‘The authorized version, yes. He ghosted it for her, that’s to say for himself.’

Beneath his long, soft lashes, Max’s eyes glinted malevolently. ‘So that’s why there’s a lie on every page.’

But he was wasting his time if he thought to wound Camilla that way. ‘By my count there’s never less than two.’ she answered.

I could see Max calculating that he might have to change sides if he was to get a good argument going, but I could see him calculating also that that wouldn’t be easy. ‘Why does he claim he cared nothing for social advancement and then list every aristocrat he ever took tea with?’ he asked. ‘I don’t mean why was he dishonest. That’s easy to understand. I mean why was he so transparently dishonest.’

Camilla shrugged amiably. ‘He never needed to be opaque, did he? You know what novelists are like – they spill their guts on every page and claim it’s plot. And their readers, who are always sentimental about creativity, believe them. Hardy had got away with it so easily for so long, it was like second nature to him. Look at this,’ Camilla seized the book from Max and riffled through it. ‘Spitting chips about what the reviewers say about him and boasting Olympian indifference – in the same sentence!’

Max seized the book back from her and flicked himself. They stood for a while shoulder to shoulder, Max reading out extracts, guffawing in unison.

‘This is interesting though,’ Max said. ‘According to Florence – I take your point that nothing is reliably according to Florence – Hardy once saw a dark man he didn’t recognise standing by her during one of those miserable teas they gave at Max Gate, but when he asked her later who it was, she assured him that there was no such person present. Years later he claimed that he could still see the man’s face vividly. Do you reckon Florence smuggled strangers in? There’s a Nabokov story that Barthes …’

‘Oh no.’ Camilla couldn’t have been more categoric. ‘He would have imagined him all right. He was perfectly capable of that. Notice that it’s a dark man. Probably tall too. And didn’t you say standing at Florence’s shoulder? Well there you are. He even put him in position.’

I thought it was about time that I made some contribution to this conversation. And I was always watchful of the more extreme forms of Camilla’s mental daring. ‘Are you saying that he actually imagined another person into the room?’