Geordie Williamson

passing her in a phone box, and he decides to kind of just give it a try.

Something about her attracts him.

She turns out to be an extraordinary human being.

She is a gambler.

She's a former escort.

She has appeared in women's magazines, in nude shoots.

She's also the daughter of a baronet.

She is a bundle of contradictions and her relationship with Amos, which continues for five years prior to his first marriage, kind of provides us with the necessary charge to keep the whole rest of the Death Haunted story alive.

afloat so yeah I think that there's something to that that he's manipulating reality there in order to give the rest of the book some ballast but look at say a character like Nicholas Six in London Fields reading about Phoebe Phelps I thought oh that's what was happening that's what was going on because Phoebe Phelps has been in Amos's novels before

Absolutely.

I mean, I'd say that she does something horrible, and I don't know whether we should share that with potential readers.

But let us say that it is something she tells Martin Amis at a crucial point in his life, which makes him question everything about his own existence.

It's that big a thing.

And it's very cruel.

But I'd say in that final encounter they have where he hasn't seen her for 30 years, she's ill and, you know, an old woman with none of that kind of the erotic fire that he knew in her.

And they do come, I feel, to some kind of accommodation.

But whether that's designed to exonerate Amos or exonerate the woman who is the real Phoebe Phelps, I cannot say.

Look, I think that we would be doing Amos a disservice if we left it with the negative side of the letter.

And I agree with you in all the points that you're making.

But I do think that ultimately it is a book about love and respect.