I volunteered to go with you. We walked out of the hotel through a side door that opened out onto a slip road and further ahead was the busy motorway. In contrast to the cold air conditioner inside, it was humid and still. The air was full of car fumes. They shimmered suspended over the gleaming cars waiting for the valet parking. The hotel porters walked back and forth wearing a heavy, theatrical uniform unsuitable for the weather.

You looked relieved that you were flying back home tomorrow. Jaunty as you took your cigarette box out of your handbag. ‘You don’t smoke? I can tell you’re not the type.’

I shook my head. You were already lighting up. True, I was not the type. But still your words had the hint of a put down, an unnecessary insistence that we were different. I had been slow to understand what you intuited that first day in Edinburgh. That we would never become friends.

It was my turn now to look at you with eyes that were not a novelist’s eyes. I saw that you were beautiful but not sexy, more talented than blessed, brittle but not weighty. And I was your opposite. I said, ‘I hope you enjoyed your time here.’

Your reply was the same one I had heard this morning on the local radio. The exact wording. Except that you now added how your mother, a gynaecologist, worked here in the 1970s and delivered a prince. This was not new to me either. I had read about it in your piece about your mother’s work in O, The Oprah Magazine.

I asked only because I could. ‘Do you ever read your fan mail?’

‘From the children?’

‘From readers in general.’

You shrugged. ‘I’m not an agony aunt. And I don’t want to be told “write about me” either.’

You had said these exact words before in an interview, ‘I’m not an agony aunt.’ Although you were lifting the cigarette to your lips, I felt as if I were in the presence of a statue, one that was opaque and unyielding. It made me miss the voice on the page, the fluid lives you had written down.

There was nothing more that I could take from you. Nothing in addition to what I already had on my shelves.

Later, I went home and instead of checking up on the children, instead of tackling the kitchen or setting the table for tomorrow’s breakfast, I got into bed and started to read, again, my favourite novel.

Acknowledgements

I am forever indebted to Elisabeth Schmitz, my editor at Grove, for supporting every single one of my books and for her encouragement and belief in me over the years. My thanks also go to Deb Seager, Jazmine Goguen and Katie Raissian.