‘Nobody told me.’
‘Then how did you know?’
He scowled – as if he didn’t want to tell me. But at the same time he was trying to get something out of me and so, briefly, I had the upper hand. ‘There’s sand stuck in the tread of your shoes,’ he said. ‘I saw it when you crossed your leg. So either you’ve walked across a building site or you’ve been on the coast. I heard you got a place in Orford, so I suppose you must have been there.’
‘And the puppy?’
‘There’s a paw-print on your jeans. Just below the knee.’
I examined the material. Sure enough, it was there, so faint that I wouldn’t have noticed it. But he had.
‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘How did you know it was a puppy? It could have been a breed of small dog. And for that matter, how do you know I didn’t just meet it in the street?’
He looked at me sadly. ‘Someone’s sat down and chewed your left shoelace,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose that was you.’
I didn’t look. I have to admit I was impressed. But at the same time I was annoyed that I hadn’t worked it out for myself. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s certainly an interesting case from the sound of what you say and I’m sure you could find a writer who would do it for you. But it’s like I said. You need to ask a journalist or someone like that. Even if I wanted to do it, I can’t. I’m working on other things.’
I wondered how he would respond. Again, he wrong-footed me. He just shrugged. ‘Yeah. All right. It was just a thought.’ He got to his feet, his hand reaching towards his trouser pocket. ‘Do you want me to get that?’
He meant the tea and cake. ‘No. It’s all right. I’ll pay,’ I said.
‘I had a coffee.’
‘I’ll get that too.’
‘Well, if you change your mind, you know where to reach me.’
‘Yes. Of course. I can talk to my literary agent, if you like. She might be able to recommend someone who can help.’
‘No. Don’t worry. I’ll find someone.’ He turned round and walked away.
I ate the cake. It was a shame to waste it. Then I went back home and spent the rest of the afternoon reading. I tried not to think about Hawthorne but I couldn’t get him out of my mind.
When you’re a full-time writer, one of the hardest things to do is to turn down work. You’re slamming a door which may not open again and there’s always the fear of what you may have missed on the other side. Years ago, a producer rang me to ask if I might be interested in working on a musical based on the songs of a Swedish pop group. I turned her down – which is why I’m not on the posters (and have enjoyed none of the royalties) of Mamma Mia! I don’t have any regrets, incidentally. There’s no saying the show would have been such a success if I had ended up writing it. But it just shows the level of insecurity that most writers live with day by day. A bizarre crime that happened to be true. A woman walks into a funeral parlour. Hawthorne, an odd, complicated but genuinely brilliant detective, gets called in as some sort of consultant. Had I made another mistake, refusing his offer? I picked up my book and went back to work.
Two days later, I was in Hay-on-Wye.
It’s funny how many literary festivals there are all over the world. There are some writers I know who never actually write any more; they simply spend their time travelling from one shindig to the next. I’ve often wondered how I would have managed if I’d been born with a stammer or chronic shyness. The modern writer has to be able to perform, often to a huge audience. It’s almost like being a stand-up comedian except that the questions never change and you always end up telling the same jokes.
Whether it’s crime in Harrogate, children’s books in Bath, science fiction in Glasgow or poetry in Aldeburgh, it feels as if there’s a literary festival in every city in the UK, and yet Hay, which takes place in a disturbingly muddy field on the edge of a tiny market town, has become one of the most pre-eminent. People come from miles around and over the years speakers have included two US presidents, several Great Train Robbers and J. K. Rowling. I was excited to be there, talking to about five hundred children in a large tent. As usual, there was a scattering of adults too. People who know my television writing will often come to my events and will happily sit through forty minutes of Alex Rider in order to talk about Foyle’s War.
The session had gone well. The children had been lively and had asked some good questions. I’d managed to get in some stuff about Foyle. I was almost exactly sixty minutes in and had received a signal to close things down when something rather strange happened.
There was a woman, sitting in the front row. At first, I’d taken her for a teacher or perhaps a librarian. She was very ordinary-looking, about forty, round-faced with long, fair hair and glasses dangling from a chain around her neck. I’d noticed her because she seemed to be on her own and also because she didn’t seem particularly interested in anything I had to say. She hadn’t laughed at any of my jokes. I was afraid she might be a journalist. Newspapers often send reporters to author talks these days and any joke you make, any unguarded comment, may be quoted out of context and used against you. So I was on my guard when she put up her hand and one of the attendants handed her the roving mike.
‘I was wondering,’ she said. ‘Why is it that you always write fantasy? Why don’t you write anything real?’
Most of the questions that I’ve been asked at literary festivals, I’ve been asked many times before. Where do my ideas come from? Which are my favourite characters? How long does it take to write a book? Nobody had ever asked me this and I was a little put out. Her tone wasn’t offensive but there was still something in what she’d asked that rankled.
‘Foyle’s War is real,’ I replied. ‘Every episode is based on true stories.’
I was about to go on to explain how much research I did, that I had spent the whole of the last week reading about Alan Nunn May, who had shared atomic secrets with the Soviets and who might be the inspiration for my next episode if a new series of Foyle went ahead. But she interrupted me. ‘I’m sure you do use true stories, but what I’m trying to say is, the crimes aren’t real. And your other television shows – Poirot and Midsomer Murders – they’re all completely fantastical. You write stories about a fourteen-year-old spy and I know a lot of children enjoy them, but that’s the same. I don’t mean to be rude, but I wonder why you’re not more interested in the real world.’
‘What is the real world?’ I countered.
‘I just mean real people.’
Some of the children were getting restless. It was time to move on. ‘I like writing fiction,’ I said. ‘That’s what I do.’
‘Aren’t you worried that your books might be considered irrelevant?’
‘I don’t think they have to be real to be relevant.’
‘I’m sorry. I do like your work. But I disagree.’
It was an odd coincidence, given the proposal Hawthorne had put to me just a couple of days before. I looked for the woman again before I left but I didn’t see her and she didn’t come to get a book signed. On the train back to London, I couldn’t help thinking about what she had said. Was she right? Was my work too focused on fantasy? I was about to launch myself as an adult writer but my first outing, The House of Silk, was about as far from the modern world as it was possible to be. Some of my television work – Injustice, for example – was set in a recognisable, twenty-first-century London but perhaps it was true that I had spent too long living in my own imagination and that if I wasn’t careful, I would lose touch. Maybe I already had. Maybe a crash course in reality would do me good.