‘Oh God, Ruth—’
‘Oh God, Ruth—’
I play it over and over again. It’s obvious from his voice, now that I’ve listened to it often enough, that at that moment, when he remembers his wife, his concern is entirely for her. I guess she must have called him late that afternoon in a panic to report I’d been to see Emmett, and shown him some photographs. She would have needed to talk to him face to face as soon as possible – the whole story was threatening to unravel – hence the scramble to find a plane. God knows if she was aware of what might be waiting for her husband on the tarmac: surely not, is my opinion, although the questions about the lapses in security that allowed it to happen have never been fully answered. But it’s Lang’s failure to complete the sentence that I find moving. ‘What have you done?’ is surely what he means to add. ‘Oh God, Ruth – what have you done?’ This, I think, is the instant when the days of suspicion abruptly crystallise in his mind, when he realises that McAra’s ‘wild accusations’ must have been true after all, and his wife of thirty years is not the woman he thought she was.
No wonder I was the one she suggested should complete the book. She had plenty to hide, and she must have been confident that the author of Christy Costello’s hazy memoir would be just about the least likely person on the planet to discover it.
I would like to write more, but, looking at the clock, I fear that this will have to do, at least for the present. As you can appreciate, I don’t care to linger in one place too long. Already I sense that strangers are starting to take too close an interest in me. My plan is to parcel up a copy of this manuscript and give it to Kate. I shall put it through her door in about an hour’s time, before anyone is awake, with a letter asking her not to open it, but to look after it. Only if she doesn’t hear from me within a month, or if she discovers something has happened to me, is she to read it, and decide how best to get it published. She will think I’m being melodramatic, which I am. But I trust her. She will do it. If anyone is stubborn enough and bloody-minded enough to get this thing into print, it is Kate.
I wonder where I’ll go next. I can’t decide. I certainly know what I’d like to do. It may surprise you. I’d like to go back to Martha’s Vineyard. It’s summer there now, and I have a peculiar desire to see those wretched scrub oaks actually in leaf, and to watch the yachts go skimming out full-sailed from Edgartown across Nantucket Sound. I’d like to return to that beach at Lambert’s Cove and feel the hot sand beneath my bare feet, and watch the families playing in the surf, and stretch my limbs in the warmth of the clear New England sun.
This puts me in something of a dilemma, as you may appreciate, now that we reach the final paragraph. Am I supposed to be pleased that you are reading this, or not? Pleased, of course, to speak at last in my own voice. Disappointed, obviously, that it probably means I’m dead. But then, as my mother used to say, I’m afraid in this life you just can’t have everything.
COMING IN OCTOBER 2015
Dictator
Robert Harris
‘Laws are silent in times of war.’
Cicero
There was a time when Cicero held Caesar’s life in the palm of his hand. But now Caesar is the dominant figure and Cicero’s life is in ruins. Exiled, separated from his wife and children, his possessions confiscated, his life constantly in danger, Cicero is tormented by the knowledge that he has sacrificed power for the sake of his principles.
His comeback requires wit, skill and courage – and for a brief and glorious period, the legendary orator is once more the supreme senator in Rome. But politics is never static and no statesman, however cunning, can safeguard against the ambition and corruption of others.
Riveting and tumultuous, DICTATOR encompasses some of the most epic events in human history yet is also an intimate portrait of a brilliant, flawed, frequently fearful yet ultimately brave man – a hero for his time and for ours. This is an unforgettable tour de force from a master storyteller.
‘Not since Robert Graves has a novelist of equal power set to fictionalising ancient Rome’
Tom Holland, Daily Telegraph on LUSTRUM
‘Immaculately researched but delivered with such a deft touch that it never feels like a history lesson . . . superlative’
Max Davidson, Mail on Sunday on AN OFFICER AND A SPY
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781409021346
www.randomhouse.co.uk
Published by Arrow Books 2008
This film tie-in edition published in 2010
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Copyright © Robert Harris 2007
The right of Robert Harris to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental
Lines from the Footlights song (lyrics by Eric Idle and John Cameron) reproduced by kind permission of the Cambridge Footlights Dramatic Club
First published in the United Kingdom in 2007 by Hutchinson
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780099525127 (Film tie-in)
ISBN 9780099538523 (Export film tie-in)
Robert Harris, The Ghost
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