This seemed to please Flora and she picked up a doll and walked with him to his study.
A new author? No marketing campaign?
Serena sleeping with him?
Eve liking older men? He wasn’t that much older, was he?
Twelve years? It wasn’t like he was Hemingway with Adriana Ivancich. That was a thirty-plus-year age gap.
He touched the side of his head where his hair was greying. Was he a silver fox? More like a used-up old pelt, he thought as he went into the study and looked for a notebook for Flora.
‘Here you go,’ he said, finding a fresh one with ribbon intact.
Flora looked unimpressed at the black book until he opened the inside and showed her the soft blue paper with small dots on the page.
‘These dots are fun to join up and make pictures,’ he said to her and opened the book and took a pen and started to join then.
‘I want to do it,’ said Flora. ‘Can I sit at a desk like you?’
‘Of course,’ he said and he put an overstuffed feather cushion on a chair and set her up at the ladies’ writing desk.
‘Here are some coloured pens. Be careful with them.’
Flora looked at the pens with awe. She was only usually allowed coloured pencils.
‘Am I your helper now, Daddy?’ she asked as she looked through the colours on offer.
‘Yes, of course you are. You’re my assistant.’
Flora put her doll on the desk and set to work on her notebook.
Edward sat down at his desk again.
There was nothing else to do except write, he thought and he read what he had written that morning.
Why not write a little longer? he thought and he settled down in his chair.
Eve would be thrilled with his output when she returned, he thought, as he cleaned up the words on the page before he started the next part of the story.
He was writing for her – he realised that. He wanted to entertain her, thrill her, and leave her satisfied at the end. It was all for Eve and he wondered if she knew yet.
20
Myles sat opposite Gabe and Nick in the garage where they had set up their fledgling band equipment.
There was a drum set on an old rug. An electric piano with a microphone and an amp but no guitar.
‘Evie,’ Gabe yelled. He was the singer, he had told Myles.
Myles heard Eve call back, ‘What?’
‘Can we use a guitar?’
‘Yeah,’ she said and Gabe ran to go inside the house.
‘She keeps her old guitars here. They’re a bit crap but they’ll do,’ said Nick who was possibly the coolest person Myles had ever seen.
He had an earring in each ear. One was a diamond, and one was a black cross that dangled when he moved his head.
