We spoke for about an hour and a half. Her careful vowels serrated at the edges when she became disdainful. There was no getting away from it: she was bitter about the world’s indifference to her and the trouble it took to write a book. She knew no one asked her to; she knew she was angry and had no right to be: ‘How do we redeem this interview from me moaning on about how crap the world is?’

So I asked her the question I was most interested in, the one I knew to be the most vulgar. ‘How much of what has happened to your characters is based on what has happened to you?’

‘Perhaps you could be specific,’ she said quietly.

*

Emily, are you on the edge? Emily, are your parents dead too? Emily, do you believe love is impossible? Do you believe love is the only hope? Were you married once, for only two weeks? What is it like to live for so long in poverty? What is it about Paris, why do you keep running there? Couldn’t you ever have decided to be happier? Is that what you have done now? Or have you always been happy? Have you tricked us? Why did you never mention this flat? Who is this man you live with? Are you writing about him now? Have you chosen comfort over love? Do you think I am an idiot? Am I like the rest of the men in your novels? Are we all so transparently hungry? Are we all so gauche? So vain and inconsequential? Are we the problem? Are we your problem? Are you laughing at me? Could you ever love someone like me? What has he got that I haven’t? Is it money? Or something else?

*

The London Review of Haircuts

An outgrown fringe, half-tied behind, is slipping back across her face. She pushes it back, like the childish thoughts of smoky rooms and loud music we hope lie behind those dark eyes, the same brown as her hair. She doesn’t look the way she does entirely by accident, and she would like to test the power and reach of those looks again while they still belong to a young woman.

*

She was laughing by the time she saw me to the door. ‘You didn’t drink your Coke,’ she said, handing it back to me. ‘It’s full to the top.’

‘This should be some kind of epiphany for me. A spur to throw down my crutches and walk unaided.’

I took a swig.

‘Stagger unaided,’ she said.

‘Remember what I said: if the photographer suggests anything unusual, remind him this is for a book interview, lock yourself in the bathroom and ring me on my mobile.’

‘I’ll handle him. Don’t worry.’