Zelda’s Cut. Philippa Gregory

      ‘You know the auction date is next Tuesday?’

      ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I wanted it finished by then so you could tell them you had the whole book, as soon as it is bought.’

      ‘One of them wants to meet you.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘It’s not unreasonable. They’re talking about investing a lot of money. But it does leave us with a bit of a problem. D’you think you could come up and be Zelda Vere for a day? Say on the Monday?’

      ‘For how many people?’ Isobel spoke cautiously but she had a great sense of excitement and anticipation at the thought of putting on Zelda Vere’s beautiful clothes and her golden head of hair and that wonderful makeup.

      ‘I don’t know how many would want to come. You’d have to be prepared for half a dozen. And you’ll have to have a back-story. You’ll have to think who Zelda is, where she comes from. Where she got the ideas for this novel. Why don’t you come and stay the night before, Sunday night, and we’ll spend some time and get our act together?’

      Isobel thought quickly. Mrs M. usually came in to sleep if Isobel was away at literary conferences or at book festivals. She generally brought a videotape and she and Philip would settle down for the evening and watch something trivial. He would complain for days after that her company rotted his brain; but his relish for the light thrillers which she chose was undeniable.

      ‘If I can, I will,’ Isobel said. ‘I’ll have to sort out things here.’

      ‘I think we need to spend some time on this,’ Troy said. Unusually for him, he sounded anxious. ‘I didn’t look ahead to this. I thought they’d just snap at the book. I didn’t think they’d want to meet you before the auction.’

      ‘It’s all right.’ Isobel heard herself sounding calm and reassuring. She realised that she was looking forward to being Zelda Vere. She wanted to wear that lovely suit, to be a blonde beautiful woman. She wanted to see her long legs in the gold strappy sandals and to wear the expensive underwear against her skin. She even wanted the firm sensation of the underwired bra pressing against the bones of her chest. She wanted to be that other woman, far away from the tedium and the responsibility of her normal life.

      ‘I’ll be there,’ she promised. ‘We can do it.’

      ‘It’s a reading,’ she told Philip. ‘First thing at Goldsmiths College and a discussion about the novel. Apparently someone dropped out at the last minute and they asked me to step in.’

      ‘Should have thought of you in the first place,’ Philip said. ‘You shouldn’t let people treat you like second best. You shouldn’t be the one they fall back on, Isobel, you should be their first choice.’

      ‘Well, they’ve chosen me now. The only thing is, I’d like to stay Sunday night, so that I don’t have to rush on Monday morning. I hate that commuter train going into London in the morning.’

      ‘Away all night?’ he asked.

      ‘Mrs M. could come in. I’ll ask her.’

      ‘I suppose she’ll bring one of those ridiculous films and insist on watching it.’

      Isobel smiled. ‘I expect she will. She always does.’

      ‘When would you be back?’

      ‘After lunch sometime, Monday afternoon,’ Isobel said. ‘It’s an all-day conference. I might stay and listen to the other papers if that’s all right with you.’

      ‘Makes no difference to me,’ he said ungraciously. ‘I’m not going out dancing after all. I can do the crossword and my exercises whether you’re here or not. What did you think you might be missing? Riding on the motorbike? Cross-country skiing?’

      ‘No,’ Isobel said quietly.

      There was a brief silence. Isobel kept her eyes on the table-top and thought that Philip’s bad temper was as much a symptom of his illness as his wasted legs. She should embrace them both with equal tenderness. She kept looking down until she could meet his eyes and smile at him with real affection.

      He was not looking at her, he was reading a brightly coloured leaflet. He nodded at the information and then pushed it across the lunch table towards her. ‘Here, I sent off for this. I thought it would give us a general idea.’

      It was a glossy brochure from a swimming-pool company. It showed a seductive picture of a beautiful indoor swimming pool, the lights glistening on the blue water, a bikini-clad girl poised on the diving board.

      ‘Does it say how much?’ Isobel asked.

      Philip laughed shortly. ‘I think if you have to ask the price you can’t afford it. And anyway, it varies in terms of the volume of the pool and whether you have an electric pump and heater or a gas one.’

      Isobel felt a familiar sense of dread. ‘I can see you’ve gone into it,’ she said lightly.

      ‘I just like to know things,’ he said with dignity. ‘I measured up the barn the other day. We could easily fit it in there and even a small sauna.’

      ‘A sauna!’ she exclaimed. ‘Very grand.’

      ‘I think it would help my condition,’ he said. ‘The heat. And of course the exercise. I could do my exercises in the water, it would take the strain off the joints, and I would swim. It’d do you good too. You never take any exercise. You drive everywhere. At least I walk once a day, but you only drive to the village. You’ll get overweight, Isobel, flabby. Women always run to flab. We’re neither of us spring chickens any more.’

      ‘I know.’ Isobel nodded, swallowing the retort that she drove to the village to collect him, to spare him the return walk home; that before his illness she had walked every day. Now she never had the time.

      ‘There you are then.’

      ‘So how much do they cost? Swimming pools? About?’

      ‘We’d get a nice one in the barn and the barn converted with sliding picture windows for under £50,000,’ he said judicially. ‘We could do it a lot cheaper, of course, but I think it’d be a false economy.’

      Isobel blinked. ‘We simply haven’t got that sort of money darling.’

      ‘Not now we haven’t, I know. But when they bid for your new book we’ll have a lump sum come in.’

      Isobel recoiled, thinking for one extraordinary moment that he knew all about Devil’s Disciple. Then she realised that he was talking about the literary novel that Penshurst Press had bought for only £20,000.

      ‘Yes,’ she said, rapidly improvising. ‘I have great hopes for it.’

      ‘Troy not told you yet?’

      ‘Not yet.’

      ‘He’s so slow, that man, anyone would think he was doing you a favour.’

      ‘He’s discussing with the editors.’

      ‘Lunching out at your expense, more like,’ Philip grumbled. ‘You ought to tell him, remind him who it is that earns the money.’

      ‘I know I should,’ she said mildly. ‘I’ll talk to him next week.’

      ‘I’ll see what sort of planning permission we need,’ Philip said. ‘I’ll phone the town hall. Do us no harm to get planning permission and some drawings done.’

      ‘Perhaps we should wait till we know how much I’m going to earn …’

      ‘It’d be an interest for me,’ he pointed out.

      ‘Oh of course then, yes. Let’s get some drawings done.’ She hesitated. ‘They won’t be very expensive, will they?’

      ‘For God’s sake!’ he exploded. ‘You’re