'h.e.l.lo, dear,' she said. 'Everything all right?'

I told her about Ronnie sending my book to America and her thin face filled with genuine pleasure. She was roughly fifty, divorced, a grandmother, sweet, fair-haired, undemanding and boring. I understood that she regarded the rent I paid her (a fifth of what I had had to fork out for my former flat) as more a bribe to get her to let a stranger into her house than as an essential part of her income. In addition, though, she had agreed I could put milk in her fridge, wash my dishes in her sink, shower in her bathroom and use her washer-drier once a week. I wasn't to make a noise or ask anyone in. We had settled these details amicably. She had installed a coin-in-the-slot electric meter for me, and approved a toaster, a kettle, a tiny table-top cooker and new plugs for a television and a razor.

I'd been introduced to her as 'Aunty' and that's what I called her, and she seemed to regard me as a sort of extension nephew. We had lived for ten months in harmony, our lives adjacent but uninvolved.

'It's very cold- are you warm enough up there?' she asked kindly.

'Yes, thank you,' I said. The electric heater ate money. I almost never switched it on.

'These old houses- very cold under the roofs.'

'I'm fine,' I said.

She said, 'Good, dear,' amiably, and we nodded to each other, and I went upstairs thinking that I'd lived in the Arctic Circle and if I hadn't been able to deal with a cold London attic I would have been ashamed of myself. I wore silk jersey long-sleeved vests and long Johns under sweaters and jeans under the ski-suit, and I slept warmly in a sleeping bag designed for the North Pole. It was writing that made me cold.

Up in my eyrie I struggled for a couple of hours to resolve the plight of the helium balloon but ended with only a speculation on nerve pathways. Why didn't terror make one deaf, for instance? How did it always beeline to the bowel? My man in the balloon didn't know and was too miserable to care. I thought I'd have to invent a range of mountains dead ahead for him to come to grief on. Then he would merely have the problem of descending from an Everest-approximation with only fingers, toes and resolution. Much easier. I knew a tip or two about that, the first being to look for the longest way down because it would be the least steep. Sharp-faced mountains often had sloping backs.

My attic, once the retreat of the youngest of Aunty's daughters, had a worn pink carpet and cream wallpaper sprigged with pink roses. The resident furniture of bed, chest of drawers, tiny wardrobe, two chairs and a table was overwhelmed by a veritable army of crates, boxes and suitcases containing my collected worldly possessions: clothes, books, household goods and sports equipment, all top quality and in good shape, acquired in carefree bygone affluence. Two pairs of expensive skis stood in their covers in a corner. Wildly extravagant cameras and lenses rested in dark foam beds. I kept in working order a windproof, sandproof, bugproof tent which self-erected in seconds and weighed only three pounds. I checked also climbing gear and a camcorder from time to time. A word processor with a laser printer, which I still used, was wrapped most of the time in sheeting. My helicopter pilot's licence lay in a drawer, automatically expired now since I hadn't flown for a year. A life on hold, I thought. A life suspended.

I thought occasionally that I could eat better if I sold something, but I'd never get back what I'd paid for the skis, for instance, and it seemed stupid to cannibalise things that had given me pleasure. They were mostly the tools of my past trade, anyway, and I might need them again. They were my safety net. The travel firm had said they would take me back once I'd got this foolishness out of my system.

If I'd known I was going to do what I was doing I would have planned and saved a lot more in advance, perhaps: but between the final irresistible impulse and its execution there had been only about six weeks. The vague intention had been around a lot longer; for most of my life.

Helium balloon-

The second half of the advance on Long Way Home wasn't due until publication day, a whole long year ahead. My small weekly allotted parcels of money wouldn't last that long, and I didn't see how I could live on much less. My rent-in-advance would run out at the end of June. If, I thought, if I could finish this balloon lark by then and if it were accepted and if they paid the same advance as before, then maybe I'd just manage the full two years. Then if the books fell with a dull thud, I'd give up and go back to the easier rigours of the wild.

