I imagined unpacking, laying out and arranging the strands of my little life in front of him, thinking, what would he find pretty? What would he want to buy?
Anna is a talented young opera singer studying at a prestigious London conservatoire. She lives in dire rented rooms with her friend, sharp-tongued waitress and aspiring writer, Laurie, first in the mouldering attic of an eerie, intrusive older couple’s house, and later as part of a maddening feminist collective. At night, she sings jazz in an expensive city bar to make rent and stay afloat alongside her wealthy peers.
There, Anna meets Max, a charismatic financier in the midst of a divorce (though he can’t quite bring himself to say the word), who, at thirty-eight, is fourteen years Anna’s senior. Something about him, his stillness, his careful detachment, the unfamiliar longing he inspires in her, has Anna hooked from that first night. Over the course of one winter, the focus of Anna’s intoxication oscillates between her hard-won moments on stage, where she can zip herself into the skin of her characters and forget the agonizing auditions, and the nights she spends with Max in his glass-walled flat overlooking the city.
But Anna’s fledgling career demands her undivided attention, and increasingly, whether he necessarily wills it or not, so does Max…
