The Glass Room (Vera Stanhope 5)

quickly?’ Nina said. Another attempt to stop the juggernaut that seemed to be rolling towards the inevitable party. ‘Shouldn’t we wait until the killer has been caught? It seems rather tasteless to go ahead now.’
    Chrissie stopped in her tracks, bent to release the dog from her lead and watched her gallop away.
    ‘Of course we must do it now!’ she said. ‘Absolutely.’ She turned to face Nina and her eyes shone with excitement – almost, Nina thought, with a kind of madness. ‘These days there’s no reason why all the major players within publishing should be based in London. I’d have to pay a fortune to get this quality and quantity of publicity. To get noticed. I heard this morning that The Bookseller has agreed to do an article about North Farm. They’re heading it “Regional publishing: the saviour of the industry?” It’s in your interest too, you know. You want to see your books in the high-street shops, don’t you? You want to give up work at the university to write full-time?’
    Nina had to agree that she did want both those things. As she marched in step with Chrissie along the edge of the newly ploughed field, it occurred to her that she was being manipulated by her editor in much the same way as Tony Ferdinand had tried to manipulate her in the seminar group all those years ago. The difference, she told herself, was that Chrissie had Nina’s best interests at heart.
    One day not long afterwards, walking out of her office in the university, she met Joe Ashworth. She’d had a supervision session with a mature student, a middle-aged woman with fixed ideas who should never have been accepted onto the course. Nina was so cross and frustrated that she almost walked past the detective. He was in the corridor, staring at a student notice board. There were old posters about elections for NUS officials and new ones advertising end-of-term parties and performances. Soon the undergraduates would be leaving and the place would be quieter. He turned so that she saw his face, and she stopped in her tracks.
    ‘Are you here to see me?’ Then could have kicked herself. Why else would he be there? It made her sound ridiculous. ‘Is there news? Do you know who broke into my flat? Have you caught the killer?’
    ‘No,’ he said. She thought he looked older than she remembered. Certainly more tired. ‘Have you got time for a coffee?’
    ‘Sure!’ She was in no hurry to get back to North Farm. Chrissie had threatened to drag her to the supermarket to buy wine for the Writers’ House party if she got back in time. And Chrissie, with her restless energy and constant enthusiasm for the project, was irritating her more each day.
    Nina took him to a small coffee shop in a back street between the university and the hospital. It was dark, like walking into a Victorian parlour at dusk. The place was run by an elderly man. He baked great cakes and scones and the coffee was very good, but he had no sense of how to treat customers. Perhaps he had Asperger’s syndrome, or some other condition that made him awkward in social situations. ‘What do you want?’ he would ask very brusquely as soon as anyone walked in. He hated waiting to take an order. He loved to read, and it was as if the customer had wandered into his home and disturbed him in the middle of his book. But, once served, the customer would be left alone, unbothered.
    They sat by the window. Outside the street lights came on suddenly. Already the shops in the main street at the end of the alley had Christmas displays in the windows. Nina smelled the camomile tea as it was set before her, watched Ashworth drink his coffee as if he needed it to stay alive, then he spread butter on a warm cheese scone and took a bite. She wondered when he had last eaten.
    ‘How can I help you?’ Because Nina thought the man did want her help. He sat across the table from her looking tentative and anxious, the scone poised near his mouth.
    ‘This do at the Writers’ House . . .’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘How’s it going to work, like?’
    ‘It’ll be a party,’ she said. ‘Like a launch party, only for a group of authors instead of an individual. And the idea is to start a fund to keep Miranda’s vision of the Writers’ House alive.’ Across the street she saw a mother holding the hand of a little girl. The girl was skipping, almost dancing along the pavement. Nina imagined what it would feel like to be holding the hand and thought that probably she’d never