“Yes, okay, money. I need to make it, just like everyone else. I wrote a memoir, which by the way is mostly not about Marco Rosedale, though I’m sure he thinks it’s all about him. It’s about the same world as your book, by the sound of it, only it isn’t made up. I didn’t write it for money, I wrote it in an effort to get myself out of a deep emotional and professional rut. But I certainly hoped to get a decent sum for publishing it. I showed it to the Messenger and they offered me what would have been a year’s rent on this place just for that little bit about Marco. I was surprised it interested them, frankly. I mean, who cares about Marco Rosedale? And it’s not as if his behavior was so unusual either. Half the men in London were like that—I said as much in the piece. Still, I’d have been happy to take the money if the Messenger hadn’t been so pathetically afraid of upsetting him.”

“You think they should have ignored that letter?” I asked.

“What letter?”

It hadn’t occurred to me that she might not have been told about Gerald’s letter. I braced myself.

“Well . . . Marco found a letter from your boyfriend at the time.”

“What boyfriend?”

“Gerald Woolley.”

“Oh, god! He found a letter from Gerald Woolley?”

“Yes.”

“To me?”

“No, to him. Marco. He showed it to the guy at the Messenger. Mel Sauer. That’s what changed their mind.”

“Gerald wrote a letter to Marco?”

I nodded.

“When? Recently?”

“No. At the time of your . . . thing with Marco.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake! Saying what?”

“Asking to meet him. You’d told Gerald about your—your feelings for Marco, and he wanted to talk it over with Marco, man-to-man, I guess.”

“You’re joking!”

“The letter quoted things you said about Marco.”

“What things?”

“Well . . . very complimentary things.”

“Not possible.”

“Calling him an exceptional human being, exceptionally decent . . .”

“Not possible!”

“He showed me a picture of it. Apparently it was sent just after the Belfast program was broadcast. So after, you know, the night in question.”

I was trying to get it all out as quickly and straightforwardly as possible, to spare her any unnecessary anguish. But from the waves of pain registering on her face, it appeared my responses were striking her like something more in the nature of poisoned arrows than the simple expedient frankness I was intending.

“Let me get this straight,” she said. “Gerald and Marco held a meeting to decide who I belonged to and now Marco’s using the letter to try to prove I’m a liar—is that what you’re telling me?”

“Well, they didn’t actually meet. Marco never answered the letter. And to be fair to Gerald, he did acknowledge you were free to do whatever you wanted.”

“Jesus Christ.”