Page 104 of A Good Heart is Hard to Find
‘I only start my slavery at midnight,’ Ipointed out.
‘But you could stretch a point and get changed and in position for midnight? Then you can do it again tomorrow, but I’ll let you off on Sunday,’ he offered.
‘Gee, thanks.’
‘I half expected Jason to insist on coming here tonight as well as tomorrow to protect you from my wicked wiles. Are you losing your charms?’
‘I don’t think I’ve got any to lose, and Jason’s busy tonight. Ifhe does turn up at all tomorrow I don’t think he will make much of a fuss, because Orla’s managed to distract him with her new singing telegram outfit. You’ll see it tomorrow.’
He’d see most ofOrlatomorrow, too.
‘Will I?’
‘Yes, because it’s Mr Bream’s birthday, and his wife has hired Orla to come here, and Rosetta says we’re all invited for cake and stuff at four tomorrow in the big sittingroom. But Mrs Bream thinks she’s getting Marilyn Monroe.’
‘And in fact she’s getting—?’
‘Wait and see,’ I said darkly. ‘Where are Rosetta and Eddie?’
‘They said something about an early night because of cooking all those breakfasts tomorrow, and left me to it.’
‘Yes …’ I said slowly, looking at Dante’s dark and shadowed face. ‘I think Rosetta’s finding the weekend a bit more exhausting thanshe thought. But then, she didn’t bank on your ex-mother-in-law coming along, and everyone wanting meals on trays and birthday teas, and all the rest of it.’
Dante rose to his feet and said abruptly: ‘Come on.’
‘Where?’
‘Back to the lonely west wing. I’ve got something I want to show you. Bring your glass, and I’ll take another bottle.’
‘I think you’ve had quite enough,’ I said severely. ‘Andwhat do you want to show me?’
‘Wait and see.’
I went, although not without certain nervous qualms, but he led me straight to his study, where he had now ranged the diaries in date order and typed up the first as Chapter One. There was a title page, too: ‘Travelling to Alaska’.
‘What do you think? Is it set out right?’
I was quite touched that he’d used my suggested title. Picking up the chapter,I flicked through it, then went back and started to read from the beginning.
… my New York hotel bedroom at first seemed a far remove from the earth-floored dark hut I shared with Paul for so many months of our captivity. Yet in a way it still seemed to cage me from the urban jungle outside with its different dangers…
When I looked up from the last page of the chapter I realized that I’d satdown with it at some point. Dante was sitting opposite me on one of the old armchairs, quietly and intently watching me.
He raised one black brow. ‘So you’re back?’
‘Sorry – it’s gripping stuff. I’m dying to read the whole thing when you’ve finished it.’
‘So you think this way of writing it is going to work, then?’
‘Work? It’s brilliant!’ I said enthusiastically. ‘I couldn’t put it down, youmust have seen that?’
‘Well, I couldn’t putLover, Come Back to Medown, if it comes to that,’ he replied. ‘But for entirely different reasons. I kept wondering if any of the characters were based on real ones – especially Vladimir, who this Keturah seems to find so very attractive but scary.’
‘Oh, no, I make them all up,’ I said hastily. Which I do, I only borrow aspects of people I find interestingand jumble them up with some invented bits to make a new character.
‘You don’t findmeattractive but scary, by any chance?’ he asked with interest. ‘Just wondered.’
‘No, not at all,’ I said firmly. ‘I made Vlad’s character up entirely. And it’s Keturah who felt that, she’s such a wimp! Or she started out as a wimp, until she took a turn for the worse and got more interesting.’
