I wrote my first letter to you by hand and I do not have a copy. People, I am sure, had said to you, ‘I devoured your novel’, but your novel devoured me. The pain of the heroine became my pain, her conflicts more vivid than my existence. For days I neglected my children and husband. I saw them through glazed eyes; I sleepwalked through the housework. I was with you, not with them.

I dreamt of you (or your heroines, I am not sure, you were interchangeable). Happy dreams in which we sat side by side on stairs, like little girls. We didn’t always speak about fiction, sometimes we swapped day to day experiences too – the school run, grumpy shop assistants, newspaper headlines – and your observations on life in the West chimed with mine. We were equals in spirit, our friendship based on shared experiences and ideas.

I continued to have variations of the same dream. The two of us on a seesaw, going up and down, both of us the same height, the same weight. The easy laughter between us, the words tumbling out of me. Telling you this and that. Repeating what I had already said in my letters or adding more. I would talk to you about my school friends, children and cousins and you knew them all already. They interested you for you hung on every word I said, threading in your own observations, details and insights specially formulated for me. You never needed me to introduce or to present, our conversations were an infinite continuation, a stream of goodwill. Even when the dream was over, the happiness and warmth remained with me infusing the day as if it were healing it.

You didn’t reply to my letters. A year passed.

Your second novel made more of a splash. I cut out the reviews from the newspapers. But I noticed that even the good ones were patronising, few gave you your due. One did say ‘a landmark’ and I agreed. Better for me than the reviews were the interviews with you. A photo of you and your little girl on the beach. Your candid answers. Details of where you went to school and where you went to university – even your parents’ careers. Such abundance, as generous as your prose. I now had so much to piece together, to match biography with fiction, to speculate, to double guess. In my plain, limited life you provided me with colour and adventure. I held you up as the epitome of intellect and glamour. The activity of reading and thinking about your work brought me hours of joy.