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pay your property tax.’
    ‘But what about your car? That must have cost at least a million.’
    ‘Try two million. But I’ve had to park it outside my neighbour’s house for the last month so it’s not repossessed!’
    Shell-shocked, I fell silent for a moment before something clicked.
    ‘I don’t believe you! You just made all that up so I’d do some more writing, didn’t you?’
    ‘If only.’
    Now it was my turn to pick up my phone, to call the accountants who took care of my taxes and therefore had access to all of my various accounts. My adviser confirmed that, yes, all of my accounts were completely empty, something that he had apparently been trying to bring to my attention for weeks, sending a constant stream of recorded delivery letters and voicemail messages.
    But when was the last time I had emptied my mailbox or listened to my answering machine?
    Once I had regained my composure, I felt neither panicked nor seized by a desire to throw myself across the table at Milo and hit him in the face. I just felt incredibly weary.
    ‘Look, Tom, we’ve got ourselves out of far worse situations than this.’
    ‘Do you realise what you’ve done?’
    ‘But you can fix it,’ he reassured me. ‘If you manage to finish your novel in time, we can easily get back to where we were before.’
    ‘And just how do you think I’m going to be able to write 500 pages in less than three months?’
    ‘You already have a few chapters tucked away somewhere – I know that.’
    I put my head in my hands. It was obvious he didn’t understand the first thing about how powerless I was feeling.
    ‘I’ve just spent the last hour telling you that I’m washed up, that my mind is behind bars, that it’s as dry as a rock. The fact that I apparently now have no money doesn’t change any of that. It’s over!’
    But he wouldn’t drop it.
    ‘You’ve always said that writing was what kept you balanced, what kept you sane even!’
    ‘Well, clearly I was wrong: it wasn’t not writing that pushed me over the edge, it was love.’
    ‘All the same, do you see that you are self-destructing for the sake of something that doesn’t exist?’
    ‘Are you saying that love doesn’t exist?’
    ‘Of course love exists. But you’re so damn obsessed by the idea of soul mates. As if there were some invisible link between two people destined to be together.’
    ‘So you think it’s ridiculous to believe that there’s someone out there who can make you happy, someone you would want to grow old with?’
    ‘Of course not, but that’s not what you believe in: you believe that there is only one person on earth for everyone. Like some kind of missing part seeking to reunite with its original other half to re-form a whole.’
    ‘Well, that’s what Aristophanes seems to think in Plato’s Symposium !’
    ‘Maybe, but your whole Aristo-thingy with its plate or whatever doesn’t say that Aurore is your missing part. Believe me: you have to give up this idea. Mythology is fine for yourbooks, but in the real world it doesn’t work so well.’
    ‘No, you’re right – in the real world it isn’t enough for my best friend to ruin me; he also thinks it’s OK to lecture me about my life!’ I exploded, getting up to leave.
    Milo also got up, with a despairing look on his face. At that moment, I could tell he would have done anything in the world just to inject a little inspiration into me.
    ‘So you have no plans to start writing again any time soon?’
    ‘No. And there’s nothing you can do to change that. Writing a book isn’t like building a car or making washing powder,’ I shouted at him in the doorway.
    As I left the restaurant, the valet handed me the keys to the Bugatti. I got into the driver’s seat, turned on the engine and put it into gear. The leather seats had a lingering smell of mandarin, and the lacquered-wood dashboard, embellished with aluminum, made me feel as though I were in a spaceship.
    The force of the sudden