Read the book: «Zelda’s Cut»

One

The question between them, being unresolvable, remained unresolved. Their irresolution: his and hers, and the intrinsic insolubility of their relationship stood between them like a wall … like a rock … like a …

Isobel broke off from typing and consulted the thesaurus beside her on the desk.

Like a barrier, bastion, bulwark, dyke, rampart … Like an impenetrable bulwark, like an impenetrable bastion, like a bastion, like a rampart …

She hesitated. Her husband put his fair head around the door of her study.

‘Can’t you take a break for lunch now?’ he asked plaintively. She glanced at her watch. It was not yet one o’clock but Philip’s condition meant that he needed regular small meals, and if Isobel failed to provide these, he became hungry and irritable.

‘What has Mrs M. left for us?’ she asked, getting up from her desk and glancing back at the screen, thinking distractedly about soup and barrier, bastion, rampart and bulwark.

‘Soup and bread rolls again,’ he said. ‘But I got her to buy a piece of steak for supper.’

‘Oh good,’ she said, not hearing him.

The kitchen was a pretty room with sprigged curtains and wooden units. The view from the window over the sink looked up the hill at the back of the house, the green shoulder of the Weald of Kent, bright now with springtime growth. Beside the Aga stood a saucepan filled with home-made soup. Philip watched as she put it on the hot plate and took the rolls from the bread bin.

‘I’ll lay the table,’ he volunteered.

When Isobel brought the bowls to the table she found that he had forgotten a knife to cut the cheese, and there was no salt. She fetched them without irritation, her mind still on bastion, rampart or bulwark.

‘You had two phone calls while you were working,’ Philip said. ‘Someone from your publishers, I wrote down the name. And Troy.’

‘What did Troy want?’

‘It’s such a ridiculous name,’ he remarked. ‘D’you think his parents really christened him Troy? Or was he called Trevor and has been trying to live it down ever since?’

‘I like it,’ she said. ‘It suits him.’

‘Never having had the honour, I couldn’t say. But it is a ridiculous name.’

‘Anyway,’ Isobel said patiently. ‘What did he want?’

‘You don’t imagine he’d tell me, do you?’ he demanded. ‘I’m just the messenger boy, the telephone operator. The receptionist at Hotel Literature.’

‘Hotel des Lettres,’ she suggested and was rewarded by the gleam of his smile.

‘Très belle.’

There was a brief silence, he reached across the table and squeezed her hand. ‘Sorry,’ he said briefly.

‘Aches and pains?’ she asked.

‘A bit.’

‘Why not have a lie down?’

‘I have all the rest of my life to lie down,’ he snapped. ‘That’s one of the things I have to look forward to. Progressive disability, or as you would say: a nice lie down. I don’t especially want to rush towards it.’

She bowed her head over the bowl of soup. ‘Of course not,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m sorry.’

Philip put his spoon in his empty bowl and finished his bread. ‘I think I’ll go for my walk,’ he said. ‘Stretch out a bit.’

She glanced outside at the clear skies. Their house was in a fold of the Weald, he had the choice of walking upwards to the crest or downwards to the village.

‘You could walk to the pub and I could drive down to meet you there later,’ she suggested.

‘You mean so I don’t face the challenge of an uphill?’

Isobel was silent.

‘That would be good,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Thank you. In about an hour?’

She nodded.

He got up from his place at the table and sighed with weariness at the effort of having to move. He went to the housekeeping jar which she kept filled with money, and helped himself to a ten-pound note. She watched the money that she had earned slide into the pocket of his slacks.

‘See you later, about two thirty,’ he said, and went out.

Isobel got to her feet and cleared the plates into the dishwasher. For a moment she looked at her face reflected in the window above the sink. She hardly recognised herself. The features were as they had always been, strong bones, large grey eyes, but the skin around her eyes and mouth was crumpled with sadness and disappointment. She paused in her work for a moment, looking at the lines around her eyes and the groove which marked either side of her mouth. She might call them laughter lines; but there had been little laughter in the last three years. In her head she heard Philip say, so sharply: ‘Progressive disability, or as you would say, a nice lie down.’

