by David Abbott
When he rang, it was Jane who answered the phone.
“If the offer is still on, I would love to be part of the bookshop … and everything else.”
“Oh Henry, wait there, don’t go away …”
He heard her calling upstairs, he looked at his watch, it must be Hal’s bath time—her voice was triumphant.
“Hal, Tom, he’s coming, he’s coming!”
She was back on the line. “He’s just wrapping a towel around Hal—you wouldn’t believe the joy.”
When Tom took over the phone, Henry could hear an excited Hal in the background. He was laughing and clapping his hands—welcoming Henry (at long last) onto the dance floor.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to Alan Stoker for helping me understand the nature and treatment of cancer. Jerome Goodman’s compassionate article in The New Yorker (25 October 2002) was instructive about the last days of a terminal illness. John Fraser guided me through the legal niceties of “self-defense” and much more. On a lighter note, Peter Pettinger’s wonderful book How My Heart Sings taught me much about Bill Evans, as did Peter Keepnews’s liner notes for Milestones. Mike Dempsey inspired the jacket design and Frank Lieberman tracked down the Orson Welles tape. I thank them both. John de Falbe and Justin Cartwright were the first to see the completed manuscript of this book and their encouragement (and advice) was uplifting at a critical time. My thanks go to Nan Talese for bringing this book to America and to everyone else at Talese/Doubleday who helped make it a thing of beauty. Finally, my thanks and love to Eve and my family.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Abbott worked for forty years in the advertising industry as a copywriter and creative director. He was a founding partner of Abbott Mead Vickers, the United Kingdom’s largest advertising agency. This is his first novel, and he is at work on his second.