“Not at all,” I said with a weird, glib feeling, as if I’d become my own communications director. “But I don’t think it’s going to be easy to find a publisher, with those documents doing the rounds. They’re pretty incriminating.”

“I’ll publish it myself in that case!”

“You’d self-publish?”

“Why not?”

“Well, that’s your prerogative . . .”

“What are you saying?”

“Nothing . . .”

“You think he’d try to stop me doing that, too?”

“I imagine so. If he can find a way.”

Her fury seemed to falter; she looked vulnerable again, uncomprehending.

“I’m not even allowed to self-publish? Christ almighty! Christ almighty!”

I had a feeling I should leave. I didn’t appear to be in control of what I was saying, or even thinking. I seemed to see myself in front of some grim-visaged campus committee, trying to account for this weird surging impulse to act as Marco’s surrogate. I stood up.

“What are you doing? You’re not leaving, are you?”

“I should get going.”

She stared, blinking, with a peculiar, unseeing look as I went over to the door and reclaimed my jacket.

“What if I can prove it?” she said, with an abrupt wild jerk of her head. “What if I happen to have proof that what I’m telling you is true? Because it so happens I do. Cast iron proof!”

I should have told her I didn’t need proof—that I already believed her. But I didn’t, couldn’t. Perhaps it was the still tenuous nature of that belief—it hadn’t quite solidified into an irreversible conviction. Or perhaps it was just the timing of her offer. I have a professional resistance to last-minute twists, surprise endings, and this sudden offer to supply one offended my sense of literary propriety. I looked down without answering, and began buttoning my jacket.

“I’d have put it in the memoir,” she went on, speaking rapidly, “except I knew it would be too controversial. Too explosive. Do you want me to tell you what it is?”

“It’s up to you,” I said.

“Do you know what people like Marco have in common?”

I continued buttoning my jacket.

“Form,” she said, her voice high and breathy. “It’s never just a one-off. There’s always a history. And Marco’s no exception. I happen to know that, for a fact.”

I looked up, curious in spite of myself.

“Did he ever tell you why he moved to America?” she asked.

“No . . .”

“Well, I’ll tell you.”

She paused theatrically.

“He was banished.”

“Banished?”

“Yes.”

Her face, like her voice, had changed—acquired a defiant brightness.

“Yes. He was caught with a fifteen-year-old girl. That’s statutory rape. Her mother found them in bed and told him he had a week to leave England, for good, or she’d go to the police. So now you know.”

She waited for me to react.