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author was a cheap shot. I was using sex to grab your attention. I wasn’t really offering to have sex with you. I actually wanted to talk to you about a job.’
    I had no idea what she meant. Did she think I was in a position to give her work? Was she offering to be my secretary, my amanuensis? Or did she think I could help her get out of local journalism and into Fleet Street?
    â€˜Why?’ I said. ‘Aren’t you happy in your current job?’
    â€˜I’m not asking for a job,’ she said. ‘I’m offering you one. Possibly.’
    I brightened up. The prospect of getting out of the rare book trade was very appealing, but then I had to remind myself that she didn’t know I was in the rare book trade, that it was Gregory Collins she’d be offering a job to, not me.
    â€˜What kind of job?’
    â€˜A writer-in-residence.’
    OK, maybe she wasn’t a journalist after all, maybe she was a college lecturer.
    â€˜Yes? Where would I reside?’
    She looked at her watch and said, ‘Finish your drink. It’s still early. There’s someone I want you to meet.’
    â€˜I’d much rather stay here with you, drinking and talking.’
    â€˜There’ll be time for that later.’
    â€˜Will there?’
    â€˜Yes. We could have dinner after you’ve seen my boss.’
    I calculated that by the time we’d seen her boss, then been to a restaurant, it would be getting late and I might very possibly miss the last train home, just like Gregory Collins had missed his last train back to the north. In the same way, I might have to stay over and she would feel responsible and obliged to offer me a bed for the night,and that would open up all sorts of possibilities. Ah, this was the literary life as dreamed of by the unliterary.
    â€˜Let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘You’re a journalist or a lecturer or something, right?’
    â€˜I’m a doctor,’ she said. ‘A psychiatrist.’
    â€˜Oh,’ I said, baffled. ‘So who is it you want me to meet?’
    â€˜His name’s Dr Eric Kincaid. You may have heard of him. He’s a genius.’
    Naturally I’d never heard of Dr Eric Kincaid, but Alicia, or Dr Crowe as I was now entitled to think of her, spoke of him with such awe that I tried to convince myself I had. On the other hand, if she was to be believed, he had heard of me, of Gregory Collins. She said he’d read
The Wax Man
and was keen to meet me. That seemed unlikely but who was I to question it? I wasn’t clear what would happen when I met him. Was he going to interview me for this nebulous writer-in-residence job, or was I being taken there for his entertainment, because I was an interesting case study? Either way, I should have run a mile, but, of course, I didn’t. We got a taxi and there I was, travelling with this strange, serious, undoubtedly sexy woman in these unusual circumstances, and it didn’t feel bad at all. It felt like another part of the adventure, and one I thought I was still in control of. Regardless of how it ended, it was infinitely more fun than my normal life.
    It did occur to me, however, that once these two psychiatrists got together and started talking to me, they might well be smart enough to see right through my act. That threatened to be humiliating, but so what? What did it really matter? I didn’t know these people and they didn’t know me. I would have welcomed the chance to get to know Alicia Crowe better, but it seemed likely that I’d never be able to hold my head up and see her again after this evening anyway. I had to make the most of her company while I could, and that’s why I went along with her plan.
    â€˜So where exactly would this writer-in-residence job be?’ I asked.
    â€˜At the Kincaid Clinic.’
    â€˜That’s some sort of hospital?’
    â€˜An asylum,’ she said. ‘A nut house. A loony bin. A