag and shuffled around for a bit in it before removing a sheet of A4 paper folded into eighths. ‘Dear Henrietta,’ she read aloud as she unravelled it. ‘Thank you so much for allowing me to read your latest story—’

‘If I may,’ he interrupted.

‘THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALLOWING ME TO READ YOUR LATEST STORY,’ she repeated, raising her voice now, ‘a wonderfully quirky fable that illustrates just why FSG were so keen to sign you up! Unfortunately, space in Storī is rather limited at the moment and I don’t think I’ll be able to publish it, although I daresay I’ll regret that when the New Yorker snaps it up! Keep sending me your stuff, though, I can’t get enough of your particular brand of whimsy. Much love, Maurice Swift. Editor-in-chief.’

‘You’re upset,’ said Maurice.

‘Upset? Why would I be upset? It’s only “stuff”, after all. It’s not as if I pour my very lifeblood into every sentence, paragraph and chapter. Stuff! Fuck you, Maurice. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.’

‘That might have been an unfortunate choice of word,’ he admitted.

‘You think? I never would have imagined that you would treat me with such contempt. You’ve let me down, Maurice, you really have.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t take it personally,’ he replied. ‘I’ve done that to quite a few people over the years. There’s an army of them out there, both living and dead, who don’t look at me with any particular benevolence.’

‘Anyway,’ she continued with a sigh, looking around the office, which was filled with books, manuscripts and multiple back issues of Storī. Several shelves were taken up with various foreign-language editions of Two Germans, The Treehouse, The Tribesman, The Breach and The Broken Ones. ‘I wouldn’t normally do this, but since we have so much history together I thought I’d come in and offer you a second chance.’

‘A second chance?’ he asked, raising an eyebrow. ‘At what exactly?’

‘At publishing my story,’ she replied, rolling her eyes. ‘Because if you don’t want it, I’ll take it across the street and find someone who does.’

Maurice tried not to laugh. Across the street? Did she think she was a character in a David Mamet play? There was nothing across the street except a vintage-clothes store, a coffee shop that reeked of marijuana and an elderly homeless man who sang the chorus of ‘American Pie’ whenever anyone handed him money. If she wanted to take it across to any of them, then she was perfectly welcome.

‘Of course, I hate to pass up such an opportunity,’ said Maurice. ‘But I read the story several times and I just didn’t think it was the right fit for our upcoming issues. I don’t like turning people down but—’

‘And I don’t like being shitted upon from a great height!’ shouted Henrietta. ‘Particularly by someone I respect and admire.’

He frowned. Weren’t respect and admire essentially the same thing? She’d made similar blunders in the story he’d rejected. The opening line, for example, had gone:

Every evening as he took the train home from work, Jasper Martin began to feel both anxious and apprehensive.

The same thing. And there was another on page four:

Lauren glanced up towards the light, which was flickering and quivering, and wondered whether she should put off hanging herself until the connections were secure.

The same thing.

‘I don’t think I’ve shitted on you, Henrietta,’ said Maurice. ‘Not from any height, great or small. I just didn’t feel the story was right for us, that’s all. And I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can be persuaded otherwise.’

‘What was wrong with it?’

‘There was nothing wrong with it, per se,’ replied Maurice, glancing back towards the screen, where Nadal was celebrating taking the second set. ‘I suppose I just didn’t feel that it had your usual je ne sais quoi.’

‘And what is that supposed to mean?’

‘It’s French.’

‘I know it’s French. And I know what it means. I’m asking what you mean by it.’

‘Do you want the truth?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘It’s just that, usually, when I ask writers whether they want the truth, they say that they do but actually they want anything but. They want me to lavish praise on them and tell them to dust off their dinner jackets for the Nobel Prize ceremony.’

‘I don’t own a dinner jacket,’ said Henrietta, narrowing her eyes. ‘Now, are you going to—’

‘I just thought the story was a little boring, that’s all,’ he said. ‘It didn’t seem to go anywhere. There were some interesting moments, of course, and your writing is as strong as ever, but the overall effect was—’

‘You’re just insulting me now,’ she said.

‘I don’t believe I am. I certainly don’t mean to.’

‘Two can play that game. I read the last issue of Storī cover to cover and, if you ask me, it was entirely pedestrian and utterly unexciting.’

Which is the same thing, thought Maurice.

‘It’s like you don’t want to take risks or chances.’

‘And now you’re insulting me,’ he replied.

‘I’m not insulting you. I’m insulting the magazine.’

‘A magazine that I founded.’

‘Why don’t you just admit that my story was too challenging for you and your readers? That you didn’t fully understand it?’

‘If I didn’t understand it, then how would I know it was too challenging?’

‘Don’t play games with me.’

‘I’m not. But your interpretation of why I said no to the story is simply incorrect. I understood it perfectly well, I’m not an idiot. I can read, even the big words. Look, it’s not a bad story, it’s just not your best, that’s all. And you wouldn’t thank me if I published something that went on to be criticized by others, particularly with your novel coming out soon. You need to keep your reputation as high as possible during these next few months. It’s critical. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about here. I’m not new to this industry and I know how easily one can turn from being flavour of the month to a sour taste in some publisher’s mouth. I’ve seen it. I’ve been it.’

‘I just feel hurt, that’s all,’ she said after a lengthy pause, softening her tone a little. ‘It’s been a very stressful time for me recently. Did you know that my grandmother died in January?’

‘No,’ said Maurice, who didn’t particularly care. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘She was only ninety-eight.’

‘Well, that is quite a good age.’

‘And then my dog was run over in the street by some idiot on a motorbike. And then I got cancer—’

‘What?’ he asked, leaning forward. This was new.

‘Well, I thought I had cancer,’ she said, correcting herself. ‘There was a mole. On my shoulder. One that hadn’t been there before. Anyway, my doctor said that he was worried about it so he sent a sample to the lab and it came back clear. But, you know, for a few days there I was convinced that I had cancer.’

‘But you didn’t.’

‘No, but that’s hardly the point. I might have done.’

Maurice tapped his pen against the desk. This was one of the reasons he preferred working from home for the most part, only visiting the office once or twice a week. Bloody writers. He’d spent so many years desperate to be among their number but there were times when he truly despised them.

‘So your rejection really hit me hard,’ she said.

‘Well, if you can beat cancer, then surely you can get over a rejection from Storī,’ he said, and she was just opening her mouth to reply when his phone rang. He rarely answered calls, preferring to let them pile up before deciding which ones to return later in the day, but he picked it up quickly now, glad of the distraction, glancing at the screen first.

