Page 46 of The Honeymoon Affair

‘Dammit, have I really? It’s so hard not to do,’ he says. ‘But it’s not something to worry about just yet. Let’s see what Graham and Sophia have to say. I’m sure we’ll work it out. Have you eaten? We could have a late lunch and talk it over.’

Sophia, Charles’s editor, is in her sixties, very experienced, and has worked with him ever since Winter’s Heartbreak. They get on really well together.

‘I have a . . . Oh, all right. I’m at home right now. Will I come to Riverside Lodge?’

‘If you’re OK with bread and cheese.’

‘I’ll stop off at the deli on the way,’ I tell him.

‘You’re a gem,’ he says, and ends the call.

It takes about ten minutes to drive from my apartment to Charles’s house, but stopping at the deli delays me, and it’s over half an hour later before I’m pointing the remote at the sliding gate that leads to the parking space beside my mews. The snow of the previous few days has melted, although it feels cold enough to start again at any minute.

I walk past my office and up the path to the kitchen door. It’s unlocked. I step inside and made my way into the hallway.

‘Anyone home?’ I call. ‘I come bearing gifts.’

I hear the sound of footsteps, and a minute later Charles appears. He’s wearing a light blue sweater over his oldest jeans. His eyes flicker to the shopping bag in my hand. ‘What did you get?’

I take out smoked chicken, salads and some crusty rolls, and he smiles appreciatively.

‘Excellent choices, thank you.’

‘Give me credit for knowing your favourite lunch,’ I say as I begin to butter the rolls. ‘Haven’t you done any shopping since you got back?’

‘No time.’ He shrugs.

I did all the food shopping when we were together because Charles is utterly hopeless at it. He eats out or orders in whenever he’s on his own.

‘Wine or water?’ he asks.

‘Water is fine, thanks.’

‘So.’ He puts a glass in front of me, then sits on the opposite side of the counter. ‘I’m really excited about A Caribbean Calypso, Annie. I believe in it completely.’

Apart from my parents, he’s the only one who ever calls me Annie, and that’s usually only when he’s trying to make a point. Mum named me Anne, after her godmother. But Anne isn’t a stand-out sort of name, and I wanted to stand out. So when I went to London, I changed it. Nobody else knows my given name and I never, ever tell anyone. It was a statement of trust in Charles that I told him.

I sip my water and then ask him about his inspiration for the book.

‘The Caribbean didn’t put me in the right frame of mind for a heartbreaking love story,’ he says. ‘But it was perfect for a murder. I had it read by an expert,’ he adds.

‘An expert?’

‘At the resort,’ he says. ‘There was a girl who read lots of crime.’

‘Someone you didn’t even know read your manuscript?’ I’m shocked. Early on in his career, he showed a first draft of Winter’s Heartbreak to his sister-in-law, Rachel. Fortunately, despite her lukewarm response to the main character, he persevered, but since then he hasn’t let anyone bar me and the Xerxes team see his work before the advance reading copies are ready.

‘I wanted feedback from someone who knew the genre,’ he says.

‘OK . . .’ I can’t help sounding doubtful.

‘And she was right, you said so yourself. It’s a good book. She’s a fan of Janice Jermyn, by the way,’ he continues, ‘I told her I’d get her some signed copies of her books.’

‘You did, did you?’

‘Why not?’

I’m stunned by Charles’s confidence. He was at a low ebb when he left for the White Sands, but now he reminds me of how he used to be when I first met him. He believed in his writing then, in what he was trying to say. He believed in it when he wrote My Frozen Heart, too. I think it was the time I was most in love with him. When everything stretched before us, bright and promising. The sunlit uplands of literary success in which we both would find eternal happiness.

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