He’d been about to email Sauer that he had no objections to the article, when a dim misgiving made him reread it. Only on this second reading did he take in the potentially damaging part. It was packed into a relatively small space; just a few sentences two-thirds of the way through, easy to overlook, or at least misgauge. In them, Julia described an incident that occurred while she was working as the research assistant on his Belfast film. They’d been drinking at the bar of their hotel after a difficult shoot. At one point he’d kissed her, and after a while they’d gone upstairs to his room. She was in a serious relationship with someone else at the time—a university boyfriend whom she was planning to marry. Upstairs with Marco, she’d had an attack of fidelity and told Marco very apologetically that she didn’t want to go to bed with him after all. “Did he take any notice?” her piece continued in its oddly jaunty way. “Not a bit of it! Next thing I knew, my buttons and buckles and fasteners were being undone by what felt like about a hundred pairs of exceedingly powerful if also exceedingly nimble and well-practiced hands, and I was lying naked underneath him on the bed. If memory serves, it was all over very quickly.” From there the piece swerved back into affectionately lampooning mode, teasingly describing the long row of sharp-toed leather ankle boots lined up in the corner of Marco’s hotel room, along with its grimy corner ­washbasin and fly-specked ceiling light, but also praising his TV programs and declaring that “in spite of everything,” she was proud to have started her media career working with someone so talented and dynamic.

The accusation he’d missed the first time around hit him squarely this time. She was saying he had assaulted her. Regardless of the cheery tone, regardless of the decades that had passed since the night in question, it was a statement that could cause him serious harm. It was the kind of thing that, once said about you in public, rendered you permanently suspect—at best.

He emailed Sauer, telling him he considered the piece malicious and defamatory, and that he was astonished the Messenger would even consider publishing it. Sauer wrote back, suavely placating, assuring him that nothing was set in stone yet, repeating that for now he was just interested in, as he put it, “taking your temperature,” while also asking if Marco could be more specific about what he found “defamatory.” Reluctantly (unversed as he was in these matters, Marco sensed that to repeat an allegation, even if just to defend oneself against it, was a sure way to increase its weight and substance), he directed Sauer’s attention to the scene in the hotel bedroom. Sauer replied, “Are you suggesting you didn’t sleep with her that night?”