Three-Book Edition: A Place of Greater Safety; Beyond Black; The Giant O’Brien. Hilary Mantel

want to ask you a question. I appreciate it might be rather difficult.’

      ‘Try.’ He didn’t look up.

      ‘Have you had an affair with her?’

      He frowned at the paper. ‘That doesn’t sound right.’ He sighed and wrote down the side of the page. ‘I’ve had an affair with everybody, don’t you know that by now?’

      ‘But I’d like to know.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Why would you like to know?’

      ‘I can’t think why, really.’

      He tore the sheet once across and began immediately on another. ‘Not the most intelligent of conversations, this.’ He wrote for a minute. ‘Did she say that I did?’

      ‘Not in so many words.’

      ‘What gave you the idea then?’ He looked up at the ceiling for a synonym, and as he tipped his head back the flat, red winter light touched his hair.

      ‘She implied it.’

      ‘Perhaps you mistook her.’

      ‘Would you mind just denying it?’

      ‘I think it’s quite probable that at some time I spent a night with her, but I’ve no clear memory of it.’ He had found the word, and reached for another sheet of paper.

      ‘How could you not have a clear memory? A person couldn’t just not remember.’

      ‘Why shouldn’t a person not remember? Not everybody thinks it’s the highest human activity, like you do.’

      ‘I suppose not remembering is the ultimate snub.’

      ‘I suppose so. Have you seen Brissot’s latest issue?’

      ‘There. You’ve got your paper on it.’

      ‘Oh, yes.’

      ‘What, you mean you really can’t remember?’

      ‘I’m very absent-minded, anyone will tell you. It needn’t have been so much as a night. Could have been an afternoon. Or just a few minutes, or not at all. I might have thought she was someone else. My mind might have been on other things.’

      She laughed.

      ‘I’m not sure you ought to be amused. Perhaps you ought to be shocked.’

      ‘She thinks you very attractive.’

      ‘What heartening news. I was consumed with anxiety in case she didn’t. The page I want is missing. I must have thrown it on the fire in a rage. A literary jockey, Mirabeau calls Brissot. I’m not quite sure what that means but I expect he thinks it’s very insulting.’

      ‘She was telling me something, about a barrister you once knew.’

      ‘Which of the five hundred?’

      But he was on the defensive now. She didn’t answer. He wiped his pen carefully, put it down. He looked at her sideways, cautiously, from under his eyelashes. He smiled, slightly.

      ‘Oh God, don’t look at me like that,’ she said. ‘You look as if you’re going to tell me what a good time you had. Do people know?’

      ‘Some people, obviously.’

      ‘Does my mother know?’

      No answer.

      ‘Why didn’t I know?’

      ‘I can’t think. Possibly because you were about ten at the time. We hadn’t met. I can’t think how people would have broached the topic.’

      ‘Ah. She didn’t tell me it was so long ago.’

      ‘No, I’m sure she just told you exactly what suited her. Lolotte, does it matter so much?’

      ‘Not really. I suppose he must have been nice.’

      ‘Yes, he was.’ Oh, the relief of saying so. ‘He was really extremely nice to me. And somehow, oh, you know, it didn’t seem much to do.’

      She stared at him. He’s quite unique, she thought. ‘But now – ’ and suddenly she felt she had the essence of it – ‘now you’re a public person. It matters to everybody what you do.’

      ‘And now I am married to you. And no one will ever have anything to reproach me with, except loving my wife too much and giving them nothing to talk about.’ Camille pushed his chair back. ‘The Jacobins can wait. I don’t think I want to listen to speeches tonight. I should prefer to write a theatre review. Yes? I like taking you to the theatre. I like walking around in public with you. I get envied. Do you know what I really like? I like to see people looking at you, and forming ideas, and people saying, is she married? – yes – and their faces fall, but then they think, well, still, even so, and they say, to whom? And someone says, to the Lanterne Attorney, and they say oh, and walk away with a glazed look in their eye.’

      She raced off to get dressed for the theatre. When she looked back, she had to admire it, as a way of getting off the subject.

      A LITTLE WOMAN – Roland’s wife – came out of the Riding-School on Pétion’s arm. ‘Paris has changed greatly,’ she said, ‘since I was here six years ago. I shall never forget that visit. We were night after night at the theatre. I had the time of my life.’

      ‘Let’s hope we can do as well for you this time,’ Pétion said, with gallantry. ‘And yet you are a Parisian, my friend Brissot tells me?’

      You’re overdoing the charm, Jérôme, his friend Brissot thought.

      ‘Yes, but my husband’s affairs have kept us so long in the provinces that I no longer lay claim to the title. I have so often wished to return – and now here I am, thanks to the affairs of the Municipality of Lyon.’

      Brissot thought, she talks like a novel.

      ‘I’m sure your husband is a most worthy representative,’ Pétion said, ‘yet let us cherish a secret hope that he does not conclude Lyon’s business too quickly. We should hate to lose, so soon, the benefit of your advice – and the radiance of your person.’

      She glanced up at him and smiled. She was the type he liked – petite, a little plump, hazel eyes, dark auburn ringlets about an oval face – style perhaps a little bit young for her? What would she be, thirty-five? He pondered the possibility of burying his head in her opulent bosom – on some later occasion, of course.

      ‘Brissot has often told me,’ he said, ‘of his Lyon correspondent, his “Roman Lady” – and of course I have read all her articles and come to admire both her elegant turn of phrase and the noble cast of mind which inspires it; but never, I confess, did I look to see beauty and wit so perfectly united.’