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film?’
    The publisher explained that the hotel was a popular venue for weddings.
    â€˜Oh,’ she said. ‘I thought it was a joke or something.’
    She slumped down heavily in the booth, fanning her face and plucking at the neck of her black garment with the other hand.
    â€˜We were just talking about Dante,’ the publisher said pleasantly.
    Linda stared at him.
    â€˜Were we meant to have studied that for today?’ she said.
    He laughed loudly.
    â€˜The only topic is yourself,’ he said. ‘That’s what people are paying to hear about.’
    We both listened while he gave us the details of the event in which we were participating. He would introduce us, he said, and then there would be a few minutes of conversation, before the readings began, in which he would ask each of us two or three questions about ourselves.
    â€˜But you already know the answers, right?’ Linda said.
    It was a formality, he said, just to allow everyone to relax.
    â€˜Ice-breaking,’ Linda said. ‘I’m familiar with the concept. I like a little ice in things though,’ she added. ‘I just prefer it that way.’
    She talked about a reading she had done in New York with a well-known novelist. They had agreed beforehand how the reading would go, but when they got on stage the novelist announced to the audience that instead of reading they were going to sing. The audience went wild for this idea and the novelist stood up and sang.
    The publisher roared with laughter and clapped his hands so that Linda jumped.
    â€˜Sang what?’ he said.
    â€˜I don’t know,’ Linda said. ‘Some kind of Irish folk tune.’
    â€˜And what did you sing?’ he said.
    â€˜It was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,’ Linda said.
    The publisher was smiling and shaking his head.
    â€˜Genius,’ he said.
    Another reading she did was with a poet, Linda said. The poet was a kind of cult figure and the audience was huge. The poet’s boyfriend always participated in her public performances, going around the audience while she read, sitting on people’s laps or fondling them. On this occasion he had brought with him a giant ball of string and he had crawled up and down the rows, looping the string around their ankles so that by the end the whole audience was tied together.
    The publisher gave another roar of laughter.
    â€˜You must read Linda’s novel,’ he said, to me. ‘It’s quite hilarious.’
    Linda looked at him, quizzical and unsmiling.
    â€˜It isn’t meant to be,’ she said.
    â€˜But that is exactly why people here love it!’ he said. ‘It reassures them of the absurdity of life, without causing them to feel that they themselves are absurd. In your stories you are always the – what is the word?’
    â€˜The butt,’ Linda said flatly. ‘Is it hot in here?’ she added. ‘I’m stifling. It’s probably the menopause,’ she said, and made quotation marks in the air with her fingers: ‘Ice melts as woman writer overheats.’
    This time the publisher did not laugh, but merely looked at her with bright neutrality, his eyes unblinking behind their glasses.
    â€˜I’ve been on tour so long I’m starting to pass through the stages of ageing,’ she said to me. ‘My face hurts from having to smile all the time. I’ve eaten all this weird food and now this dress is the only thing I can fit into. I’ve worn it so many times it’s become like my apartment.’
    I asked her where she’d been before coming here and she said she had gone to France, Spain and the UK, and before that had spent two weeks at a writers’ retreat in Italy. The retreat was in a castle on a hill in the middle of nowhere. For a place promoting solitary contemplation, it was pretty hectic. It belonged to a countess who liked to spend her dead husband’s money on surrounding