She had begged me to go to the party with her.
‘It would mean a lot. Please don’t make me go alone.’
‘But I won’t know anyone there,’ I protested. ‘It will be awkward.’
‘I’ll be with you the whole time,’ she promised. ‘I won’t leave your side for a second.’
We had been there less then five minutes when she exclaimed, ‘Oh look, there’s Jim. He writes too.’ She gave us a quick introduction and disappeared into the crowd. I was left with Jim for the night.
‘So,’ he asked, ‘what do you write?’
This was not a conversation I wanted to have but I knocked back some beer and threw myself into it. ‘I like to mix it up,’ I answered. ‘You know a bit of fantasy, a bit of humour. I like to experiment.’ I took another deep slug before asking the inevitable question. ‘How about you?’
‘I write like Ian McEwan,’ was his answer.
I was more than a little drunk so I said the first thing that came into my head.
‘Why?’
He spent what must have been an hour extolling the virtues Mr McEwan and he totally failed to see the point.
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