School, it said.

‘Sorry,’ he said, holding his index finger in the air to silence Henrietta before she could start barking at him again. ‘It’s my son’s school. I should take this.’

She threw her hands up as if she couldn’t quite believe that he was prioritizing his son over her and he stepped outside, marching past the interns and into the stairwell beyond where there was an occasional chance of privacy.

‘Maurice Swift,’ he said.

‘Mr Swift,’ said the voice at the other end, who sounded simultaneously bored by her job and thrilled by the momentary drama of calls such as this. ‘This is Alisha Macklin from St Joseph’s.’

‘Oh yes?’ said Maurice, already feeling the first rush of irritation build inside him. He didn’t much care for Daniel’s school and felt a certain anxiety every morning when he dropped the boy off at a place that might be riddled with child molesters or gun-wielding psychopaths. It was like living in some dystopian society or a Young Adult novel. He still couldn’t believe there was an airport scanner on the door that each of the children had to pass through before being admitted to classes. ‘What’s he done this time?’

‘First, let me say there’s nothing to worry about,’ replied Alisha. ‘Your son is perfectly fine. But we think you should make your way to the school as soon as possible.’

‘Why, what’s happened?’

‘There’s been an incident.’

He didn’t ask anything else, just hung up and pressed the button on the lift. The school was only a ten-minute walk away, but the sun was shining so he took it leisurely. One of the interns could deal with Henrietta. That’s what I pay them for, after all, he thought, ignoring the fact that he didn’t actually pay them anything. They worked for free but with the unassailable conviction that a couple of months spent on a desk at Storī would add a solid detail to their résumés. Ultimately, he knew, they were using him to get ahead. And who was he to argue with that?

Daniel, as it turned out, had slapped one of the girls in his class.

‘We’ve been experiencing problems between Daniel and Jupiter for some time,’ said Mrs Lane, the forty-something school principal, who, with her bouffant dyed-blonde hair and sensible sweater, gave off an air of mild desperation. A photograph in a silver frame was turned towards her on her desk and Maurice longed to see the picture it held, a human or a pet. He bet the latter.

‘Jupiter?’ he said, trying not to laugh. ‘I’m sorry, did you say Jupiter?’

‘Yes, Jupiter Dell,’ said Mrs Lane.

‘And she’s a little girl? Or a boy, perhaps?’

‘She’s a little girl, Mr Swift.’ The principal’s face relaxed a little, and she shrugged. ‘Between you and me, her parents are rather hippy-dippy types, if you know what I mean.’ She looked around and, despite the fact that they were alone, leaned forward and lowered her voice. ‘She has a younger brother named Mercury.’

‘He’ll have an easy time of it in school. Maybe you should bring the parents in to chastise them for forcing their children to grow up with such ridiculous names.’

‘Actually, the Dells were in here just before you,’ replied Mrs Lane. ‘Naturally, we had to call them first. Jupiter is very upset.’

‘Perhaps you could tell me exactly what happened,’ said Maurice, feeling the same level of anxiety in this room as he had thirty years before when he’d been dragged to the principal’s office, along with his best friend at the time, Henry Rowe, two fifteen-year-old boys trembling in anticipation of what was to come. This memory, one that he had tried to block from his mind for decades, made him feel nauseous.

‘Miss Willow, Daniel’s teacher—’

‘I know who Miss Willow is,’ said Maurice.

‘Yes. Well, she’d already noticed an unusual dynamic between Daniel and Jupiter and had brought it to my attention.’

‘An unusual dynamic?’ he repeated, wondering whether these were terms drilled into teachers and school principals to avoid any potentially slanderous, and thereby litigious, remarks.

‘Jupiter has… I suppose we can just call it a crush on your son.’

‘But he’s only seven,’ said Maurice with a bewildered smile.

‘The children don’t recognize it as a crush, of course, but it happens all the time. One child forms a strong attachment to another and the object of their affections doesn’t reciprocate the emotion. In this particular case, Jupiter had started bringing little treats into school for your son. A ladybird that she was keeping alive in a matchbox, for example. A book that she particularly enjoyed. She even made him a sandwich one day and brought in a strawberry cupcake to follow.’

‘I wish someone would do that for me,’ said Maurice. ‘And what does Daniel do? When she gives him these things?’

‘What all boys that age will do, I suppose,’ she replied with a shrug. ‘He takes the gifts and eats the food but once he gets what he wants from her he goes right back to playing with his friends and then she’s left upset by his rejection. In that respect, perhaps there’s not a lot of difference between boys and men.’

Maurice raised an eyebrow, surprised by the comment, which seemed based on some unfortunate personal experience instead of a professional evaluation of the situation. He thought about challenging her on it but became distracted by an abacus placed on the windowsill behind her desk. It was fairly basic, ten rows of multicoloured beads supported by a wooden frame and stand. He hadn’t seen one in a long time but, like Proust’s madeleine, it brought back a wave of memories that he knew had the power to overwhelm him if he did not remain steady. Dr Webster’s abacus, of course, had been much more elaborate, monochrome but constructed from maple wood, the beads polished ivory. It had been passed down in the Webster family since before the Great War, he had been told, and the inscription on the base – A. F. P. Webster, 1897 – had always made him wonder whether the original recipient had gone on to make a success of his life or had forfeited it in the trenches.

Looking at this cheaper version now, Maurice felt an urge to pick it up and hear the click of the beads as he slid them along the wires, but he resisted, uncertain whether he would find himself throwing it to the ground and smashing it underfoot, actions that would surely provoke an even stronger reaction than that to one child slapping another in the playground. Mrs Lane noticed him staring and turned to see what he was looking at, misinterpreting his interest in the abacus as an observance of the children playing outside.

‘They are being supervised, you know,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘The children. They’re being supervised. There’s always at least two teachers in attendance during playtime.’

‘No, I wasn’t…’ he began, but shook his head, not bothering to continue the sentence.

‘Anyway,’ she said, her voice loud, sharp and hectoring now. ‘This morning, between classes, Jupiter went over to Daniel while he was talking with some of the other boys, threw her arms around him and kissed him. On the lips. I suppose she’d seen someone do that on television or in a movie and—’

‘She kissed him?’

‘Yes. Only for a moment. The poor boy was mortified, particularly as the other boys immediately started to laugh at him, and that’s when he did it. When he slapped her, I mean.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Indeed.’

‘And was she badly hurt?’

‘Well, no. I don’t think the attack was particularly brutal. There was a red mark on her cheek afterwards, of course, but I think she was more shocked than anything else. Not to mention humiliated.’

