Must be a nice view here in the daytime, said Felix.

Alice was still standing by the door. Yes, it’s beautiful, she said. Even better in the evening, actually.

He turned away from the window, casting his appraising glance around the room’s other features, while Alice watched.

Very nice, he concluded. Very nice room. Are you going to write a book while you’re here?

I suppose I’ll try.

And what are your books about?

Oh, I don’t know, she said. People.

That’s a bit vague. What kind of people do you write about, people like you?

She looked at him calmly, as if to tell him something: that she understood his game, perhaps, and that she would even let him win it, as long as he played nicely.

What kind of person do you think I am? she said.

Something in the calm coolness of her look seemed to unsettle him, and he gave a quick, yelping laugh. Well, well, he said. I only met you a few hours ago, I haven’t made up my mind on you yet.

You’ll let me know when you do, I hope.

I might.

For a few seconds she stood there in the room, very still, while he wandered around a little and pretended to look at things. They knew then, both of them, what was about to happen, though neither could have said exactly how they knew. She waited impartially while he continued glancing around, until finally, perhaps with no more energy to delay the inevitable, he thanked her and left. She walked him down the stairs—part of the way down. She was standing on the steps when he went out the door. It was one of those things. Both of them afterwards felt bad, neither of them certain really why the evening had been such a failure in the end. Pausing there on the stairs, alone, she looked back up at the landing. Follow her eyes now and notice the bedroom door left open, a slice of white wall visible through the banister posts.

About the Author

Sally Rooney is an Irish novelist. She is the author of Conversations with Friends and Normal People. She also contributed to the writing and production of the Hulu/BBC television adaptation of Normal People. You can sign up for email updates here.

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Contents

1. Title Page
2. Copyright Notice
3. Chapter 1
4. About the Author
5. Copyright

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

120 Broadway, New York 10271

Copyright © 2021 by Sally Rooney

All rights reserved

First edition, 2021

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following material:

Epigraph on page v from ‘My Vocation,’ by Natalia Ginzburg, from The Little Virtues. Copyright © 1962, 1966, 1972, 1984, 1998, 2012, and 2015 Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a., Torino. Originally published in Italian as Le Piccole Virtù. Translation copyright © 1985 Dick Davis. First published in Great Britain in 1985 by Carcanet, Manchester.