A Line to Kill

But I was uneasy as I sat down with the other guests in Southampton. Our surroundings didn’t help. The Globe was an airport restaurant serving airport food. That was the best and the worst I could say of it. The bright lighting and open-plan configuration, spilling into the terminal, didn’t help. We might just as well have been eating on the runway. Also, I still wasn’t convinced that Alderney was a good idea. With just six weeks’ notice, I hadn’t had time to prepare and I still had no idea how Hawthorne would perform when he was put on a stage. Talking about Alex Rider or Sherlock Holmes was one thing, but having the subject of the book sitting next to me would put me well outside my comfort zone. And it wasn’t just that. As I joined Marc, Anne and Maïssa at the table, I immediately felt that I was an outsider, that I didn’t belong.

I recognised Marc Bellamy from the photograph I had seen of him on the festival website. He was even wearing the same clothes: a bottle-green jacket, an open-neck shirt with a double-sized collar and a pair of half-rim reading glasses on a gold chain around his neck. Like many of the television celebrities I had met, he was actually much smaller than he seemed on the screen and although his teeth were very white and his tan very deep, he didn’t look well. Perhaps that went with his persona. After all, he specialised in unhealthy food, railing against vegans, vegetarians and pescatarians (‘the worst of the lot … there’s something fishy about them’) on his show. Of course, he was only having fun, delivering his jokey insults with an exaggerated Yorkshire accent accompanied by a nudge and a wink. He was overweight – chubby rather than fat. His hair was swept back in waves with a little silver around the ears. His nose was a road map of broken blood vessels. I guessed he was about forty.

‘How do!’ he exclaimed when he saw us. This was actually one of his catchphrases. ‘You must be Anthony and Mr Hawthorne – or is it the other way round! Hawthorne and Mr Anthony.’ He laughed at that. ‘Don’t be shy. Come and sit down. I’m Marc. This is my assistant, Kathryn. That’s Maïssa, with two dots over the i, and I’m talking about her name, not her forehead. And Anne Cleary – rhymes with dreary, but she’s anything but! Scribblers United … that’s what we should call ourselves. You’ve got time for a bite. Plane’s on the runway, but they haven’t finished winding the elastic.’ He laughed again. ‘Anyway, we’ve already ordered. What are you going to have?’

We took our places. Hawthorne asked for a glass of water. I went for a Diet Coke.

‘Horrible stuff! Be a good girl and put in the order, will you?’ These last words were addressed to his assistant. She was in her early twenties, slim and a little awkward, hiding behind a pair of glasses that covered most of her face. She had been staring at her knees, trying not to be noticed, but now she stood up and hurried away. ‘She’s a good girl,’ Marc continued, speaking in a stage whisper, shielding his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Only just joined me. Loves my show, which is just as well. It means I don’t have to pay her so much!’

There was something quite desperate about the way he talked, as if he was always searching for the next joke just around the corner but was afraid he would never quite reach it. I didn’t quite have Hawthorne’s deductive skills, but I’d have bet good money that he was a lonely man, probably on his own, possibly divorced.

‘Hello, Anthony.’ Anne Cleary greeted me as if she knew me and I felt my heart sink as although I knew who she was, I couldn’t remember having met her.

‘How nice to see you again, Anne,’ I said.

She scowled but without malice. ‘You’ve forgotten me,’ she said, reproachfully. ‘You and I had a long chat at the Walker Books summer party a couple of years ago. That was when they were still having summer parties.’

‘You’re with Walker Books?’ I asked. They published Alex Rider.

‘Not really. I just did a one-off for them. It was a picture book. Hedgehogs Don’t Grow on Trees.’

‘I ate a hedgehog once,’ Marc chipped in. ‘Roasted in clay. It was actually quite nice. Served up by a couple of Gypsies.’

‘I think you mean travellers,’ Anne said.

‘They can travel all they like, love. They’re still gyppos to me!’

Anne turned back to me. ‘We talked about politics … Tony Blair.’

‘Of course. Yes. I remember.’

‘I bet you don’t, but never mind. Names and faces! I’m exactly the same. That’s the trouble with being a writer. You spend so much time on your own and then suddenly you get fifty people at once. But it is nice to see you again. I thought that when I saw your name on the programme.’