I realized, washing my hands on a cracked slip of soap, that I’d decided she was telling the truth. Or at least telling me truthfully what she remembered. There was always the possibility of false memory, I supposed, though I’d never really accepted that as a concept. I was temperamentally opposed to it. I don’t share the contemporary relish for questioning the reliability of the human mind as a processor of reality. At any rate, taking stock of things as I stood at the mirror with its reflection of the door on which a worn gray towel hung like an abstracted grimace, I noted the absence of doubt inside me. I’d been planning to press Julia on the question of whether that fateful evening was the first or last time she’d been to bed with Marco, but it seemed a minor quibble suddenly—not worth pursuing. And as if freed from some internal prohibition, my mind went to that other room, the hotel room in Belfast. I seemed to see it with stark clarity: a functional seventies box with a bed on which Marco with a drunken grin was ignoring Julia’s change of heart, her ineffectual attempt to push him off; forcing himself onto her, into her, the act compressing its own colossal implications to a blackness too dense for either of them to comprehend as they rolled apart. It was like one of those vitrines we’d been shown at that talk at the Irving Foundation: one figure sated, indifferent; the other staring out at the washbasin in the corner, the fly-specked light, the row of boots lined up against the wall, wondering what had just happened.

“So . . . What are you going to do now?” I asked, returning to the living room.

Julia was once again seated on the chair facing mine. A new bottle of wine stood on the table between us. She’d refilled both our glasses. I’d have liked to eat something before drinking any more, but food didn’t seem to be on the horizon.

“About Marco?”

“Yes.”

“What I’ve been trying to do all along.”

“You mean . . . ?”

“I’m going to publish my book.”

“You have a publisher?” I asked, surprised.

“No, but I’m going to find one. Renata Shenker isn’t the only fish in the sea.”

“Have you . . . sent it out?”

“Not yet. I thought I might try to get an agent this time. Perhaps you can suggest someone?”

I stammered something about being out of touch with the English literary scene. “I could probably find you some names though . . .”

She must have noticed my lack of conviction:

“Are you against me publishing it?”

“No, no. Of course not. But . . . I mean, I do wonder if you’ve . . . if you’re aware of the impact it’ll have . . .”

“On?”

“Marco.”

Her eyes flashed wide.

“Why should I care what impact it has on him?”