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a very sophisticated smoke detector installed here. It set off the alarm…
    STYLER: Will the fire brigade come?
    FARQUHAR: No. You heard me give the security clearance. My ID number and a seemingly irrelevant personal detail but one that only I would know. So now they know it’s a false alarm. Let’s talk about Easterman.
    STYLER: Actually, you know, I am beginning to feel a little uneasy. There’s something about this place. It doesn’t feel quite right.
    FARQUHAR: I’ve treated you badly.
    STYLER: Well…
    FARQUHAR: I’m tired, I admit it. I was annoyed you were here. But now that you are here, why don’t you tell me a little more about yourself, your work. Tell me about your books. Did you bring them with you?
    STYLER: No.
    FARQUHAR: A shame. But you were saying there were two of them. Bloodbath and…
    STYLER: Serial Chiller . Actually, I wrote other books too.
    FARQUHAR: Also ‘True Crime’?
    STYLER: No. My first two books were quite different. They were about my mother.
    FARQUHAR: Should I read something into that?
    STYLER: Only that I had a very happy childhood and that I admired her. My father died when I was quite young and I was an only child. I was brought up in the north.
    FARQUHAR: You don’t have an accent.
    STYLER: I suppose I lost it after I moved to London. My mother died when I was twenty-one…
    FARQUHAR: I’m sorry. Was it illness?
    STYLER: ( Hesitant .) No.
    FARQUHAR: An accident, then?
    STYLER: Yes. It was very sudden. But anyway, she’d always encouraged me to write. She was a great believer in my abilities. So after she died, I decided to write about her.
    FARQUHAR: A biography?
    STYLER: Not exactly. She was a very ordinary person, not someone you could write a book about. But she was a wonderful cook. So I wrote a book called My Mother’s Table which was a collection of her favourite recipes interspersed with anecdotes about her life. It was a bit like The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady . I suppose you don’t remember that.
    FARQUHAR: Yes.
    STYLER: You do.
    FARQUHAR: I don’t.
    STYLER: Well, it had the same success, so the publishers asked me to write a sequel. So I came up with My Mother’s Garden which was really the same thing again but this time about her garden…tips on how to get the best out of your flowers and shrubs. That sort of thing. My mother spent a lot of time in the garden. It was nice to remember her that way.
    FARQUHAR: It seems you made quite a killing out of your mother.
    STYLER: The second book did almost as well as the first, it’s true.
    FARQUHAR: And you were still living in the same house? ‘In the north’?
    STYLER: No, after she died I moved to London. I got married and bought a house in Vauxhall, near Victoria Station.
    FARQUHAR: You’re married?
    STYLER: Separated.
    FARQUHAR: Any children?
    STYLER: No.
    FARQUHAR: And what did your wife do? Was she also a writer?
    STYLER: No. She was a vet.
    FARQUHAR: So tell me. Was your next book about her? My Wife’s Pussy Cat ? Hints on animal care interspersed with anecdotes from a marital breakdown?
    STYLER: No. Although actually it was partly inspired by her, by our relationship. I’d always wanted to write fiction so I wrote a sort of tragic love story. It was called Blaming Jane .
    FARQUHAR: That was her name?
    STYLER: No. ( Pause .) No. This was fiction. It was only very loosely based on my experience although one of the characters was a vet. Anyway, to be honest the reviews were less than lukewarm but it became a best-seller and in fact last year we sold the option to Hollywood.
    FARQUHAR: They’re going to make a film out of it?
    STYLER: Yes. I understand Quentin Tarantino’s interested. There’s a team of script-writers working on a new draft even as we speak. Apparently it still isn’t violent enough.
    FARQUHAR: But it is violent?
    STYLER: The book is about a woman who pushes a man to violence, yes. He