It was a bit of a disastrous evening really: the writer, youngish, with windblown hair, arrived with her own group of friends. My presence was an embarrassment rather than a reassurance to her. I skulked in the background drinking red wine and wishing that I were across the river in Brooklyn Heights.

She read in a slow-fast gabble a piece about infanticide, desecration of a holy site and the wickedness of nuns. I was in the front row, so I had to keep my eyes open. I wondered what James Cavan was up to. Would he be waiting outside when I came out? If ever I got out – this woman was going to read for ever. Tumultuous applause – mainly, I thought sourly, from her friends. She bowed her tousled head again and again, then held up a hand and said that she would not be answering questions and almost ran from the room. I stood up and thanked her in absentia. I would have preferred to wring her neck.

There was nobody waiting outside Ireland House when I came out and nobody called my name as I walked home along Bleecker; nobody stood on my doorstep with a bunch of flowers. For the first time since I had come to New York I wanted to be home in Dublin. Sour bloody grapes. I kicked the furniture round a bit, ate some yogurt and went to bed.

He rang even earlier the next morning, well before my normal running out the door time. I was asleep. I was in fact dreaming – one of those odd dreams about floating and falling through colours and space. I have such dreams quite often. I don’t find them frightening; somehow I know that I will never fall too far or too fast. Anyway, the bell rang in my dream and I tried to push the sound away from my ears, but it went on and on and I was forced to wake up. My room was still dark, but there was a wash of grey outside the window. My mother is dead was my first thought, and my heart was beating so hard when I lifted the receiver that I could hardly speak. I didn’t have to.

‘Clara.’

‘For fuck’s sake.’

‘I hate women who swear.’

‘Well, don’t ring them in the middle of the night.’

‘It’s five.’

‘And I suppose you’ve been at work for an hour.’

‘Five minutes. I wanted to hear your voice. Even swearing. Swear again.’

I laughed. My mother wasn’t dead and I had a feeling that this man was good news, even at five o’clock in the morning.

He laughed. We both laughed comfortably together for a moment.

‘What about lunch?’ he asked.

‘I only have an hour between lectures. Tuesday’s a bad day. I work like a slave on Tuesdays. What about dinner? I could be delightful at dinnertime.’

‘Tomorrow. I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty. Will it suit you to be delightful then?’

‘If that’s the best you can do.’