‘I suppose you’re going to tell me now that her parents are planning on suing me. Or you. Or the school.’

‘Oh no,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Quite the opposite, in fact. They made a point of saying that they believe America has become far too litigious a society and that they have no intention of going down that road.’

‘Thank God for that.’

‘Yes, I echo your sentiments there. The last thing St Joseph’s needs is a costly lawsuit. The attendant publicity alone could be ruinous. No, what they want is for Daniel and Jupiter to attend a couple’s counselling session together.’

‘You’re kidding me, right?’

‘No, not at all.’

‘They’re seven. And they’re not a couple.’

‘It’s a figure of speech, Mr Swift. A forum where they can air their grievances aloud. Jupiter’s parents like to talk, you see. They talk a lot. They never stop talking, if you follow my meaning.’

‘And what if I say no?’ asked Maurice. ‘What if I say that I don’t like the idea of my son seeing a shrink at such a young age?’

‘Well, that would be entirely up to you, of course,’ said Mrs Lane, picking up a fountain pen from her desk and removing the cap before tapping the nib against a piece of blotting paper in what Maurice took to be a nervous gesture. ‘But my advice would be to go ahead with the session, if only to appease them. I can’t imagine it would do any harm and it might do a lot of good. After that, I expect the entire matter will be put to bed.’

‘Fine,’ said Maurice, who had no particular opinion on psychotherapy one way or the other but was happy to do what was necessary if it meant that he could leave her office soon. ‘One session?’

‘One session, yes. It might be useful for Daniel, anyway,’ she added, and Maurice could tell that she was choosing her words carefully now because her speech pattern had slowed down and she wasn’t looking him in the eye. ‘One wonders, after all, where he picked up such behaviour.’

‘Like you said,’ said Maurice. ‘From TV. Or a movie. Although I don’t allow him a lot of screen time and he never really wants any. We’re readers in our family.’

‘That’s good. Yes, Miss Willow says that Daniel loves books. And that he’s a very good writer too.’

‘He has a terrific imagination,’ said Maurice. ‘I don’t know where he gets it from.’

‘Well, you, most likely,’ she replied. ‘You’re a writer, aren’t you?’

He didn’t reply.

Discomfited, she hesitated, replacing the cap on her fountain pen and returning it to a stand with holes for a dozen more, almost all of which were empty. ‘There’s nothing going on at home that you’d like to discuss with me?’

Maurice smiled. It was obvious what she was getting at. ‘I don’t hit him, if that’s what you’re getting at,’ he said. ‘I’ve never laid a finger on the boy.’

‘I wasn’t suggesting that you had. And Daniel hasn’t witnessed any violence against women, I suppose?’

‘I’m a widower, Mrs Lane,’ said Maurice. ‘I thought you knew that.’

‘I do. But am I correct in thinking that Daniel’s mother died many years ago?’

‘No, that’s not correct.’

‘It’s not?’ she said, frowning. ‘But in your file, it says that—’

‘My late wife wasn’t Daniel’s mother,’ he explained. ‘Daniel was conceived through a surrogate after Edith died. I wanted a child but didn’t want to share my life with a woman and, as my career began to take off around the same time, I did what I had to do in order to become a father.’

‘I see,’ said Mrs Lane, looking as if she wanted to extract every juicy detail that could be offered but was uncertain whether she could ask or not. ‘That was very selfless of you, Mr Swift.’

‘No it wasn’t,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘Had I gone to an orphanage in China or India and rescued a baby from a life of poverty, then that would have been selfless. But I didn’t do that. I paid a woman a lot of money to carry a baby for me and hand him over the moment he was born, then disappear from our lives. It was an entirely selfish act in some ways but one that I was happy to commit.’

Mrs Lane’s mouth opened and closed like a fish’s.

‘So, going back to your original question, I presume you were asking whether I have girlfriends over to stay and, if I do, whether I smack them around. Perhaps you’re wondering whether it’s a sexual fetish on my part and Daniel has had the misfortune of walking into my bedroom in the middle of the night to find some woman naked on my bed and me fucking her from behind while she’s tied up? No, would be the answer to all such queries. I don’t have girlfriends and I don’t expose my son to anything like that. That part of my life has been over since before we came to New York. My writing and my son are all that I need.’

‘That must be…’ Mrs Lane searched for the right word. ‘You must have loved your wife very much,’ she said. ‘To swear off all other women after her death. Particularly when you’re so… so…’

‘So what?’ he asked, smiling a little.

‘Well you’re a… you’re not an unattractive man, Mr Swift. Obviously, I don’t mean anything by that. I’m a happily married woman.’

‘You’ve gone quite red,’ he said.

‘It’s the heat.’

Maurice smiled again.

‘But don’t you get lonely?’ she asked, leaning forward.

‘No. Why, do you?’

Mrs Lane’s expression changed suddenly and her cheeks flushed even more. ‘I mean… no,’ she said. ‘I have… there’s so much to keep me occupied, what with… And Mr Lane has his business and—’

‘People seem to think that a life is worthless unless it’s shared with someone,’ said Maurice with a sigh. ‘But why must that be the case? I’ve been married, I know what the experience is like, and while there were certainly times when it was pleasurable there were just as many times when I wished that I was alone, not answerable to anyone, not needing to account for my every movement throughout the day. When Edith died, I promised myself that I would never get involved with anyone again. I don’t much like women, if I’m honest. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not some tragic misogynist. I don’t much like men either. I’m an equal-opportunities hater, so to speak. And as for sex, well, it never really interested me, not even when I was young. I could never quite see the point of it, if I’m honest. And, you’ll forgive me for sounding immodest, but I know that I’m good-looking. Throughout my life, both men and women have made their interest in me obvious. But I can’t control any of that. It was simply the way I was born. Ultimately, it means nothing. I could have a heart of stone for all they know. I could be a psychopath or a sociopath. Not all monsters look like the Elephant Man, and not everyone who looks like the Elephant Man is a monster. So I don’t really think about sex that often, although, strangely enough, it’s very present in my work. Have you read any of my novels, Mrs Lane?’

The principal stared at him, barely registering that he had asked her a question, and swallowed hard, looking down at the notebook before her and smoothing its pages with trembling hands.

‘I read your most recent one,’ she said. ‘When I realized who Daniel’s father was I went to Barnes &—’

‘The Broken Ones.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, that novel doesn’t have very much sex in it at all,’ admitted Maurice. ‘But then, if you’ve read it, you know that. Anyway,’ he smiled, slapping his hands down on his knees so loudly that he made her jump, ‘I shouldn’t keep talking about myself like this. It sounds as if it’s me who needs the services of a counsellor and not my son.’

