Bestseller. Olivia Goldsmith

but he didn’t see her gesture or else ignored it. Perhaps he didn’t care for sweets. Or he was waiting for dessert of another kind. He had finished his espresso and now leaned forward. “Camilla, I would like to ask you to do something with me. I know it’s a lot to ask. It involves a lot of trust, but I think you can trust me.”

      Oh God, she thought. Here it comes. This was what happened when one wasn’t good at talking. She decided it was best to take control herself. “You want to sleep with me,” she said, her voice flat.

      Frederick leaned back. He was silent for a long moment. “That’s a very kind offer, and I’m sure it would be much more than pleasant, but I wasn’t actually thinking about that.” He paused, and Camilla tried to get over her monumental embarrassment. “I was talking about something more intimate.” Frederick said. “I hoped you would read me your manuscript.”

      They had moved into the salon for the light. Frederick was lying on the uncomfortable-looking sofa, propped up by an even more uncomfortable-looking bolster. Camilla sat across from him on the small chair beside the lamp table. She had her manuscript on her lap—she carried it with her all the time since she’d finished it. Frederick had called for a bottle of Pellegrino, and Camilla stopped now, at the end of the chapter, and took a sip. She was afraid to look at him. She was still far too embarrassed. And she was also far too excited. She had never shown the manuscript to anybody, and she had certainly never read it out loud. Hearing it made a lot of difference. She saw awkward phrases and some redundancies. But on the whole she thought it came across, and she had been thrilled when he laughed at the funny bits. She’d even dared to glance across at him from under her lashes as she read the scene introducing Mrs. Florence Mallabar. She couldn’t be sure, but his face looked pained.

      She finished the fizzy water and put the glass down. They were both silent for a moment. “Are you tired?” he asked.

      She shook her head, but she didn’t want to bore him. “I’ll stop,” she assured him. “It isn’t very good, is it?” The eleventh commandment in Britain was “Thou shalt not blow thine own trumpet.” She still adhered to it.

      Frederick threw his legs over the side of the sofa and sat up. “Camilla,” he said, “it’s wonderful. It’s a really wonderful story. Your descriptions … well, they’re brilliant. I see everything that you write about.” He paused. “But that’s not it. That’s not even important. It’s the characters. Those women are so alive. I know them. My mother is friends with them. They’re funny. And brave.” He paused. Camilla’s heart beat so loudly she was sure he could hear it too. “You have so much insight, and so much compassion for them, Camilla. You’re really, really good.”

      She sat still, utterly still, for a long moment and then put her face in her hands. She began to cry, silently at first, but she couldn’t help making some sound. She wept because she believed him. This book that she had started, purely out of loneliness and desperation, that she had worked on with discipline, and then with all of her concentration and all of her love, really was worth something. It had taken on a life of its own. It wasn’t just because Frederick said so. His words had unlocked the knowledge in her own heart. She looked across the room at him.

      “Thank you,” she said.

20

       That’s very nice if they want to publish you, but don’t pay too much attention to it. It will toss you away. Just continue to write.

       —Natalie Goldberg

      Judith lay on their bed. Her feet were cold, but it seemed too much trouble to untangle the blanket and cover herself. She had no energy. With great effort, she turned her head to the right so that she could see the electric clock on the night table. It was eleven twenty-five already. Time in the dusty little apartment had a very strange way of going unbearably slowly and then telescoping, so that now, somehow, it was almost time for Daniel’s return.

      She had managed to lie here for almost five hours, disturbed only by her own thoughts. The phone hadn’t rung. Since the break with her family, she never heard from them—except for the letter that her mother sent her every month. And she had no real college friends. When she married Daniel, she had had to drop her two college roommates—they’d seemed so young, and Daniel hadn’t liked them. Since then Judith hadn’t replaced Stephanie and Jessica with any of the cold faculty wives or professors. They certainly disapproved of her. Anyway, she had to spend hours alone on the book, so it seemed as if the writing life didn’t make it easy to make friends or to keep them.

      While she was writing, Judith had been holed up in her little office room all day without the time to think of herself as lonely. At night she’d been tired, and then she had Daniel’s company. Only now that the writing was finished had she realized how alone she was without the book to keep her company. The days stretched endless and empty before her, a burden rather than a gift. She imagined this was a little bit like postpartum depression. But then didn’t your obstetrician give you pills? Wasn’t there some young mother who told you she’d had this too and what to do about it? Judith felt as if she had given birth to Elthea and the other characters of In Full Knowledge, but there had been no celebration afterward. There was no pink little baby to delight in. Instead, all the labor and pain had yielded nothing but a dead manuscript that Daniel had taken away and that no one seemed to be celebrating.

      Judith sighed and turned over. She had meant to get up early this morning and begin to clean the apartment. She had planned to start in the bathroom, but when she had awakened at half past six it was still dark out. Once she did force herself up and had walked across the cold, splintery wooden floor and smelled the mildew in the bathroom, Judith had felt so overwhelmed with despair that she had simply crawled back into bed. There was so much that needed to be cleaned—the windows were coated with dirt, the floors had dustballs and dog hair on them, the window-sills were gritty. Even the sheet she was lying on needed to be changed. Judith rolled over and opened her eyes. The pillowcase under her cheek had old mascara marks and an irregular stain the shape of Australia where she had drooled during the night.

      Somehow it seemed the more she rested, the more tired she was, but Judith couldn’t manage to just tell herself to snap out of it. Anyway, what was the point? If she washed the windows, a cold and messy all-day job, they’d only be coated with grime in a day or two. And the bathroom! She could scrub the grout with a toothbrush, and the stains still would reappear. The worn linoleum of the floor didn’t get really clean no matter how much scrubbing she did, and anyway, once Daniel peed and missed the bowl it would just need scrubbing again.

      Still, despite her overwhelming fatigue, Judith hadn’t meant to be lying in bed in a dirty nightgown until lunchtime. How had the morning gone by? What was wrong with her? She was frightened, but she didn’t know who to talk to. She felt too guilty to tell Daniel, and anyway he was so wrapped up with his classes and his workshop and his phone calls to agents that he seemed almost unaware of her. Perhaps if they marked the occasion or if he had seemed more excited about the completion of the book … perhaps if there had been some good news about it … But Daniel had told her it was far too early to hear anything. When she had handed In Full Knowledge over to him, Daniel had simply put it in his new briefcase and said that he would read it and think about “a submission plan.” And that had been that.

      Judith looked over at the clock: 11:31. Daniel would be home in ten or fifteen minutes. She couldn’t let him see her like this. In a panic, she stood up, dizziness hitting her as she did so. She dragged herself into the bathroom, peed, and realized she didn’t have the time or the energy to shower. She couldn’t think about what to wear. She would pull on her jeans and her sweater from yesterday. She didn’t have the wherewithal to plan another outfit. She went to the sink and washed her face quickly, not bothering to use the facecloth but merely splashing the water on with her hands. She brushed her brown hair back and put an elastic band around it. It was too greasy to let it hang down any other way.

      She walked back to the bedroom. She didn’t have time to make the bed now, not if she wanted to have some lunch waiting for Daniel. The apartment was very quiet. Where