‘I finished it. I quite liked it in the end. Albert Camus … he knew how to write.’
The two of us stood facing each other and I began to wonder if I hadn’t made a mistake coming here. It had given me what I’d needed. I’d learned something about Hawthorne. But at the same time I had an uneasy feeling that I’d broken faith, going to Meadows behind his back, coming here without permission.
‘Maybe we could have dinner next week,’ I said. ‘I might have a couple of chapters to show you by then.’
He nodded. ‘Maybe.’
‘I’ll see you, then.’
And that might have been it. I might simply have walked out, slightly regretful that I had come here at all. But as I turned, I noticed a framed photograph on a shelf. It showed a fair-haired woman with glasses dangling around her neck. She had her hand resting on the shoulder of a young boy. I knew at once that this was Hawthorne’s wife and son and my first thought was how unfair he had been to me. When we were in Diana Cowper’s house, I had seen a photograph of her dead husband and he had snapped at me. If they were divorced, she wouldn’t have kept his picture. But he was divorced and he had done just that.
I was about to say as much when something else occurred to me. I knew this woman. I had seen her before.
And then I remembered.
‘You bastard!’ I said. ‘You fucking bastard.’
‘What?’
‘Is this your wife?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve met her.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘She was at Hay-on-Wye, at the literary festival, two days after you came to see me. She laid into me. She said my books were unreal and irrelevant. She was the reason why …’ I stopped myself. ‘You put her up to it!’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
He was looking at me with innocent, even child-like eyes but I wasn’t having any of it. I couldn’t believe I’d allowed myself to be manipulated so easily. Did he really think I was so stupid? I was furious. ‘Don’t lie to me.’ I almost shouted the words. ‘You sent her. You knew exactly what you were doing.’
‘Tony …’
‘That’s not my name. I’m Anthony. Nobody ever calls me Tony. And you can forget the whole thing. It was a bad idea and it nearly got me killed. I should never have listened to you in the first place. I’m not going to do it.’
I stormed out of the room. I didn’t bother with the lift. I took the stairs twelve floors back down to the ground floor and out into the fresh air. I didn’t stop walking until I was halfway across Blackfriars Bridge.
I took out my mobile phone.
I was going to ring my agent. I was going to tell her that the deal was off. I still had two books to write for Orion. There was the new series of Foyle’s War. I had plenty enough to be getting on with.
And yet …
If I walked away, Hawthorne would just go to another writer and what would be the result of that? I’d end up as minor character, nothing more than a sidekick in someone else’s book, which would actually be considerably worse than being a real character in one of my own. They would be able to do anything they liked. They could make me look like a complete idiot if they wanted.
On the other hand, if I wrote the book, I would have control. Hawthorne had admitted that he had come to me and only me. It was my story. Hilda had done the deal and, now that I thought about it, I’d already done half the work.
I was still holding my phone.
My thumb was hovering over the speed dial.
By the time I reached the other side of the river, I knew exactly what I was going to do.
Acknowledgements
A great many people helped me with this book.
I am very grateful to Edward Kemp, the Director of RADA, for inviting me into the academy to watch him rehearse. Lucy Skilbeck, the Director of Actor Training, provided me with further background material and also introduced me to Zoe Waites, who gave me a brilliant account of her time there – she was roughly contemporary with Damian Cowper. Charlie Archer, a recent graduate, also described his auditions and gave me further insights and the theatre director Lindsay Posner provided me with notes from his still-celebrated production of Hamlet.
In order to understand Robert Cornwallis, I spent time with Andrew Leverton, whose own funeral service is nothing like the one described in these pages. Colin Sutton is a former detective who, like Hawthorne, has worked with many television companies. I have to say that he was far more helpful with background detail than Hawthorne himself. My brother, Philip Horowitz, gave me a legal briefing on Diana Cowper’s traffic accident and the case that followed.
I have a brilliant new editor in Selina Walker at Penguin Random House and both Hawthorne and I were delighted that she accepted the book. We are also grateful to our very diligent copy-editor, Caroline Pretty, and to Jonathan Lloyd at Curtis Brown who gave us invaluable advice when Hilda Starke was unavailable.
As always I must thank my wife, Jill Green, and my two sons, Nick and Cass, who not only read the book and helped me with it in its early stages but didn’t object too much when they found themselves drawn into it.