was guaranteed to have a convincing theory about the personal crisis that conjured up his story, and summoned his double to life.
Oh yes, the nearer you stood to the literary double, the more (spookily) it told you universal truths of existence. Unfortunately for Belinda, she could never quite appreciate that the further you stood back from the literary double (as all her friends effortlessly did), the more it resembled leg-waxing by other means.
The phone rang at ten o’clock and Stefan answered it.
‘It was a man from British Telecom, seemed a bit rum,’ he reported to Belinda, who was curled up with a book in her study, Neville snoozing contentedly save for the occasional twitch of his little pink tail. ‘His name was Graham.’
Belinda bit her lip. ‘Oh yes?’
‘He was ringing from home, to check you were recovered. I told him, “This is ten o’clock at night, were you born in a barn?”’
Belinda looked amazed. Neville stirred.
‘You are all right, aren’t you, Miss Patch? He said he only mentioned his money-off Friends and Family scheme and you wept, like cats and dogs.’
She nodded. She felt cornered. When women had breakdowns, their husbands left them. It was a well-known fact. When Stefan’s former wife Ingrid had a breakdown, he left her good and proper, in an institution in Malmö.
‘You try to do too much,’ he said.
‘I know.’
‘It’s not my fault, is it?’
Belinda gasped. His fault?
He searched her face, which crumpled under the strain of his kindness.
‘Of course it’s not,’ she snuffled.
‘Come to bed,’ he said, reaching to touch her.
‘All right,’ she said.
‘You must not forget, Belinda. No man is an island.’
‘No.’
She put down her book, and got up.
He smiled. ‘The thing about you, Belinda, is you need two lives.’
‘Well, three or four would be nice,’ she agreed, switching off the light. ‘Why don’t you make some clones for me? You know perfectly well you could knock up a couple at work.’
It was eleven thirty on Tuesday night in Putney, the candles were guttering, and Jago was telling a joke over coffee. It was one of the smart showbiz ones he’d picked up on a trip home to New York several years ago.
‘So the neighbour in Santa Monica says, “I tell ya, it was terrible. Your agent was here and he raped your wife and slaughtered your children and then he just upped and burned your damn house down.” And the writer says, “Hold on a minute!…”’ Here Jago paused for a well-practised effect. His guests looked up.
‘“Did you say my agent came to my house?”’ Belinda laughed with all the others, although she’d heard Jago tell this joke before. Oh, understanding jokes about agents, didn’t it make you feel grown-up and important? She remembered the first time she’d managed to mention her agent as a mere matter of fact, without prefacing it with ‘Oh listen to me!’ It had been one of those Rubicon moments. No going back now, Mother. No going back now.
To be honest, Belinda’s grand-sounding agent – A. P. Jorkin of Jorkin Spenlow – was a dusty man she’d met only once. But he was adequate to her meagre purposes, being well connected as well as reassuringly bookish, though alas, a sexist. ‘Let’s keep this relationship professional, shall we?’ she’d said to him brightly in the taxi, when he put his hand on her leg and squeezed it. ‘All right,’ he agreed, with a chalky wheeze, pressing harder. ‘How much do you charge?’
Ah yes, she’d certainly made a disastrous choice with Jorkin, but changing your agent sounded like one of those endlessly difficult, escalatory things, like treating a house for dry rot. For a woman who can’t be arsed to pick up a sock, it was a project she would, self-evidently, never undertake. ‘Perhaps he’ll die soon,’ she thought, hopefully. Random facial hair sprouted from Jorkin’s cheek and nose, she remembered dimly. She really hated that.
Jago’s agent, of course, was quite another matter. Not that Jago ever wrote books, but having a big-time agent was an essential fashion accoutrement once you reached a certain level in Fleet Street: the modern-day equivalent of a food-taster or a leopard on a chain. Dermot, who often appeared on television, was famously associated with those other busy scribblers, the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Complete with his too-tight-fitting ski tan, he was tonight’s guest of honour, amiably telling Stefan about rugby union in South Africa, fiddling with a silver bracelet, and recounting jaw-dropping stories about being backstage at Clive Anderson. No random facial hair on this one. No hair at all, actually. When she’d told him in confidence about her book on literary doubles, he’d laughed out loud at the sheer, profitless folly of it. ‘Here,’ he’d said, taking off his belt with a flourish. ‘Hang yourself with that, it’s quicker.’
Tonight he was feeling more generous, so he gave her a tip. ‘Belinda, why don’t you write a bittersweet novel about being single in the city with a cat?’
‘Perhaps because I hate cats and I’m not single, and I don’t write grown-up fiction.’
‘OK, but single people sell.’
‘Which is why I’m writing about double people, no doubt.’
‘Well,’ he sighed, leaning towards her and picking imaginary fluff from her shoulder, ‘you said it.’
Belinda wondered now whether she should have taken his advice. Was her literary work above fashion? Or just so far beyond it that it had dropped off the edge? She poured herself some more wine and took a small handful of chocolates. Relaxation on this scale was a rare and marvellous thing. Neville had given the other rats the night off, evidently, and was spending the evening quietly oiling his whip. Stefan was now teasing Dermot about the real-life chances of an attack of killer tomatoes (for some reason, Dermot was rather exercised on this point); Jago was arguing good-naturedly with Dermot’s assistant about modern operatic stage design. Maggie (bless her) seemed to be adequately hitting it off with the spare man Viv always thoughtfully provided – this time a long-haired, big-boned sports reporter plucked without sufficient research from Jago’s office. And, with all the dinner finished, it now befell Belinda to adopt her perennial role at dinner parties – i.e. pointlessly sucking up to Viv.
‘That was such a good meal,’ she began. ‘I don’t know how you do it. I feel like I’ve eaten the British Library. I can’t even buy ready-cook stuff from Marks and Spencer’s any more, did I tell you? Every time I go in, I see all the prepared veg and I get upset and have to come out again. Even though I haven’t got time to prepare veg myself, I’m so depressed by bags of sprouts with the outer leaves peeled off that I have to crouch on the floor while my head swims. Has that ever happened to you?’
Viv shrugged. She refused to be drawn into Belinda’s domestic