Mrs Lane said nothing, and he took pleasure from seeing how uncomfortable he had made her. It was reassuring to know that he still had this sort of power over people.

‘So is that everything?’ he asked, standing up. ‘Or was there something else you wanted to discuss with me?’

‘No,’ said Mrs Lane, remaining seated. ‘No, that was it. You may leave.’

‘Thank you,’ he said, laughing a little at the manner of his dismissal.

‘I’ll email you details of a psychologist that the school recommends,’ she said as he turned away. ‘And you and Mr and Mrs Dell can liaise on that. I think you’ll find them very accommodating. Believe me, if Daniel had to hit a girl, then Jupiter was probably the best one to hit.’

When he opened the door he smiled when he saw a small, seven-year-old boy sitting on a chair outside, his legs swinging in the air, his hands pressed together as if in prayer.

‘Am I in trouble?’ asked Daniel, looking up. Not for the first time, it struck Maurice how beautiful he was.

A fresh collection of manuscripts had arrived at home from the Storī office and Maurice piled them up on the coffee table. There looked to be about twenty in total, the usual amount selected for his evaluation, whittled down by the interns from the three hundred or so that arrived unsolicited every month. Having got past those merciless gatekeepers, each one should, in theory, have something to recommend it and, as he was judicious in his reading, it typically took him the best part of a week to get through them, pulling out the wittiest and most perceptive dialogue, the most ingenious plot lines and arresting images, and entering each one into a file on his computer. He’d pick four or five to publish too, of course, but send letters to the rejected authors, signed by a fictitious employee, apologizing that, due to time constraints and the pressures of writing a new novel, Mr Swift had not personally had an opportunity to read their submission – it was important that he should make this clear in case of any future problems – but that the editorial team at Storī had considered their work and decided it was not quite right for them at this time. Generally, he assumed, the writers would be so pleased to have received even an acknowledgement of their writing that their disappointment would be salved and they would set the piece aside for ever, believing that it just wasn’t good enough.

The pile arrived four times a year and there was often very little in it worth stealing, but once in a while he came across a moment of brilliance that justified his decision to set up the magazine in the first place. His fourth novel, for example, The Breach, had been constructed around two different ideas that he’d discovered in stories by an American and a Chinese-American writer. Combining them into one, and using a central character that he created himself as the link between the pair, he’d managed to build a novel that had been highly praised upon publication and sold even more copies than The Tribesman, which of course was always going to do well after it was shortlisted for The Prize. His most recent book, The Broken Ones, published three years earlier, in 2008, had found its origin in a story written by a nineteen-year-old Viennese student that recounted a couple’s visit to Paris on the eve of their twentieth wedding anniversary, where an unexpected infidelity took place in a restaurant. (He had changed the setting to Israel, the wedding anniversary to a birthday, the restaurant to a museum, and when combined with a comic character he purloined from the work of a young British writer, the book had once again been a commercial and critical hit.) He’d been putting off starting a new book for a while now as he hadn’t found the right idea yet, and had been rather looking forward to receiving this group of submissions, hoping that there might be something in there that would be worth appropriating as his own.

The sound of a door opening to his left made him turn around, and he watched as Daniel walked towards him. The boy was wearing his favourite Spider-Man pyjamas and carrying a furry animal of no obvious species. He smelled of the lavender bubble-bath that he’d been splashing around in only an hour before and he was carrying his blue Ventolin inhaler. His asthma had been particularly aggressive lately and he’d had to spend ten minutes sitting quietly when they got home, taking puff after puff, before the congestion in his lungs cleared.

‘Feeling better?’ asked Maurice as the boy jumped up on to the sofa next to him, leaning over to bury his body into his father’s side. Maurice held him close, kissing him on the top of his head, breathing in his scent.

‘If I say sorry to Jupiter tomorrow, will I still have to go to see the doctor?’ asked Daniel, sounding a little less anxious about that particular ordeal than he had when they’d arrived home. There had been tears then and a declaration that he shouldn’t have to be kissed if he didn’t want to be, a sentiment that Maurice thought was actually rather fair.

‘I think so,’ said Maurice. ‘Otherwise this could all end up in a big drama that neither of us needs. I’m sure the doctor will be very nice, anyway.’

‘Will she use a needle?’ he asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The doctor. Will she use a needle when she sees me? I don’t like needles.’

Maurice shook his head. ‘She’s not that type of doctor,’ he said. ‘There’ll be nothing like that. All you’ll do is talk to her, that’s all. And then it will be over.’

Daniel frowned, his expression suggesting that he couldn’t believe you could attend a doctor with no pain being involved, just conversation.

‘I didn’t like it when she kissed me,’ said the boy.

‘I never really cared for it much either,’ said Maurice. ‘But you can’t go around committing random acts of violence when people do things you don’t like. You should have just told her not to do it again.’

‘Everyone was laughing at me,’ whispered Daniel.

Maurice hugged him again and looked down at the perfect feet and toes emerging from the ends of his son’s pyjamas. He had always expected to feel unadulterated love for a child, if he ever had one, but things hadn’t quite worked out that way. He was terribly fond of Daniel, certainly, but the boy irritated him as often as he pleased him. He was always there, was the problem. Hanging around. Needing food, toys or new clothes. Saying that it was time to go to school or to be picked up again. It was endless harassment. Maurice did his best to keep an even temper with the boy – he was just a child, after all, and he recognized that – but still, he looked forward to the day that he turned eighteen and was heading off to college. He might get his life back then.

The idea of using a surrogate had come to him on the night that he’d been shortlisted for The Prize, which, to his immense disappointment, he’d lost out on to an old rival, Douglas Sherman. He’d been thinking about what to do with the sudden influx of royalties and made an appointment with a solicitor later that same week in order to get the ball rolling. Six months later, a young Italian girl working as a chambermaid in a Central London hotel was pregnant with his child and there had been no trouble whatsoever during the pregnancy or the birth. Although the legal agreement had been tight, he had naturally worried that the woman might have second thoughts once the baby was born, but no, she had kept to her part of the bargain and disappeared from his life the moment he took Daniel home from the hospital.

It hadn’t been easy at first, of course. He had no experience of babies and had to rely on books for most of his knowledge. But Daniel had not been a difficult infant, sleeping through the night almost from the start and apparently happy to lie in his crib, reaching up for the toys that swung from a mobile above him, as long as Maurice was in his sight-lines, which he always was, since he worked from home in those early years, only spending more time at the Storī office after Daniel started kindergarten. They’d travelled to international literary festivals together, where other writers seemed charmed by the image of this handsome novelist, hugely successful at a young age, going everywhere with a small boy in tow. It helped that Daniel liked books too, as he was content to sit reading while his father offered himself up for endless interviews or took part in public events.

