‘It was. Freddy was thirteen when Alan came out and the worst thing was that the newspapers got hold of the story and the children read about it at school. Of course he was teased. Having a gay dad. I think it would be easier if it happened now. Things have moved on so fast.’
She was completely without rancour. I was surprised and made a mental note to cross her off the list I had drawn up the day before. She explained that the divorce had been amicable; that Alan had given her everything she wanted and had continued to support Freddy even though there had been no contact between the two of them. There was a trust fund to take him through university and beyond and, as James Taylor had mentioned, he had been left money in the will. She herself had a part-time job; she was a supply teacher in nearby Warminster. But there was plenty of money in the bank. She didn’t need to work.
We talked a lot about Alan as a writer because that was what I had told her interested me. She had known him at the most interesting time in his career: struggling, getting published for the first time, finding fame.
‘Everyone at Woodbridge School knew that he wanted to be a writer,’ she told me. ‘He wanted it desperately. That was all he ever talked about. I was actually going out with another of the teachers there but that ended when Alan came to teach at the school. Are you still in touch with Andreas?’
She had asked it so casually and I don’t think she noticed when I froze. We had talked, long ago, at publishing parties, and I had mentioned to her that I knew Andreas but either I hadn’t told her that we were going out together or she had forgotten it. ‘Andreas?’ I said.
‘Andreas Patakis. He taught Latin and Greek. He and I had a huge fling – it lasted about a year. We were crazy about each other. You know what these Mediterraneans are like. I’m afraid I treated him badly in the end but, as I say, there was something about Alan that just suited me more.’
Andreas Patakis. My Andreas.
All at once, a whole lot of things fell into place. So this was the reason why Andreas had disliked Alan and why he resented Alan’s success! It was also the reason why, on Sunday evening, he had been so reluctant to tell me what it was about Alan that had annoyed him. How could he admit that he had been going out with Melissa before he met me? What should I think about it? Should I be upset? I had inherited him second-hand. No. That was ridiculous. Andreas had been married twice. There had been plenty of other women in his life. I knew that. But Melissa …? I found myself looking at her in a completely different light. She was definitely much less attractive than I had thought: too thin, boyish even, better suited to Alan than to Andreas.
She hadn’t stopped talking. She was still telling me about Alan.
‘I absolutely love books and I found him fascinating. I’d never met anyone so driven. He was always talking about stories and ideas, the books he’d read and the books he wanted to write. He’d done a course at East Anglia University and he was certain it was going to help him break through. It wasn’t enough for him to be published. He wanted to be famous – but it took a lot longer than he’d expected. I was with him throughout the whole process: writing the books, finishing them and then the horrible disappointment when nobody was interested. You have no idea what it’s like, Susan, being rejected, those letters that turn up in the post with six or seven lines dismissing the work of a whole year. Well, I suppose you’re the one who writes them. But to spend all that time writing something only to find that nobody wants it. It’s horribly destructive. They’re not just rejecting your work. They’re rejecting who you are.’
And who was Alan?
‘He took writing very seriously. The truth is, he didn’t want to write mysteries. The first book he showed me was called Look to the Stars. It was actually very clever and funny and a little sad. The main character was an astronaut but he never actually got into space. In a way, I suppose, that was a bit like Alan. Then there was a book set in the south of France. He said it was inspired by Henry James, The Turn of the Screw. It took him three years to finish but again no one was interested. I couldn’t understand it because I loved his writing and I completely believed in it. And what makes me angry is that, in the end, I was the one who spoiled it all.’
I poured myself more sparkling water. I was still thinking about Andreas. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘Atticus Pünd was my idea. No – really, it was! You’ve got to understand that what Alan wanted more than anything was to be published, to be recognised. It killed him to be stuck in a boring independent school in the middle of nowhere, teaching a bunch of kids he didn’t even like and who would forget him the moment they moved on to university. And one day – we’d just been to a bookshop – I suggested that he should write something simpler and more popular. He was always great at puzzles – crosswords and things like that. He had a fascination with tricks and trompe l’oeils. So I told him he should write a whodunnit. It seemed to me that there were writers out there who were earning thousands, millions of pounds from books that weren’t half as good as his. It would only take him a few months. It might be fun. And if it was a success he could leave Woodbridge and become a writer full-time, which is what he really wanted.
‘I actually helped him write Atticus Pünd Investigates. I was there when he thought up the main character. He told me all his ideas.’
‘Where did Atticus come from?’
‘They’d just shown Schindler’s List on TV and Alan took him from that. He may have been based on an old English teacher too. His name was Adrian Pound or something like that. Alan read loads of Agatha Christie books and tried to work out how she wrote her mysteries and only then did he begin writing. I was the first person to read it. I’m still proud of that. I was the first person in the world to read an Atticus Pünd novel. I loved it. Of course, it wasn’t as good as his other work. It was lighter and completely pointless, but I thought it was beautifully written – and of course, you published it. The rest you know.’
‘You said you spoiled things for him.’
‘Everything went wrong after the book came out. You have to understand, Alan was such a complex person. He could be very moody, introvert. For him, writing was something mysterious. It was like he was kneeling at the altar and the words were being sent down to him – or something like that. There were writers that he admired, and more than anything in the world he had always dreamed of being like them.’
‘What writers?’
‘Well, Salman Rushdie, for one. Martin Amis. David Mitchell. And Will Self.’
I remembered the four hundred and twenty pages of The Slide that I had read. I had thought it derivative at the time but now Melissa had told me where it had come from. Alan had been imitating a writer he’d admired but who, personally speaking, I had never been able to read. He had produced something close to a pastiche of Will Self.