‘God, what a stupid thing to say.’ She shook her head. ‘What a fool I am.’

She bent and closed the dishwasher door. When she straightened up and saw her mirrored face again she gave the pale reflection a tight, determined smile. ‘I’ll have to try harder,’ she said to her image. ‘I’ll just go on trying.’

Troy on the telephone was always at his best. Isobel was glad to be talking to him without the silent presence of Philip, brooding in the kitchen or walking slowly in the garden.

He answered on the third ring. ‘Troy Cartwright,’ he said warmly.

‘It’s Isobel,’ she said and heard her voice lighten.

‘My star writer!’ he exclaimed. ‘Thanks for calling back. How are you?’

‘I’m well.’

‘And Philip?’

‘He’s fine,’ she said cheerfully.

‘You sound wonderful. How’s the book going?’

‘It’s finished,’ she said. ‘Actually, all except one word.’

‘One?’

‘Yes.’

Troy briefly considered asking her which word, but thought that lay within the area of the writer’s particular talents and outside the remit of her agent.

‘Come out to lunch to celebrate!’ he commanded. ‘I need to be seen out with a beautiful woman.’

Isobel smiled at the thought of Troy Cartwright, slim, mid-thirties, urbane, and living at the heart of fashionable London, needing to be seen lunching with her. ‘Oh, ridiculous.’

‘Not at all. I was looking through my client list for someone who combined brains and beauty and there was no contest.’

Absurdly, she heard herself giggle, an unusual sound in the quiet house. ‘I could deliver the manuscript, I suppose.’

‘Oh please! I so want to see it.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Great. I’ll book a table somewhere expensive.’

She hesitated. ‘It’s not necessary – ’

‘If I am taking Isobel Latimer out to lunch I want the world to know it.’ His voice dropped to a warm caress. ‘So you make sure that you wear something beautiful.’

‘All right,’ she said, surrendering to the pleasure of flattery. ‘I’ll come to your office at one.’

‘I’ll vacuum the red carpet myself,’ he promised.

Philip had walked himself into good humour. He sat in the garden of the pub with a whisky and ice in a glass before him. He waved as Isobel drew up in the Volvo and watched her park and get out of the car. He thought that she looked older than her fifty-two years as she walked across the car park towards him. She was as slim as she had always been, and her glossy chestnut hair had only faded slightly to pale brown. At first glance she could still be the young academic who had sat opposite him at a conference on ethics in the pharmaceutical industry, and argued her case with such precocious confidence and serenity that she had made him laugh and want to flirt with her. He had thought then that a highly intelligent academic wife might be a great asset to a man in his position. He had thought then that he could afford such a wife. He could earn the money, doing work which she considered morally suspect, he could bring home the tainted profits of capitalism, and she could study philosophy. She could be his luxury, a wife infinitely more prestigious and interesting than the flashy blondes of his colleagues. His earning power could buy her a good lifestyle where she could read and think and write. And in return: he could enjoy her.

It all changed the moment he became ill. He knew now that he could have died without her steady strength of mind, her determination that he should survive. But as he watched her walk towards him and saw the droop of her shoulders and the weariness in her very footsteps, he did not feel gratitude, nor even tenderness. He felt irritated. She was always tired these days. She always looked so miserable. Anyone would think that it was her who was ill.

‘Come and have a drink,’ he called. ‘We don’t have to rush off, do we?’

She hesitated. ‘I was going to work this afternoon.’

Philip tutted. Isobel’s problem was that she worked too hard, he thought. Her agent Troy, her publishers, her publicity people – they all thought they had equal right to her time, and she was too polite to say no. People pushed her around, and she was foolish enough to try to please everyone.

‘Take a break,’ he ordered. ‘You need a break.’