‘Why did you slap her, anyway?’ he asked now, and the boy shrugged.

‘I told you. Because she kissed me.’

‘No, I know that,’ said Maurice. ‘I mean, why was that your reaction? Violence. Striking out. When have you ever seen people behave in that way? No one has ever hit you, have they?’

The boy paused for a few moments, and Maurice wondered whether he was trying to decide whether or not to tell the truth.

‘Sometimes in school,’ he said eventually, letting out a deep sigh as he looked down at the floor.

‘A teacher?’

‘No,’ said Daniel, shaking his head.

‘Who then?’

‘No one.’

‘Come on,’ urged Maurice. ‘Tell me.’

‘Just some of the boys in my class.’

‘Which boys?’

‘I don’t want to say.’

Maurice frowned. He didn’t want to push him, but if Daniel was being bullied, then he wanted to get to the bottom of it.

‘Please, Daniel. You can tell me. Maybe I can make it stop.’

‘James,’ said Daniel, after a lengthy pause during which he snuffled a few times and looked as if he might start to cry. ‘And William.’

‘But I thought you got along with them? You sit beside James in class, don’t you?’

‘Yes, but he doesn’t like me.’

‘Why not?’

‘He says I’m a freak.’

Fuck him, the little fucking shit, thought Maurice. But, ‘You’re not a freak,’ he said.

‘He says I am.’

‘Then he’s an idiot.’

‘It’s because I don’t like playing with them,’ he continued.

‘Why not?’ asked Maurice.

‘Because every time they play someone always ends up going to the nurse’s office with blood pouring from their nose. And they say I never speak either. They say I’m scared.’

‘And is that why they hit you?’

‘I don’t know,’ he replied with a shrug. ‘They say it’s just a game.’

‘Well, it seems like a stupid game to me,’ said Maurice, and Daniel looked up at him now, wounded by the irritation in his father’s voice. ‘Just stay away from them from now on, all right?’ he continued. ‘You’re only seven years old, after all. I don’t want you acting like you’re in Fight Club.’

‘What’s Fight Club?’

‘It doesn’t matter. Just don’t let your friends hit you, and don’t you hit anyone either. Especially not the girls. We got lucky this time, there’s no lawsuit, but remember, this is America. People here will sue you just for looking at them the wrong way in the street and, if they find out that we have a little money, then they’ll try to find a way to take it off us.’

‘Are we rich?’ asked Daniel.

‘We’re comfortable. You don’t have to worry, put it that way. But we’re nowhere near as rich as most people who live in this city. So we have to hold on to what’s ours and not let anyone steal it from us. Okay?’

The boy nodded. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Stealing is bad.’

Maurice smiled. ‘Stealing is very bad,’ he agreed. ‘Only really bad people take things that don’t belong to them. Now, it’s time for bed, don’t you think?’

Henry Rowe had been new to the school that year. His family were originally from Belfast, Catholics who lived on the junction where the Falls Road met Iveagh Drive, but his mother, sister and he had relocated to Harrogate in 1980 to escape the Troubles. Even though he’d heard reports on the news of the bombing campaign in England and was vaguely aware of the hunger strikes taking place in the H-Block of the Maze Prison, Maurice had almost no interest in what was taking place on the island next to his own and, at fourteen, the concept of death, such a distant and other-worldly idea, bored him. Politics, he believed, was for other people and while he longed to be set free from the daily tedium of his home life, he had scant interest in the causes that his peers wore, quite literally, like badges of honour on their school uniforms. Only when the rumour went around that Henry Rowe’s father had been murdered by the IRA for betraying them was Maurice’s interest piqued. That would make a good idea for a story, he thought: a teenage boy, forced to relocate to a strange country, gradually begins to understand his father’s criminal past. He might have been out of step with his classmates when it came to their political concerns but Maurice already knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life, which was more than most of them could claim.

‘A writer?’ his dad had said when he first told him his plans. ‘You’ve more chance of winning the World Cup for England. You have to come from London if you want to write books. Have a fancy education and all that.’

‘Not every writer comes from London,’ said Maurice, rolling his eyes at the parochial nature of his father’s worldview. He’d never read a book in his life, as far as he knew, and barely worked his way through the local newspaper once a week. ‘D. H. Lawrence’s dad worked at Brinsley Colliery. Isherwood came from Derbyshire. William Golding’s from Cornwall.’

‘That D. H. Lawrence only wrote filth,’ replied his father. ‘Naked men wrestling with each other and posh pieces having it off with the gamekeeper. Queer stuff, if you ask me. Written for poofters with fancy ideas. I’ll not have any of it in the house.’

‘You’ll be a plumber, like your dad,’ said his mother. ‘That’s good honest work, that is.’

‘I’ll not,’ said Maurice, and meant it.

He was popular in school, of course, because despite being a bookworm, he was good-looking, which somehow made the other boys want to be his friend, even if they didn’t quite understand why. The teachers liked him too – he was one of the students with whom they tried to ingratiate themselves – and he’d only found himself in trouble once, when it was discovered that he’d plagiarized a history essay from a book he borrowed from the local library, an offence that resulted in a week’s suspension. There were boys who wanted to know him better, to get closer to him, but he was essentially a loner and kept others at a distance. Until Henry arrived, that is.

Even now, thirty years later, he could still remember the moment when the boy walked through the classroom door for the first time, a few steps behind the headmaster, Dr Webster, to be introduced to his new classmates. He was tall and lean with brown hair that both fell into his eyes and stood up above his head. When he opened his mouth to tell the class his name and what had brought him to Harrogate, the room broke into uncontrollable laughter at his strong Northern Irish accent and Henry’s face had betrayed a mixture of anger, humiliation and confusion at how they mocked him. He looked around the room, disconcerted by this unruly and vaguely threatening group of strangers with whom he would be spending his days, until his eyes met Maurice’s, the only boy who wasn’t laughing. Maurice tilted his head a little, a sort of greeting, and Henry stared back, his tongue peeping out from between his lips, unable to look away.

