linger at their table.
‘He has reformed,’ Isobel said. ‘He is a changed man, the leader of a charismatic Christian church.’
‘Television,’ Troy whispered.
‘He’s a television evangelist.’ She improved at once on his hint. ‘He does not recognise her, he welcomes her to join his flock. She has the decision: should she believe in his genuine reform and help him with the wonderful work he is doing with the – ’
‘Homeless children,’ Troy suggested.
‘Homeless abused children,’ Isobel supplemented. ‘Or should she pursue her revenge against him? Is he, in fact, still an evil man, who has just seized power over these helpless children in order to abuse them further? She joins the cult to discover the best way to destroy him, but then she finds that she has fallen completely in love with him. What will she do?’
‘What does she do?’ the waiter demanded. ‘Oh, excuse me!’
Isobel came to herself, tucked back the stray hair, drank a sip of water. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I always have difficulties with the endings,’ she said.
‘My God.’ Troy leaned back in his chair. ‘Isobel, that was fantastic. That is a fantastic story.’
She looked primly pleased. ‘I told you I could do it,’ she said. ‘It is a matter of choice for me – I choose to write well rather than to churn out dross. I have pride in my work. I like to do the very best that there is, not thick books of nonsense.’
The waiter stepped back from the table, the woman at the next table gave Troy a little smile, mouthed the word ‘Fantastic’, and returned her attention to her lunch. Isobel took a sip of wine.
‘But if fine writing doesn’t pay the bills?’ Troy suggested.
There was a long pause. He watched her brightness drain away. She twisted the stem of the wineglass, her face suddenly tired and heavy.
‘I have to consider Philip,’ she said. ‘It’s not just me. If it were just me I could sell the house and reduce my expenses. I would never compromise with my art.’
Troy nodded, concealing a rising sense of excitement. ‘I know that…’
‘But Philip may never get any better, and he may live for many years. I have to provide for him. He was talking only yesterday about converting the house in case he can’t get upstairs.’
The waiter brought their main course and set the plate before Isobel with ostentatious respect. Troy waited until he had reluctantly stepped out of earshot.
‘I thought you said he was fine.’
She smiled, a sad little smile. ‘I always say he’s fine, hadn’t you noticed that? There’s no point in complaining all the time, is there? But it’s not true. He’s ill and he’ll never get any better, and he may get very much worse. I have to provide for him, I have to think about the future. If I were to die before him – who would look after him? How would he manage if I left him with nothing but debts?
Troy nodded. ‘A big commercial book could earn you – I don’t know – a quarter of a million pounds? Perhaps half a million with foreign sales too.’
‘That much?’
‘Certainly £200,000.’
‘Would it be possible for me to write such a book, a commercial book, and no-one know that it was me?’
Of course,’ Troy assured her. ‘A nom de plume. Lots of writers use them.’
Isobel shook her head. ‘I don’t mean a nom de plume. I mean a complete concealment. No-one is ever to know that Isobel Latimer has ever written anything but the finest of writing. I couldn’t bear people to think I would write something so …’ She hesitated and then chose a word which was almost a challenge: ‘So vulgar.’
Troy thought for a moment. ‘We’d have to create a false client account at the agency. A bank account in another name, in the name of the nom de plume. I could be the main signatory, and draw the funds for you.’
She nodded. ‘I’d have to sign the contracts in the false name?’
‘I think you could,’ he said. ‘I’d have to check with the lawyers, but I think you could. It’s the ownership of the manuscript that matters, it’s not as if it’s not your work.’
She gave him a wonderful secretive smile. ‘And I could write an absolutely torrid shocker.’
‘Would you want to do that?’
‘For two hundred thousand pounds I’d do almost anything.’
‘But could you do it? Could you work on it for day after day? The story’s fantastic. But you’d have to write and write. These books are huge, you know, Isobel. They’re not a hundred pages or so like your usual work, they go to seven hundred, a thousand pages. Two hundred thousand words at the very least. You’d have to write in a way you’ve never written before and it would take you at least six months. It’s a long project.’
The look she shot across the table was one of bright determination. He thought he had never seen her so sharp and so focused before. ‘I’m in real trouble,’ she said bluntly. ‘All we own is the house, all that’s coming in is my advances. I was counting on a good sum from Penshurst Press and now you tell me all they want to pay is £20,000. It’s a hard world we live in, isn’t it? If they won’t pay me to write good books, then I’ll just have to write bad.’
‘Can you bear to do it?’ he asked quietly.
Isobel gave him a glance and he realised, for the first time in their long association, that this was a passionate woman. Her frumpy clothes and her faded prettiness had hidden from him that this was a woman capable of deep feelings. She was a woman who had dedicated her life to being in love with her husband. ‘I’d do anything for him,’ she said simply. ‘Writing a bad book is the least of it.’
Isobel was silent on her return from London. When Philip asked if she was well she said that she was a little tired, that she had a headache.
‘Were you drinking at lunchtime?’ he asked disapprovingly.
‘Only a glass of wine.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘That Troy always tires you out,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you just post the manuscript to him? What d’you have to see him for?’
‘He’s amusing,’ she said. ‘I like him.’
‘I suppose he’s a change from me.’
‘It’s not that, darling. I just like to deliver the finished manuscript. It’s a bit of a lift, that’s all.’
‘I’d have thought you had enough to do without becoming a courier service as well,’ he said grudgingly.
‘I do have,’ she said. ‘I’m going to start a new novel at once. I got the idea over lunch.’
‘What will it be about?’
‘Something about the notion of personal responsibility and whether people can genuinely reform,’ she said vaguely.
He gave her an encouraging smile. ‘That sounds a bit like The Dream and the Doing,’ he said, citing one of her earlier books. ‘I always liked that one. I liked the way the heroine had to make a choice not between which man she married, but actually between two contrasting moral systems. It was a very thoughtful book.’
‘Yes, I think it’ll be very like that,’ she said. ‘Are you coming up to bed?’
‘I’ll have a nightcap before I come up.’
Isobel paused. ‘Oh, come up before I fall asleep.’
He smiled. ‘Of course,’ he said evasively.
Since his illness, his desire