'No time like the present. I'm free if you are.'

Hecate said nothing for a while. Ada prepared tea and biscuits and they sat in the living room looking at each other.

'What must you think of me?'

Ada was prepared for mortification and warring thoughts from the other woman. Shame, even. Hecate showed all signs of this.

'I wouldn't find this easy either' she soothed. 'It would have been easier for us to avoid each other. But we shouldn't have to and I wouldn't want to. I look forward to seeing you in book club, bumping into you at the shops. I like seeing you interacting with Morgana in the morning. There can such a wondrous pleasure in seeing someone's routine even if we don't feel it ourselves.'

Hecate still wasn't sure what to say.

'I hope you're not feeling abashed with your creations. There's no need to be. Even if you were a terrible writer, you have every right to write for people's pleasure. I think I might do the same if I wasn't used to talking about sex. To write it down would be a perfectly reasonable way to express yourself and it's easier when writing in third person. You feel detached enough from the situation and can still put elements of yourself in there.'

Hecate sighed, resigned to Ada's understanding.

'I suppose then I don't need to explain myself to you. You've already worked it all out.'

'I feel like words don't come easily to you. That you use them when it really matters' remarked Ada.

'It's a relief that you are doing the talking' Hecate confessed. 'I think right now even though I can say it, I'm still not comfortable with it. I've never needed to explain myself because my agent had given up trying to make me do so.'

'Who else knows about your sideline? Perhaps a partner or a friend?'

'Nobody. If they have read the book, it is all generic enough for them not to notice if
I have put something or someone familiar in there. I never explicitly do that. That leads to trouble. One author that the agency used to represent, had multiple affairs that everyone knew about but one day the current fling dumped him. So he revenge wrote her into his next book very hastily and everyone recognised her. It was sexually humiliating, very sadistic. She turned up drunk at an event and assaulted him. Her career suffered as he had intended but not as badly as he had hoped because that time he didn't get away with it. He was dropped from most publishing houses and his wife divorced him. In time, the other woman gained back a lot of empathy. He's at the bottom of the pile now.'

'You've been quite prudent then.'

'I still wouldn't be able to face my colleagues if word got out. I rely on being private. I need you to keep my secret.'

'What would I gain from outing you?' Reasoned Ada. 'Unless you wrote me into your next book in a very unflattering manner.'

Hecate knew that most people wouldn't be able to resist it. But Ada had not breathed a word to anyone so far. Hecate was rarely wrong about people and she felt that Ada could be trusted.

'I won't write you into my next book' she promised.

'If you want to promise me something, make sure if you do decide to, please make it flattering. I'd like a lift to my ego sometime soon.'

Her appeal earned her a rare smile. One that Ada had never seen before. She stared at her, enthralled. Hecate didn't look away. The atmosphere between them was thrumming with anticipation.

'If you don't mind, I'd love you to take me to bed, open the book. I feel like my vibrators have taken a battering and I'd like to use my literary imagination for a while.'