They formed an alliance of sorts, spending time in each other’s houses after school and at weekends, and it was while they were in Maurice’s room one Saturday afternoon, listening to a Kate Bush cassette and discussing how much they both despised the school football captain, that Henry tried to kiss him. Kate was singing about Kashka from Baghdad, who lived in sin with another man, when he turned to his friend and pressed his lips against his own, his hand reaching up to press itself flat against the other boy’s shirt. Maurice had been expecting something of this sort to happen but was surprised that there had been no lead-up to the moment. He’d never been kissed before, had never made a pass at any girl or boy, nor had he ever felt any particular desire to do so. It was something he’d wondered about from time to time, this curious lack of interest in sex. In moments of experimentation, he’d looked at pornographic magazines but had found himself entirely unaroused by the tragic expressions on the girls’ faces as they spread their legs or pressed their breasts out towards the camera. In the school showers, after games, he’d surreptitiously examined the naked bodies of his classmates and felt no particular desire for them either. When he masturbated, it was solely for the pleasure of touching himself, for the trembling ecstasy of the orgasm, but it seemed unnecessary to him to share the experience with anyone else and he did not see the faces of others in his fantasies, only his own.

Now, however, with Henry pushing him back against the bed, he felt willing to investigate the moment a little in order to examine what effect an intimacy such as this might have on him. He could write about it afterwards, he thought, in a story. Most writers wrote about sex, didn’t they? Even those, like Forster, for whom carnality in their private lives seemed unimportant. One of his favourite writers, Aldous Huxley, had said that experience is not what happens to a man, it is what a man does with what happens to him, and this was surely an experience, the body of another fifteen-year-old-boy lying above his own, his tongue in his mouth, his unfamiliar erection pressing against his thigh through the fabric of his clothes.

‘What can I do?’ asked Henry, pulling away for a moment, his face red, his entire body pulsating with desire as he looked down at his friend with such longing in his eyes that Maurice began to realize just how much power he already had. ‘What will you let me do?’

‘Tell me about Belfast,’ he replied, and Henry pushed himself up on his elbows, frowning, uncertain that he’d heard him right.

‘What?’ he asked, running his hand down Maurice’s shirt and releasing it from his trousers, tentatively opening a couple of buttons, his palm against the boy’s navel and firmly muscled stomach.

‘Belfast,’ he repeated. ‘What was it like over there?’

Henry shook his head and leaned down to kiss him again, but Maurice pushed him away, sitting up on the bed and re-buttoning his shirt. ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Tell me the stories. I’m interested. I want to know.’

And Henry, confused and disappointed, his body crackling with hormones, sat up and stared at the carpet, trembling in bewilderment. ‘What do you want to know?’ he asked.

‘Anything,’ said Maurice. ‘Did you ever see anyone get shot?’

Henry nodded. ‘Once,’ he said. ‘Outside a petrol station in Ardoyne.’

‘Tell me about it,’ whispered Maurice. ‘Tell me everything you saw and everything you heard and then I’ll let you do some more.’

And, of course, he did.

They were in Maurice’s house when it happened next, watching television, his parents having gone to Cardiff to visit a dying relative. Maurice was enjoying the tension as they sat together on the sofa and only when Henry reached across and took his hand did he feel a little unsettled at being the focus of so much obvious desire. Why don’t I feel the same way? he asked himself. Why don’t I feel it for anyone? Could there be a story there?

‘You’re so fuckin’ gorgeous,’ said Henry, leaning forward, and Maurice not only permitted himself to be kissed again but he kissed back, his tongue exploring his friend’s mouth, a new sensation that was neither unpleasant nor arousing. Soon, they were upstairs, lying on his bed, and again Henry asked what he was allowed to do. Sensing that he needed to allow the burning boy more freedom than last time, he shrugged and said, Anything you like, and Henry, with an expression that suggested he couldn’t quite believe his luck, unzipped Maurice’s trousers and took his cock into his mouth. Maurice closed his eyes and enjoyed the feeling but his mind wasn’t fully engaged with it. Would Henry tell him another story when he was finished or was this all a waste of time?

He came, and Henry looked up at him, smiling in delight, and Maurice smiled back, only mildly embarrassed. He could only imagine how ridiculous they looked.

‘My turn,’ said Henry, unbuckling his belt and pulling his trousers down.

Maurice looked at him and then stared at the boy’s cock, feeling no particular repulsion at the idea of sucking him but no great desire to do so either. He reached down and touched his penis tentatively, running his index finger along the shaft as Henry closed his eyes and groaned in pleasure.

‘Another story first,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll do it.’

And so it went on, week after week for almost two months, the two boys finding opportunities to be alone together when Henry could indulge his desires and Maurice could hear tales of the boy’s life before coming to England. His father, he revealed, had not been shot by the IRA as the boys in school believed. In fact, he’d died of nothing more imaginative than a heart attack, although he had, the boy claimed, been a member of the organization for many years and men in balaclavas had shown up at the funeral, acting as pallbearers as they carried the tricolour-adorned coffin to the grave. He talked about what it was like to hear shootings in the night, how a teenage boy from down the street had been kneecapped for an unexplained crime of which he had sworn his innocence, how a mother had gone missing after a visit to a local church, how a family had gone into hiding after becoming informers. It wasn’t to Maurice’s taste, most of it, but he wrote it all down and found a way to turn the boy’s disconnected memories into a coherent narrative. It seemed that all he had to do was continue to give Henry orgasms and his story would eventually be completed. It seemed like a worthwhile trade to him.

They made their mistake when Henry’s lust overcame him in school one lunchtime and, as Maurice was coming to the end of his story anyway, he decided to indulge him by taking him to a cluster of trees in the corner of the school, a shaded area that the other pupils usually avoided, and stood against a tree, his trousers around his ankles as the Irish boy fucked him from behind. Their minds were on separate things – sex and stories – which explained why they didn’t hear one of their teachers approach.

The headmaster, Dr Webster, was informed, but he waited until the end of the day before summoning the boys to his office, where he told them that they could be expelled for what they had done, that their deeds were so shameful they should be sent to a young offenders’ institution, but that he was willing to take pity on their youth, promising not to tell their parents if they agreed to end their friendship immediately and stay away from each other in future. Readily, they agreed, but it was then that the headmaster explained that there could be no forgiveness without punishment and that if they wanted to leave his office with their souls washed clean then they would have to do as he said. He walked towards the cabinet by his desk where he kept a two-foot-long cane and removed it, running his finger along the side of the oak with obvious pleasure.

‘Trousers down,’ he told them. ‘Bend over the desk.’

The boys obeyed and, as he beat them, Maurice counted the number of the strokes by working his eyes along the lines of the abacus propped up on the headmaster’s windowsill. There were ten rows and he counted them all off, and then half again, before it was over.