‘All right,’ she said, thinking that the bastion, rampart, bulwark or dyke question could be resolved tomorrow morning before she took the train to London.

He limped into the pub and brought her back a glass of white wine, and they sat in the sun together. Isobel tipped her head back to the warmth.

‘This is idyllic,’ she said. ‘I love the month of May.’

‘Best time of year,’ he agreed. ‘The field that Rigby left fallow last year is just filled with cowslips.’

‘We are so lucky to live here,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t bear to live in London.’

‘It was a good choice,’ he said. ‘I just wish I knew how long we’ll be able to stay in that house.’

Covertly, she glanced over at him, nursing his drink. ‘Surely we’ve got a good few years yet.’

‘It’s the stairs that’ll be the first difficulty,’ he said.

‘We can get one of those stairlifts.’

Philip made a face. ‘I’d rather move our bedroom downstairs. We could use your office and you could write upstairs. It wouldn’t make any difference to you.’

She thought for a brief moment of regret that she would lose the view from her study window which she loved, and the bookshelves that she had designed. ‘Of course. That’d be fine.’

‘Provided Mrs M. is prepared to keep coming, and maybe do a little more. We’d need to get someone to do the garden.’

‘It’s so terribly expensive,’ Isobel remarked. ‘Other people’s wages cost so much. It’s paying their tax which is so awful.’

‘It’s our lifestyle,’ he reminded her. ‘It makes sense to spend money on our comforts.’

‘As long as we have the money coming in.’

He smiled. ‘Why shouldn’t it come in? You’ve never written a book yet which didn’t win one prize or another. All we need is for someone to buy the option for a film and we can rebuild the barn and put in a swimming pool and a gym.’

She hesitated, wondering if she should state the obvious: that a film was not likely, and that literary prizes and literary acclaim were not guarantees of good royalties from publishers. She stopped herself. She had promised herself that she would never worry him with money troubles. She had taken it on herself to earn the money and to free him from fear of debt when he was facing so many other, greater fears.

‘That barn would be perfect for a swimming pool,’ Philip repeated. ‘I read a paper the other day. Swimming is the best exercise someone with my condition can take. Much better than walking. And if we put it in the barn it would be useful all the year round. It’s hard to get the exercise in winter.’

‘I don’t know that we could afford it,’ Isobel said cautiously.

He shook his head at her reluctance. ‘What are we saving our money for?’ he demanded. ‘You talk like we’re going to live forever. Well I’m certainly not. We know that well enough. I don’t see why we have to be so cautious.’

Isobel made herself smile and raise her glass to him. ‘You’re right, I know. Here’s to the Hollywood option and us as millionaires with a swimming pool in the barn and a yacht in the Med!’

‘I might look into the price of pools,’ he said.

‘Yes, do,’ she said. ‘Why not?’

Troy’s office was in Islington, in a converted Victorian terrace house. He lived in a flat upstairs and the ground floor was occupied by two other literary agents, a beautiful girl behind the reception desk, and one overworked assistant who was required to do the administration for all of them.

Isobel perched on a chair surrounded by manuscripts while Troy slipped on his Armani jacket, set it straight across his shoulders, and smoothed his silk tie. It was a dark navy suit and a dark navy tie. Against the severe colour Troy’s light brown hair and clear skin looked boyishly handsome.

‘You look gorgeous,’ he remarked, patting his pockets to check that he was carrying his credit cards. He picked up his mobile phone to carry in his hand, he would never have destroyed the line of the jacket by putting it in his pocket.

Isobel glowed at his praise. She was wearing a summer shift dress in pale blue with blue court shoes, her soft brown hair was enfolded into a bun on the nape of her neck. She gave the overall impression of being a rather elegant headmistress at a select girls’ school. She was not a woman that any man had ever called gorgeous.

‘Absolutely edible,’ Troy asserted, and Isobel giggled.

‘Hardly. Where are we going for lunch?’

