Page 43 of The Honeymoon Affair

‘Lonely? No.’ He seems a little surprised at the question. ‘I find it peaceful, to be honest.’

‘I like living on my own, but I’m not sure I’d be as keen on it in a house like this where there are probably all sorts of nooks and crannies. My entire home would fit in this room.’

‘You’re exaggerating.’

‘Only slightly.’

‘Would you like a tour?’

‘Yes please.’

I place the glass of wine on the dark-wood coffee table and stand up.

‘This is my living room. Obviously.’ He gestures around. ‘And through here . . .’ he opens connecting doors to the room with the blue and silver tree, ‘is my library.’

‘Oh, wow.’ The only furniture is a couple of comfortable-looking armchairs and a coffee table. The walls are taken up entirely with bookshelves, which themselves are crammed with books. ‘It really is a library. How many books?’

‘Thousands,’ he says. ‘I’ve more in my study, of course.’

I thought I was quite a good reader, with my overflowing IKEA Billy bookcase, but this is a whole new level. I walk over to one of the shelves and see that there are little numbered tags on them, while the books themselves are arranged in alphabetical order. I congratulate him on his organisation. My books are simply shoved on the shelf as I finish reading them.

‘My sister did it,’ he said. ‘She worked in a library for a time. So they’re arranged using the Dewey system.’

That goes completely above my head, and he explains that it’s a way of classifying books into groups and then subdividing the groups to make it easy to find any volume. I tell him I don’t need a system to know where all my Janice Jermyns are, and he smiles and confesses that he hasn’t read all the books on his shelves.

‘I do read a lot,’ he admits. ‘But when this room was finished and had so much space for books, I bought loads of old editions to fill the shelves. Of course, now I actually need more space again. I have an entire set of Dorothy L. Sayers,’ he adds, and walks over to them to show me ‘So I’m not totally hopeless when it comes to crime, even if hers are classic murder mysteries.’

‘Maybe yours could be the start of a series.’ I take out a couple of the books and smile at the old-fashioned covers before putting them back in their correct places. ‘After all, your detective is a very sexy character.’

‘I didn’t try to make him sexy.’ He looks appalled.

‘Imagine that! He writes sexy without even trying.’ I grin. ‘Come on, show me more.’

He brings me to the kitchen next, which is at the lower level and, in contrast to the studied yet faded elegance of upstairs, is relentlessly modern, white and clinical. It connects to a smaller room which is set up as a home gym, with a Peloton bike and a rowing machine. No wonder Charles looks so fit! I think of my own lapsed gym membership and vow to renew it.

Then we go up two flights to his study, which is a lovely, comforting space with big armchairs, more bookshelves and quite an impressive desk with a vintage-style desk lamp with a green glass shade and a gold base. Dozens of framed quotes from famous writers are hung on the walls.

‘So this is the creative hub,’ I say. ‘Cool.’

‘The allegedly creative hub,’ he reminds me. ‘I had to decamp to the White Sands to write, remember.’

‘What was stopping you here?’

‘I don’t know.’ He perches on the edge of the desk. ‘Perhaps . . . perhaps it was having such a great place to write.’

I look at him curiously.

‘I wrote my first book in my office at work,’ he says. ‘I wrote the second in my tiny one-bedroom apartment. The builders were in here when I was writing my third. Now that I have the perfect space, it intimidates me. To be honest, I got it done up like this for photographs.’

‘Photographs?’

‘You know, when I do TV or newspaper interviews. It’s good to have a place that looks the part.’

I laugh. I can’t help it.

‘You think I’m a complete arse, don’t you?’ he says.

‘Not a complete one,’ I assure him. ‘But there’s a certain arse-ness about it all right.’

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