Summary

After five drafts, Serena’s letter to Haley was approved. She posted it but didn’t hear back for over a month. He had been away doing research. He wrote that he’d be interested in hearing more. He was a part-time professor and would rather meet at his campus office than in his cramped flat. Serena traveled by train to Brighton on an unseasonably hot October day. She walked across the large campus to Haley’s office. On the train ride down she had read up on Haley’s journalistic works which were more pragmatic and sensible than his fiction. One piece asserted that West German novelists were cowardly for not speaking out about the Berlin Wall. Surely English writers would have spoken out about a London Wall.

Serena had built Tom Haley up in her mind to such a point that she...