‘Number Fifty-two – it’s a new restaurant. Very hot. I had to almost beg for a table.’

‘There was no need – ’

‘There was every need. Aren’t we celebrating the birth of a new manuscript? And besides, I want to talk to you about things.’

Isobel followed Troy down the steps to the street and waited while he hailed a cab with a commanding wave of his hand. But it was not until they were seated in the restaurant – dark-tinted mirrors, real wood floors, marble-top tables, astoundingly uncomfortable chairs but beautiful flowers on every available surface – that he leaned forward and said: ‘I think we may have a bit of a problem.’

She waited.

‘It’s Penshurst Press,’ he said. ‘They’re not offering so much for this book as they did for the last.’

‘How much?’ she asked bluntly.

The waiter came to take their order and Troy shook his head. ‘In a minute.’ He turned back to Isobel. ‘A lot less. They’re offering £20,000.’

For a moment she thought she had misheard him. In the rattle of utensils and the hum of conversation she thought that he must have said something quite different.

‘I beg your pardon. What did you say?’

‘I said £20,000,’ he repeated. He saw that she had paled with shock. He poured a glass of water and held it out to her. ‘I’m sorry. I know it’s less than half what we were expecting, but they won’t shift. I’m sorry.’

Isobel said nothing, she looked stunned. Troy glanced uneasily around the restaurant, hating the discomfort. The waiter returned and Troy ordered for them both, and waited in silence until Isobel had taken a sip from her glass of wine, raised her neat head and spoke:

‘This is nearly two years’ work,’ she said. ‘Two years’ work for £20,000?’

‘I know. There would be foreign sales on top of that, of course, and a book club deal perhaps, and the usual extras …’

She shook her head. ‘They don’t add up to much these days.’

‘No,’ he said quietly.

The waiter brought them two little plates of appetisers. Isobel looked down at the exquisite parcels of filo pastry, her expression completely blank.

‘Why have they offered so little?’

Troy swallowed one of the parcels in a single gulp. ‘The signs were there. They’ve paid slightly less for every book that you’ve written over the last ten years. They look at the balance sheet, and they can see that your sales are going down. The fact is, Isobel, that although you win the literary prizes and there is no doubt of the merit of your writing, no question of that – the fact remains that you don’t sell many books. You’re too good for the market, really. And they don’t want to pay out in royalties when they’re not earning good money in sales.’

She took another sip of wine. ‘Should I go to another publisher?’

He decided to risk complete honesty. ‘I’ve asked around already, very discreetly. I’m afraid they all say the same sort of thing. No-one can see how to sell more than Penshurst are doing already. Nobody would pay you any more.’

‘Two years’ work for £20,000,’ she repeated. She took another sip of wine, and then another. The waiter refilled her glass and she took a gulp.

‘What you must remember is that no-one is denying that you are one of the foremost literary writers in England today.’

The look she turned on him was not one he had expected; he thought she would be offended but instead she looked terrified.

‘But what am I going to do?’ she cried. ‘I have to earn enough to keep us, I have to earn enough for me and Philip. I can’t go back to teaching at a university, I can’t be out of the house all day, he needs me at home now. If I can’t earn money from my writing, how are we going to live?’

He did not understand what she meant. ‘Live?’

‘All the money that comes into our house is earned by me,’ Isobel said fiercely. ‘Philip doesn’t have a penny.’

Troy looked stunned. ‘I thought he’d have a disability pension, or something.’

She shook her head. ‘It’s gone. All gone. I cashed it in to buy the house outright. I told him not to worry. I told him that it had paid off the mortgage and we had bought savings policies. But we hadn’t. It just paid off the mortgage. I thought I could keep him for the rest of his life.’

She looked away. ‘I thought he was going to die. I thought I’d have to keep him for a couple of years, keep him in real comfort and security. But now he’s in remission. I don’t know what will happen next. And you tell me that I can’t earn the money I need for him.’

