gasp but he would not be interrupted. ‘People’s lives are fiction. All autobiographies are fiction. When some supermodel says that what she really wanted to do was to work for charity, when some rich man’s wife writes that she married him for love: it’s fiction. Sportsmen’s autobiographies, ballerinas’ own stories: they tell the truth of their lives as they want it to appear, not what it was really like. We all know it. That’s what we’re selling. Whether the manuscript says “Charity thinks, Charity does” or “I thought, I did” makes no difference.’
Isobel was on to it like a flash. ‘It makes a difference to me! I have to stand by this nonsense and pretend that it is real. I have to say that it was me!’
‘Zelda says: “it was me”, not you. And you were happy to pretend to be her, brought up in France, worked as a secretary, married once, unhappily, parents dead in car crash. Now we pretend as well that she had a sister, that she was entrapped by a cult of Satanists. What difference does it make?’
She hesitated. ‘I’ll have to think about it,’ she said slowly. ‘It does make a difference. There is a difference between fiction and telling lies.’
‘It’s fantasy whichever way you look at it,’ he said. He took a breath, forcing himself to stay calm. From this one morning’s work he stood to earn £20,000. The prestige from being known as Zelda Vere’s agent had already had an impact in the way he was treated by publishers. No-one had ever before returned Troy’s calls within the same day. Overnight he had become a major figure in the publishing scene.
‘Please, Isobel, think,’ he said quietly. ‘The auction is tomorrow. I can’t be seen to let people down. I can’t conduct an auction and then withdraw the book. The auction is a binding agreement. If we’re going to cancel then it has to be by nine o’clock tomorrow morning. And then you’ll have lost everything. You’ll be back where you were when we started. You’ll never again earn enough to live on from your writing, Penshurst simply won’t pay more. And worse than that: you’ve just wasted four months on a novel that you won’t publish. I’ll have wasted a small fortune on Zelda’s clothes. You’ve destroyed my confidence in your work.’
She looked quickly at him and he saw her lower lip quiver. ‘You?’ she asked. ‘I’ve lost you?’
Troy was relentless. ‘I asked you in the cab before we went to Harrods if you were sure. I told you then that it was my reputation as Zelda’s agent that was on the line. I bank rolled you. I said we were in it together. If you pull out now it doesn’t just hurt you and Philip, it’s bad for me too.’
She shook her head as if it were too much for her. He thought for a guilty moment that he was bullying her as persistently as her husband must bully her. Philip must do something like this: intellectual argument and then emotional blackmail. This must be his technique to make her responsible for everything. She was so endearingly vulnerable. She could struggle forever with that sharp, trained intelligence, but she could not tolerate the thought of being abandoned, of losing someone’s love.
He saw her shoulders hunch under the burden he had laid on her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Sorry to appear indecisive. I’ll ring you tonight. I’ll think about it as I go home on the train. I’ll decide by six o’clock.’
He nodded. ‘I hope you decide to take the plunge,’ he said. ‘For the swimming pool, for Zelda, for Philip. I hope you decide to take good money for good work. I’d be really disappointed if you failed at this stage.’
Isobel nodded. He noticed that she did not meet his eyes. ‘I’d better go,’ she said.
There was an odd atmosphere between them as she came from the spare bedroom with her little overnight bag. They were like lovers parting after some mutually unsatisfactory experience. The cramped hall was filled with the atmosphere of mild blame, of dissatisfaction. At the door, on a sudden impulse, Troy put his hand on her waist and at once she turned her face up to his. He leaned forward and kissed her. Extraordinarily, her mouth was warm and inviting under his. She dropped her bag, her hands slid up his arms to his shoulders and then one cool palm pulled his head down to her lips. He kissed her hard, passionately, his irritation dissolving into a surprised desire. She kissed him back and for a moment he did not see her as the tired middle-aged woman, but with his eyes closed in her kiss he imagined that he was touching the golden, languid, arrogant beauty who had sprawled all the morning on his sofa with a high-heeled pink mule swinging, showing the curve of her instep.
Isobel stepped back and they looked at each other, a little breathless. She would have said something but awkwardly, shyly, he opened the front door, and in that moment’s dislocation she slipped away. The door closed behind her and Troy froze, listening to her sensible shoes clumping down the stone steps to the street but hearing in his mind the light feminine skitter of high heels.
On the other side of the door, Isobel stepped into the road and raised a hand for a taxi. ‘Waterloo,’ she said to the driver, her face blank.
She had her hand clamped over her mouth as if to hold the kiss and the power of the kiss inside her. Unprecedentedly, for a woman who was mostly intellect, and often worry, she thought of nothing, nothing at all. She sat back in the seat and stared unseeingly, as the taxi turned in the street and headed south through the early-afternoon traffic. Still she kept her hand over her mouth, still she felt, under the unconscious grip of her fingers, the heat and the power of his kiss.
‘Good talk?’ Philip asked her when she arrived home.
‘Fine,’ she said distractedly. The breakfast things had not been washed up, his soup bowl and bread plate from lunchtime were still on the table along with the litter of Philip’s morning: orange peel, a couple of pens, a rubber band from the post, some empty envelopes, some flyers which had been shed from the newspaper. Isobel looked at the room and the work that needed to be done without weariness, without irritation. She looked at it all with calm detachment, as if it were the kitchen of another woman. It was clearly not the kitchen of a woman who had, this very morning, been offered more than a quarter of a million pounds for a novel, lounged on a sofa like a beauty queen and been passionately kissed.
‘Sorry about the mess,’ Philip said, following her gaze. ‘Mrs M. thought she might go off early after staying overnight and I said: “Yes”. I didn’t quite realise …’
‘That’s all right,’ Isobel said. ‘Won’t take a minute.’
She started to clear the table, watching her hands collecting debris, throwing it in the bin, watching herself stacking plates in the dishwasher, adding dishwasher liquid, still feeling on her lips the scorch of Troy’s touch.
‘Did it go well?’ Philip asked again.
‘Oh yes,’ she said. She heard her voice assemble lies. ‘They were very bright, they asked some interesting questions. Then there was a buffet lunch. I saw Norman Villiers. He was doing the afternoon session. He was well, said some interesting things about Larkin. Then I came home.’
‘You should do that sort of thing more often,’ Philip said generously. ‘It’s certainly done you good. You look quite radiant.’
‘Do I?’ she asked, her interest suddenly sharpened.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Glowing.’
Isobel’s hand stole to her mouth, her fingers covered her lips as if their bruised pinkness would betray her. ‘Well, I did enjoy it,’ she said, her voice very level. ‘There was some talk of a series of lectures. Replacing someone on maternity leave. I didn’t say yes or no, but I would like to think about it.’
‘Surely you don’t want a regular commitment,’ he protested.
‘Just a short series. In a few months’ time,’ she said. ‘I might go up and stay overnight and then come back in the afternoon, like today, once a week.’
He rose from the table and stretched. ‘As you like,’ he said. ‘Makes no difference to me. There were a couple of phone calls. The ansaphone took them. I was outside in the barn. I’ve been measuring up. I marked it out with spray