That night the air temperature over London plummeted still further, and in the morning Aunty's house was frozen solid. '

'There's no water,' she said in distress when I went downstairs. 'The central heating stopped and all the pipes have frozen. I've called the plumber. He says everyone's in the same boat and just to switch everything off. He can't do anything until it thaws, then he'll come to fix any leaks.' She looked at me helplessly. 'I'm very sorry, dear, but I'm going to stay in a hotel until this is over. I'm 'going to close the house. Can you find somewhere else for a week or two? Of course I'll add the time on to your six months, you won't lose by it, dear.'

Dismay was a small word for what I felt. I helped her close all the stopc.o.c.ks I could find and made sure she had switched off her water heaters, and in return she let me use her telephone to look for another roof.

I got through to her nephew, who still worked for the travel firm.

'Do you have any more aunts?' I enquired.

'Good G.o.d, what have you done with that one?'

I explained. 'Could you lend me six feet of floor to unroll my bedding on?'

'Why don't you gladden the life of your parents on that Caribbean island?'

'Small matter of the fare.'

'You can come for a night or two if you're desperate,' he said. 'But Wanda's moved in with me, and you know how tiny the flat is.'

I also didn't much like Wanda. I thanked him and said I would let him know, and racked my brains for somewhere else.

It was inevitable I should think of Tremayne Vickers.

I phoned Ronnie Curzon and put it to him straight 'Can you sell me to that racehorse trainer?'

'What?'

'He was offering free board and lodging.'

'Take me through it one step at a time.'

I took him through it and he was all against it.

'Much better to get on with your new book.'

'Mm,' I said. 'The higher a helium balloon rises the thinner the air is and the lower the pressure, so the helium balloon expands, and goes on rising and expanding until it bursts.'

'What?'

'It's too cold to invent stories. Do you think I could do what Tremayne wants?'

'You could probably do a workmanlike job.'

'How long would it take?'

'Don't do it,' he said.

'Tell him I'm brilliant after all and can start at once.'

'You're mad.'

'I might as well learn about racing. Why not? I might use it in a book. And I can ride. Tell him that.' 'Impulse will kill you one of these days.' I should have listened to him, but I didn't.

I was never sure exactly what Ronnie said to Tremayne, but when I phoned again at noon he was mournfully triumphant.

'Tremayne agreed you can write his book. He quite took to you yesterday, it seems.' Pessimism vibrated down the wire. 'He's agreed to guarantee you a writing fee.' Ronnie mentioned a sum which would keep me eating through the summer. 'It's payable in three instalments - a quarter after a month's work, a quarter when he approves the full ma.n.u.script, and half on publication. If I can get a regular publisher to take it on, the publisher will pay you, otherwise Tremayne will. He's agreed you should have forty per cent of any royalties after that, not thirty. He's agreed to pay your expenses while you research his life. That means if you want to go to interview people who know him he'll pay for your transport. That's quite a good concession, actually. He thinks it's odd that you haven't a car, but I reminded him that people who live in London often don't. He says you can drive one of his. He was pleased you can ride. He says you should take riding clothes with you and also a dinner jacket, as he's to be guest of honour at some dinner or other and he wants you to witness it. I told him you were an expert photographer so he wants you to take your camera.'

Ronnie's absolute and audible lack of enthusiasm for the project might have made me withdraw even then had Aunty not earlier given me a three o'clock deadline for leaving the house.

'When does Tremayne expect me?' I asked Ronnie.

'He seems pathetically pleased that anyone wants to take him on, after the top men turned him down. He says he'd be happy for you to go as soon as you can. Today, even, he said. Will you go today?'

'Yes,' I said.

'He lives in a village called Sh.e.l.lerton, in Berkshire. He says if you can phone to say what train you're catching, someone will meet you at Reading station. Here's the number.' He read it out to me.

'Fine,' I said. 'And Ronnie, thanks very much.'

'Don't thank me. Just- well, just write a brilliant chapter or two and I'll try to get the book commissioned on the strength of them. But go on writing fiction. That's where your future is.'