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As for the recent past, it had been diverting, eventful. The postcard from the children was on her dressing table, and she glanced at it from time to time. The memory of Steve brought a smile to her face. The wedding breakfast no longer seemed grotesque, and even the prospect of Kitty’s celebration failed to bring forth the usual sigh. The great revelation of the night was that although the past was singular, private, exceptional, and preserved for ever in neurones to which she had privileged but intermittent access, age—the age she had reached—could be, must be, an enterprise in which help must be solicited and offered. There were no precedents for the journey ahead, yet it was felt to be hazardous. Therefore some form of solidarity was in order. This could no longer be ignored.

In one sense the friends of her youth were still present, and with them the unthinking acceptance that had characterised days gone by. By comparison—yet the comparison was unwelcome, faintly ill-mannered—all latter-day attachments were tenuous. Yet she thought it marvellous that she had some existence in the consciousness of others. The postcard was there to prove this fact, as were the many fretful telephone calls she had received, and discounted, over the years. She was newly aware of a certain collective fragility. She looked back incredulously at her recent fantasy of leaving, at her vision of herself as unkempt, ill-natured. That woman in the sun was
simply the obverse of her real self, a
doppelgänger
struggling for expression. She was valid only as an interesting variation of the truth, whereas the real truth was to be assessed in terms of character, history, even antecedents.

She was not lonely, or perhaps only for ideal company, a fact she hoped she had managed to conceal. What company was presently offered would be accepted, if not actively sought. That she still had access to that company was, she thought, remarkable, given her somewhat remote nature. In the mild morning she felt refreshed, grateful. She thought it marvellous that she could still stand at her window and watch the flight of a bird, could still (occasionally) eat with appetite, could still hear voices other than her own. She was aware of the need to make amends—for joylessness, for fatalism, for caution—in what time was left to her.

When Kitty telephoned, at the end of a day given over largely to reflection, she was not surprised. There was a questing note in Kitty’s normally peremptory tone, as if hovering over some as yet unformulated anxiety.

‘Kitty?’ she replied, unrehearsedly, and undoubtedly with more spontaneity than hitherto. ‘Don’t worry. I hadn’t forgotten. I’ll be there. Of course I’ll be there. The holiday? Another time perhaps. When we’ve had a chance to talk things over. After all, we’ve plenty to talk about, haven’t we?’

BRIEF LIVES

Brief Lives
chronicles an unlikely friendship: that between the flamboyant, monstrously egocentric Julia and the modest, self-effacing Fay, who is at once fascinated and appalled by Julia’s excesses.

Fiction/0-679-73733-2

A CLOSED EYE

A Closed Eye
tells of the self-inflicted paradoxes in the life of Harriet Lytton, a woman whose powers of submissiveness and self-denial are suddenly tested by the dizzying prospect of sexual awakening.

Fiction/0-679-74340-5

THE DEBUT

Dr. Ruth Weiss, a quiet scholar of forty devoted to the study of Balzac, is convinced that her life has been ruined by literature, and that she must make a new start in life.

Fiction/0-679-72712-4

DOLLY

Aunt Dolly is flamboyant and unrepentantly selfish; her niece Jane is tactful and shy. Brought together, the two women show us that in families, love can surface in the most unlikely places.

Fiction/0-679-74578-5

FRAUD

At the heart of
Fraud
lies a double mystery: What happened to Anna Durrant, a solitary woman who has disappeared from her London flat? And why has it taken four months for anyone to notice?

Fiction/0-679-74308-1

HOTEL DU LAC

Edith Hope, author of romance novels, flees to the luxury of Hotel du Lac in Switzerland for peace and rest, and finds instead, an assortment of love’s casualties and exiles—and the attention of a worldly man keen on mischief and pleasure.

Winner of the Booker Prize
Fiction/0-679-75932-8

INCIDENTS IN THE RUE LAUGIER

One muggy summer Maud Gonthier and two English boys share a flat in Paris’s Rue Laugier. Out of their volatile chemistry—a chemistry of longing, sensuality, and betrayal—comes a novel that is stylish, deeply knowing, and delightfully surprising.

Fiction/0-679-76512-3

LATECOMERS

Hartmann and Fibich are “latecomers” to England, brought over as children from Nazi Germany. Their fifty-year relationship is at the center of a transcendently moving tale about the ambiguous pleasures of friendship and domesticity.

Fiction/0-679-72668-3

LEWIS PERCY

In
Lewis Percy
, a man is torn between the reassuring cloister of the library and the alluring but terrifying world of the senses, a world populated by women who persist in bewildering him.

Fiction/0-679-72944-5

LOOK AT ME

Look at Me
explores the gulf between Nick and Alix Fraser, a happy couple so dazzling they seem to vindicate Victorian theories of natural selection, and Fanny, a solitary librarian nursing a particular heartache.

Fiction/0679-73813-4

A PRIVATE VIEW

A Private View
explores the funny yet moving complications that arise when loner George Bland comes up against Katy Gibb, a woman who seems determined to invade his solitude.

Fiction/0-679-75443-1

PROVIDENCE

Providence
’s protagonist is Kitty Maule, who, in revenge against the impossibly charming and elusive man who rejects her, resolves to become “totally unfair, very demanding, and very beautiful.”

Fiction/0-679-73814-2

ALSO AVAILABLE
:
Family and Friends
, 0-679-78164-1
Altered States
, 0-679-77325-8

Available at your local bookstore or call toll-free to order: 1-800-793-2665 (credit cards only).