Didn’t she know that we writers were professional gossips? No one knew him, I explained; he didn’t give interviews and photos of him hadn’t appeared with his books for a long time now. She looked surprised. It was true, she’d heard him turn down interviews several times, but she’d never imagined there could be anything mysterious about him: he didn’t appear to have any secrets. He must have been a little over forty, was tall and slim; in his youth he’d been a long-distance swimmer, there were cups and medals from that time in his study, and he sometimes still went swimming late at night at a club near his house.

She’d carefully chosen the few words she used to describe him, as if she wanted to make sure she sounded neutral, and I wondered if she was interested in him in any way. So he was tall, slim, with broad swimmer’s shoulders, I summed up. Attractive? I fired the word at her. She laughed, as if she’d already considered and discounted it: “No, at least not to me.” And she added, sounding a little shocked: “He’s old enough to be my father.” And anyway, she said, he was very serious. They too worked for four hours every morning. He had a lovely little girl, four years old, who was always drawing pictures for Luciana and would have liked her for a big sister. The daughter played on her own in a room on the ground floor next to the study while they worked. His wife never appeared-Luciana did find this a little mysterious. She’d only ever seen her a couple of times. Sometimes she heard her shouting something at the little girl, or calling her from upstairs. Maybe she was a depressive, or perhaps she had some other illness-she seemed to spend a large part of the day in bed. It was he who mainly looked after the child and they always finished on time so that he could take her to her nursery school. And how did he work? He dictated to her in the mornings, as I did, every so often sinking into silences that seemed to last for ever. He was always on his feet, pacing like a caged animal; one moment he was at the other end of the room, the next moment he was behind her.