hand as an unwelcome social obligation and similarly invited me into her house, leaving my driver to look after himself.
‘I am Alison Visborough. Howard warned me to expect you,’ she announced, leading me into a cold tidy room furnished with hard-stuffed, blue-green armchairs and sofas which looked inviting but repelled boarders, so to speak. I perched on the inhospitable edge of one of them, and she on another. The dogs had been unceremoniously left in the hall.
‘You are younger than I expected,’ she pronounced, her vowels unselfconsciously plummy. ‘Are you sure you are who you say?’
‘Quite often.’
She stared.
I said, ‘I’m not the ogre you described to the Drumbeat.’
‘You were driving Howard to despair,’ she said crisply. ‘Something had to be done. I did not expect all this fuss. Still less did I intend to bring trouble to Howard. He has explained that your wretched film company are angry with me, but when I perceive an injustice, I must speak out.’
‘Always?’ I asked with interest.
‘Of course.’
‘And does it often get you into trouble?’
‘I am not to be deterred by opposition.’
‘For Howard’s sake,’ I said, ‘could you write a short apology to the film company?’
She shook her head indignantly, then thought it over, and finally looked indecisive, an unusual state for her, I guessed.
She had short dark hair with grey advancing, also unafraid brown eyes, weathered skin, no lipstick and ringless work-roughened hands. A woman hard on herself and on everyone else, but admired by Howard.
I asked, ‘Who did you talk to, who works for the Drumbeat?’
She hesitated again and looked not overpleased. ‘I didn’t say,’ she grudgingly answered, ‘exactly what she wrote in the paper.’
‘She?’
‘She’s an old acquaintance. We went to the same school. She works on the “Hot from the Stars” team, and I thought it would help Howard in his fight against you. She didn’t write what was printed. She just passed on the information to one of the columnists, as she always does. She gathers the material, you see, and then it gets sensationalised, she explained to me, by someone whose job it is to do that.’
Sensationalised. What a process! Yet without it, I supposed, Howard’s gripe wouldn’t have been worth the space.
‘How long,’ I enquired, ‘have you known Howard?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I only wondered about the length of your commitment to him.’
With a touch of the belligerence I was coming to expect, she said, ‘I can be committed to a good cause within five minutes.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Actually, we’ve known Howard since he came to visit us after Daddy died.’
The word Daddy came naturally: it was only I who found it odd and incongruous in someone of her age.
‘He came to see your mother?’
‘Principally, I suppose so.’
‘Because of the obituary?’
She nodded. ‘Howard found it interesting.’
‘Mm.’ I paused. ‘Have you any idea who wrote that obituary?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
I shrugged. ‘Interest. It seemed to me it was written from personal feelings.’
‘I see.’ She let seconds pass, then said, ‘I wrote that myself. It was edited by the paper, but the gist of it was mine.’
‘Was it?’ I was non-committal. ‘You wrote about your father’s potential career being blighted by Sonia’s death?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘You wrote as if you cared.’
‘Of course I cared,’ she said vehemently. ‘Daddy would never discuss it with me, but I knew he was bitter.’
‘Uh,’ I said, ‘but why did Sonia’s death make him give up politics?’
Impatiently, as if it were self-evident, she said, ‘Scandal, of course. But he would never talk about it. He would never have let this film be made. Rodbury and I were also against it, but we were powerless. The book was Howard’s, not ours. Our name, Daddy’s name, doesn’t appear in it. Howard says you forced him to make the ridiculously untrue changes to his work, so of course I felt someone had to stop you. For Howard’s sake and, yes, for Daddy’s memory, I had to do it.’
And nearly succeeded, I thought.
I said, without trying to defend either myself or film company policy, ‘Excuse me, but who is Rodbury?’
‘My brother, Roddy.’
Roddy, of course.
‘Could I possibly,’ I asked, ‘meet your mother?’
‘What for?’
‘To pay my respects.’
It hung in the balance, but it wasn’t left to her to decide. The half-closed door was pushed open by a walking stick in the hands of a thin seventyish lady with a limp. She advanced slowly and forbiddingly and, while I rose to my feet, informed me that I was a monster.
‘You are the person, aren’t you,’ she accused with tight lips, ‘who