Troy took a gulp of his own wine. ‘Could you do some more reviewing?’

‘It doesn’t pay, does it?’ she said bitterly. ‘Not like the novels ought to pay. And now you’re telling me that my novels don’t sell. To sell you have to be someone like Suzie Wade or Chet Drake. No-one admires their work; but everyone reads them.’

He nodded.

‘And how much do they get for that … that drivel?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps about £200,000 for a book? Maybe more. And then there are film rights or television mini series. They’re both millionaires from their writing.’

‘But I could do that!’ she exclaimed bitterly. ‘I could write a book like that in a year! In half a year!’

The waiter appeared and put their first course before them. Troy picked up his fork but Isobel did not eat.

‘It’s harder than it looks,’ he reminded her gently. ‘You of all people know that. Even these commercial novels require skill. They’re not complicated stories or beautifully written; but they have a real talent for catching the public imagination, they command a readership.’

She shook her head and took another gulp of wine. The waiter refilled her glass. Troy saw with some concern that the level in the bottle had dropped quite dramatically.

‘I could write like that!’ she exclaimed. ‘Any fool could.’

He shook his head. ‘You have to really be in touch with the readers’ dreams,’ he said. ‘That’s what they’re so good at. It’s all emotions, it’s all gut consciousness. It’s not the sort of thing you do. You write from the intellect, Isobel.’

‘I could do it,’ she persisted. ‘I could tell you the sort of story right now.’

He smiled at her, welcoming any change in tone which would move her away from the horror of the initial shock. ‘What would you call it?’

‘Devil’s Disciple,’ she said promptly. ‘Son of Satan. Something with the devil in it, that’s what they all want, don’t they? To believe that there are Satanists and that sort of nonsense?’

‘That’s true,’ he conceded.

‘It would be the story of a young woman who has to earn money, a huge sum of money, to pay for her sister’s operation. Something, oh, complicated. But something that we’ve all heard about.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘Bone marrow transplant. The sister is near to death and only this experimental operation would save her.’

He nodded, smiling.

‘They’re twin sisters,’ Isobel said, improvising rapidly. A lock of hair had become detached from the neat bun, her cheeks had flushed. The waiter poured more wine. ‘They’re twin sisters and the younger sister discovers that a Satanic cult will pay exactly the sum of money they need for a girl who can prove she is a virgin, who will allow anything to be done to her – for one night.’

The waiter hovered, bottle in hand, openly listening.

‘Go on.’ Troy was intrigued.

‘She is examined by a doctor, she is indeed a virgin, and then she walks towards the large house in the country for the cult to use her as they wish for twenty-four hours.’

Troy leaned forward to listen. The woman on the next table leaned too.

‘They use her sexually, they tie her up, they cut her with their silver knives so that her body is tattooed with occult signs, then they lie her on the altar and she thinks they are going to slit her throat at dawn. Scented smoke wreathes around her, they give her a strange-tasting drink, a man, a dark and handsome man, comes slowly towards her with his silver knife held before him …’

Troy hardly dared to speak. The waiter poured more wine for Isobel, like a fee for the storyteller.

‘She wakes. It is broad daylight. She can remember only the faces of the thirteen people of the coven. But in her hand is a cheque for her sister’s treatment.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Troy whispered. The woman on the next table and the waiter were rapt.

‘She walks from the house, she goes to bank the cheque.’ Isobel paused for dramatic emphasis. ‘The cheque is no good. There is no such name, no such account. She has no money. Her sister dies in her arms.’

‘Oh, my God!’ exclaimed the waiter involuntarily.

‘She swears complete revenge against the thirteen members of the coven.’

‘Too many, too many,’ Troy whispered.

‘Against the five members of the coven,’ Isobel corrected herself, hardly breaking her pace. ‘She goes to the police but no-one believes her. She decides to hunt each one down individually.’

‘Very Jeffrey Archer,’ Troy muttered to himself.