‘Now,’ said Dr Webster, his eyes alert as the boys turned around. ‘Let me see what you filthy little bastards do to each other anyway. First you,’ he said, nodding towards Maurice. ‘And then you,’ he said to Henry.

There were no more stories after that. Henry kept his distance, humiliated and frightened by the events of that day, and whenever Maurice approached him he turned on his heels and fled. Only when Maurice knocked on his door one night and demanded to be heard did the boy let him in.

‘I don’t want to any more,’ said Henry, unable to look him in the eye.

‘But my story isn’t finished,’ complained Maurice.

‘What story?’

‘Just… let’s go upstairs. To your room. You can do whatever you want to me. Just tell me more about Belfast. Tell me what you saw, what you heard, what you—’

But Henry shook his head and pushed him back on to the street, looking around as if he feared that Dr Webster would be out there somewhere, watching them. Maurice tried several more times, but to no avail, and the piece remained unfinished.

What a waste of time, he thought, unable to find a way to complete it to his satisfaction and leaving it unfinished in a drawer. I won’t make that mistake again.

After they left the psychologist’s office, Maurice and Daniel decided to go for ice-cream. It had taken them almost fifteen minutes to break free of the Dells, who had been suggesting playdates and trips to the zoo together, despite the fact that Daniel clearly disliked their daughter and Jupiter, feigning victimhood, had already turned her attentions to another boy.

Maurice was glad the ordeal was behind them. The doctor had been young, no more than twenty-eight or twenty-nine, with that good-looking Brooklyn hipster vibe that had recently begun to grate on him. There was an effortlessness to the way the boy dressed, to his unkempt hair and white teeth, that made Maurice feel of lesser importance, and when both of Jupiter’s parents had fallen over themselves to laugh at his jokes he felt, for the first time in his life, as if he was not the most attractive person in the room. He wasn’t entirely uncomfortable with this idea – he knew that he’d always be good-looking and people would always be drawn to him – but still, he wasn’t sure he was ready to give up his throne just yet. And certainly not to some clown in a J. Crew T-shirt, a sweater vest and vintage brogues.

Strolling past Barnes & Noble on East 17th Street now, close to where the Storī offices were located, Maurice glanced in the window and saw a display of Beyond the River by Garrett Colby, and his heart gave him a kick of resentment in his chest. It was the film tie-in edition, for Garrett’s third book had not only been adapted by a famous Danish theatre director making his first foray into cinema, but the film had gone on to win several Academy Awards at the most recent ceremony, including an acting prize for a young man with whom Garrett was now in a heavily publicized romance.

‘I used to know that guy,’ Maurice said, looking down at his son, who was kicking his heels on the pavement, wishing they could move on to the ice-cream portion of the afternoon. ‘Years ago. Back in England. He wrote stories about talking animals.’

Daniel looked up, interested now, for talking animals were a particular favourite of his, particularly if they had some prehistoric element to them. ‘Were they good?’ he asked.

‘They weren’t bad,’ admitted Maurice.

‘Can we go in and get them?’

‘They weren’t children’s books,’ said Maurice, shaking his head. ‘But maybe you’ll get to read them when you’re older.’

‘Can I get something else then?’ asked Daniel, and Maurice nodded. He never denied the boy a book and considered it rude to leave a bookshop without making a purchase. And so they stepped inside, the soft music and smell of new hardcovers giving Maurice that instant hit of belonging he’d felt all his life whenever he walked into such places. Daniel immediately made his way towards the children’s section – this was their local bookshop and he knew its every nook and cranny intimately – and Maurice watched him for a moment before picking up Garrett’s book from the table and reading the author biography.

‘Mr Colby is one of the most exciting young writers at work today,’ it concluded, and Maurice rolled his eyes, recognizing the third-person biography that had clearly been written by the author himself. Supercilious little shit, he thought.

He returned it to the table, then picked up a novel by another writer, Jonas Ramsfjeld, before placing it on top of Garrett’s. He’d read his novel Spiegeltent some years before and admired it and the two writers had read together at a festival in Listowel once and got along quite well, which had surprised Maurice, as he tended not to like other writers very much. Ramsfjeld was gay and handsome and, after spending an evening together, drinking in the hotel bar, Maurice had expected him to make a pass at him, but it had never happened. When he’d gone to bed that night, he’d almost regretted it. Now, it crossed his mind to wonder how many students from Edith’s class had gone on to secure publishing deals in the ten years since her death.

He made his way towards the New Fiction section, where he recognized books by people he knew, people with whom he’d read at festivals, people he’d reviewed both well and badly for various publications. And then, just as he was about to take down a new edition of Maude Avery’s Like to the Lark, which had been re-published in a hardback series of her novels, each with a jacket designed by Tracey Emin, he noticed a familiar face staring out from the non-fiction titles, the younger version of a man he had once known very well.

It was a biography of Dash Hardy, the first, as far as he knew, that had been written about the American writer. The author’s name was unfamiliar to him. And the book itself was almost six hundred pages long, which suggested that it was an exhaustive account of the writer’s life. Did Dash merit such a work? he wondered. Gore did, certainly. And Erich, probably. But Dash? Hadn’t he turned into something of a second-tier writer by the end?

He took the book down and moved directly to the index at the back, running his finger down the names. To be included ran the risk of something negative being said but to be ignored would be wounding. But no, there he was, Maurice Swift, 131, 284. Just two entries and not spread across multiple pages. He flicked to the first, where the author mentioned Maurice’s initial encounter with Dash in the Prado all those years ago and how a friendship had struck up between them.

Well, that was true enough, he reasoned. Nothing libellous there, although in fact he had only lived with Dash for nine months, so there was an error there. And what did ‘one or two boys of his type’ mean?

He flicked to the index for the other entry and then to here, where, despite quickly scanning the page, he could find no mention of his name. He turned back to here and then forward to here, but no, there was nothing there either, and he frowned, wondering whether another mistake had been made. But just to be certain, he began to read here in its entirety and came across this line, which appeared in an interview with Edmund White:

Maurice slammed the book shut, causing some of the other shoppers to turn and look in his direction. He hadn’t been named, of course, so it was unlikely that he could sue, but the page reference in the index confused him. Of course, he realized, after a moment. His name must have been originally part of the Edmund White quote, and indexed, but then the lawyers must have taken it out before publication, forgetting to remove the reference at the back. He was almost amused by their stupidity. But was it worth pursuing? He couldn’t decide. He would have to acknowledge that the description was one that fitted him and he wasn’t sure he wanted to do that.

