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poor.’
    ‘They’re not
that
bad,’ I demur. ‘Those are actually pretty good figures. And sales have picked up a lot this last year or two.’
    ‘Still,’ she mutters, ‘how can you afford to write full-time?’
    ‘My parents left me an inheritance,’ I lie, as I always do whenever that question is asked. ‘And I was in business – computers – before striking out as an author.
I’ve enough set by to see me through the lean years. Besides, I can live frugally when I have to. Money isn’t everything.’
    ‘Nice to see someone dedicated to his craft,’ she says.
    ‘I don’t know about dedication,’ I respond modestly. ‘I’m just stubborn. I know I’m not the world’s greatest writer – not even its greatest horror
writer – but I’m determined to prove that I can make it, even if my books are lacklustre, thrill-free affairs, as one critic cruelly put it.’
    ‘But they’re not!’ she exclaims, tightening her fingers over my knuckles, which melt with ecstasy at the pressure. ‘You’re a wonderful writer.’
    ‘Oh stop.’ I grimace, and lay my free hand over hers. ‘How’d you like to become my agent?’
    ‘What’s the starting salary?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘I’ll take it.’
    We laugh in chorus and my fingers link with hers. Deleena looks down at our hands and her laughter subsides. I half-unhook my fingers from hers. If she takes her hand away now, the moment will
be spoiled and I’m sure she’ll find an excuse to leave. But to my delight she lets it lie where it is and gazes up at the underbelly of a bridge as we pass.
    We discuss her life. She works in the City for a private banking firm. Not the most interesting of jobs, she says, but the pay’s good and so are the perks — trips abroad three or
four times a year, regular hours, plenty of promotion opportunities.
    Deleena left school at sixteen and ‘arsed about for a couple of years’ before marrying an older gentleman a week after her eighteenth birthday. ‘It was a mistake. I
didn’t love him, didn’t even really like him. But he was a man of the world, he had a good CD collection, he was –’
    ‘You married a man for his CDs?’ I interrupt.
    ‘Taste in music is very important,’ she asserts. ‘I could never get involved with anyone who listens to the Eagles or Rod Stewart.’
    ‘What about Dire Straits and Bob Dylan?’ I ask nervously.
    ‘Dylan’s a legend. Dire Straits . . . ’ She makes a so-so gesture.
    ‘Acceptable?’
    ‘Just about.’
    ‘Phew.’ I pretend to wipe sweat from my brow.
    The marriage lasted eight months. ‘I hated him by the end, which was wrong, because I was the one who forced him to get married. I sat down with him a few years ago and we managed to put
things straight. We’re good friends now.’
    After the divorce, she ran home to her parents to sort out her head. Her mother convinced her to finish her education, which she did, earning three A levels at night class, then graduating with
honours in business studies at university. She spent a couple of years in Europe brushing up on her languages – she speaks six and is working on Chinese – and fell into banking more by
chance than design. Upon her return to London she went to work for one of the major banks, before being headhunted by her current employer four years ago.
    Piecing together her chronology as it unfolds, I realize she’s older than I thought. When I ask delicately about her age, she laughs, taps her nose and says she won’t see thirty
again.
    I quiz her about current boyfriends. Nobody serious. There was a guy called Mark who she met while travelling across Europe. They were together for a few years. Only brief flings since then.
    Then it’s my turn to spill the beans. I tell her a bit about my early life, how I was born in Chicago, moved to Seattle when I was six, then to Detroit when I was ten, when my father got a
job there, back when they still made cars. I gloss over my pre-writing career, like I