‘There are two women and three men. Each one she tracks down and then ruins. Social shame, bankruptcy, death in a car crash, their house burned down, and then she comes to the last man, the leader of the cult whose cheque was no good.’

The waiter removed their plates as an excuse to 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 for Isobel had almost completely disappeared. He refused absolutely to discuss this either with Isobel or with his doctor, and if Isobel insisted that they go to bed at the same time, or if she tried to kiss and caress him in the morning, he would gently but firmly push her away. It seemed to be another of the many things that had melted away from Isobel’s life, like her looks, her youth, her sense of joy, and now – her ability to make money from her fine writing. She did not complain. When Philip had first become ill she had gone down on her knees to pray. She had made an agonised bargain with the god of her imagination, that if He would spare Philip’s life she would never ask for anything ever again.

When they were finally told, after years of tests, that Philip would become progressively weaker for the rest of his life, but would not die in the near future, she thought that God had taken advantage of her trust. God had cheated on the deal. Philip would not die, but the man she had loved and married was gone forever.

Isobel felt that it was not in her power to withdraw her offer to God. She had promised that if Philip lived then she would never ask for anything again and she intended to keep that promise. She would never make any demands of Philip, she would never ask God for extravagant luck or wonderful opportunities. She thought that what lay before her was a life of duty which would be illuminated with the joy of self-sacrifice. Isobel thought that she might create a life which was itself a thing of beauty – a life in which a talented and devoted couple turned their energies and abilities into making some happiness together despite illness, despite fear of death. She thought that she and Philip might be somehow ennobled by the terrible bad luck that they had suffered. She had thought that she might show him how much she loved him in constant, loving, willing self-sacrifice.

Instead, what she actually experienced was a slog. But she knew that lots of women were forced to slog. Some had disagreeable husbands, or arduous jobs, or difficult children. Isobel’s witty, charming husband had become a self-pitying invalid. Isobel’s love for him had been transformed from the erotic to the maternal. Isobel’s sense of herself as an attractive woman had been destroyed by night after night of the most tactful but unrelenting sexual rejection.

She thought that it should make no difference. She was still determined to keep her side of the bargain with God. She had promised never to ask for anything ever again, and she was holding to her side of the deal.

‘All right,’ she said, smiling, making it clear that she would embarrass neither of them by making a sexual advance to him. ‘You come to bed when you like, darling. Anyway, I expect I’ll be asleep.’

She did indeed fall asleep almost at once but she woke in the light of the summer morning at five. Outside the window she could hear the birds starting to sing and the insistent coo of the wood pigeon, nesting in the oak tree beside the house. For a moment she lay beside Philip, enjoying the warmth of the bed and the gleam of the early-morning sunlight on the ceiling. She turned and looked at him. Peacefully asleep, he looked younger and happier. His blond forelock fell attractively across his regular features, his dark eyelashes were as innocent as a sleeping child’s on the smooth skin of his cheeks. Isobel was filled with a sense of tenderness for him. More than anything else in the world she wanted to provide for him, to care for him as if he were her child. She wanted to earn enough money so that he could always go to the housekeeping jar to take whatever cash he wanted, without asking, without having to give thanks. She wanted to provide for him abundantly, generously, as if her love and wealth could compensate for the awful unjust bad luck of his illness.

Isobel crept out from the warmth of the bed and put her dressing gown around her shoulders, and slid her feet into her sensible fleecy slippers. She left the bedroom quietly, went downstairs to the kitchen and made herself a pot of strong Darjeeling tea and then carried her china cup through to her study.

The word processor came alive with a deep, reassuring chime. She watched the screen gleam into life, and then created a new document. The blank page was before her, the little line of the cursor waiting to move, to tick its way into life. She laid her fingers on the keyboard, like a pianist waiting for the signal to play, for the indrawn breath, for that powerful moment of initiation.

‘Devil’s Disciple,’ she typed. ‘Chapter One.’