A moment later, Daniel returned with a brightly coloured paperback and Maurice took it, along with the Dash biography and the Maude Avery novel, to the till before walking hand in hand with him towards Union Square Park, where they sat on a bench, eating ice-creams.

‘When you’re older,’ said Maurice, ‘and you think back on this morning, don’t blame me too much for it, all right? It was only an hour of your life, and it’s saved us both a lot of grief. I’m proud of you for going along with it.’

‘Blame you for what?’ asked Daniel, who had seemed to rather enjoy telling a stranger all the details of his day-to-day pedagogical life and the sexual harassment that he’d suffered from a girl whose attentions he had never encouraged.

‘Blame me for anything,’ replied Maurice. ‘There’s a good chance that, when you’re a teenager and complaining about how I’ve ruined your life, you’ll bring this up and say that it all started here.’

Daniel shrugged; he wasn’t interested. His breath caught a little and he reached into his bag for his inhaler, taking a quick puff. Maurice sat quietly, his sunglasses resting on his nose, watching the people go by. One of his own interns marched past, oblivious to his presence on the bench, while reading something on his phone. He was carrying a luxurious brown saddle bag over his shoulder and Maurice wondered how the boy could afford it – it was an expensive brand – but then recalled that his mother was on the board of the New York Ballet and so, presumably, he came from money.

And then, to his dismay, he noticed Henrietta James walking in his direction, still covered in multiple layers of clothing, as if she were about to embark for the Arctic, and before he could tell the boy that it was time to go she’d spotted him too and was waving manically at him, as if trying to generate her own electricity with her arms.

‘Hello, you,’ she said, grinning like the cat who’d got the cream.

‘Henrietta,’ he said, standing up to kiss her on both cheeks. ‘How nice to see you!’

‘And who’s this?’ she asked, looking down at Daniel, who barely glanced up from his ice-cream.

‘This is my son,’ said Maurice. ‘Daniel.’

‘How charming!’ she said. ‘I’ll join you for a few minutes, if you don’t mind,’ she added, not waiting for an answer as she sat down. ‘I need to rest. It’s been a horrendous day. My publisher emailed me the proposed jacket for I Am Dissatisfied with My Boyfriend, My Body and My Career and it was so awful that I came all the way downtown to tell her exactly what I thought of it. I might not have been as polite as I could have been and we left things on a rather sour note. Lashings of apologies to make later, I daresay.’

‘Well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out,’ said Maurice.

‘What an adorable little boy,’ she said, smiling a little as she reached a hand out to ruffle Daniel’s hair, but when he looked up and narrowed his eyes, emitting a low growling sound from the back of his throat like a threatened animal, she changed her mind and made a hasty retreat.

‘Is he staying with you for the summer?’ she asked, and now it was Maurice’s turn to frown, uncertain what she meant, before realizing that she probably assumed he was divorced.

‘No, he lives with me,’ said Maurice.

‘Oh. And your… partner? Your…?’

‘My wife died some years ago,’ he said, a non-sequitur, of course, since Edith had borne no relationship to Daniel, but he had no intention of getting into the intricacies of his life with an author he barely knew and didn’t much like.

‘Maurice, I’m so sorry,’ she replied, lowering her voice. ‘I had no idea.’

‘And now you do.’

‘It’s a bit like Kramer vs Kramer, isn’t it?’ she said.

‘How so?’

‘You know, when Meryl Streep walks out on Dustin Hoffman and he doesn’t know how to cope at first with the little boy. He can barely even cook dinner. But then they form a connection that’s been missing since he was born and, when Meryl comes back, Dustin doesn’t want to give the child up and they have the most frightful rows.’

Maurice stared at her, wondering how someone so stupid could have publishers begging for her work. ‘As I said, my wife died,’ he said quietly. ‘So I don’t think she’s going to show up demanding custodial rights any time soon.’

‘No, I suppose not,’ said Henrietta, who didn’t look entirely convinced that this would be the case. ‘Oh, by the way, I meant to tell you. I sold that story.’

‘Which story?’

‘The one you rejected.’

‘I didn’t reject it, Henrietta,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I simply passed on it for now as I didn’t think it was a good fit for our next issue.’

‘That sounds a lot like semantics to me, which is unworthy of you. You hated it. Just be honest and tell the truth.’

The same thing, thought Maurice.

‘All right, fine,’ he said, throwing his hands in the air. ‘You’re right. I hated it.’

Henrietta sat back in her chair in shock, as if he’d just pulled a gun on her or told her that he’d impregnated her mother. ‘That’s a little rude, isn’t it?’ she asked.

‘Well, you’re so insistent on the point that it seems easier to agree with you than anything else.’

‘So you didn’t hate it, then?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, smiling a little. ‘What do you think?’

She stared at him, looking as if she was torn between annoyance and laughter, but finally gave in to the latter, slapping his knee sharply.

‘You shouldn’t hit people,’ said Daniel, sitting up straight.

‘I beg your pardon?’ she said.

‘Don’t hit people!’ he insisted, and Henrietta looked from father to son in bewilderment.

‘She didn’t mean anything by it,’ said Maurice, looking at the boy. ‘But he’s right, Henrietta, you shouldn’t hit people. It’s not nice. How would you like it if I hit you?’

The smile faded from her face now. There was nothing in his tone to suggest that he was joking. She waited for him to smile and to say that he was only teasing her and, when he didn’t, when his face remained as still as a block of stone, she shuddered a little and placed both hands on the table, pushing herself into an upright position as if she were morbidly obese and needed assistance.

‘I’d better go,’ she said.

‘Actually,’ said Maurice, reaching into his bag and removing a small camera that he always kept there, ‘before you do, could you do me a favour? I don’t have many pictures of Daniel and me together. Would you take one for me?’

Henrietta seemed slightly bored by the request but took the camera as Maurice put an arm around his son, who was still focussed entirely on eating his ice-cream. Just as she asked them to smile, Maurice tapped the boy on the head lightly so his nose dipped into the tip of the cone, covering it with vanilla, and both father and son burst out laughing.

‘Thanks,’ he said when Henrietta handed the camera back, and she kissed him briefly on the cheek before continuing on her way.

‘I didn’t like her,’ said Daniel when she had gone, and Maurice shrugged.

‘I don’t like her very much either,’ he said. ‘What do you want to do now, anyway? We could go to see a movie, if you like?’

‘Let’s just go home,’ said Daniel, shaking his head. ‘I want to read my new book.’

‘I was hoping you’d say that,’ said Maurice, standing up and taking his son by the hand as they left the park behind. ‘I have twenty short stories waiting for me and I’d better make a start on them if I’m going to figure out what my next novel will be about.’