Free The Closed Circle by Jonathan Coe

bright. Divides her time between here and London, from what I can make out. Just wants to talk to you about your relationship with journalists, I think. A bit of background to help with her dissertation.”
    â€œWell,” said Paul, grimly. “She could hardly have chosen a better day.”
    Looking back on that evening, some time later, Benjamin realized that it had been foolish of him not to have anticipated the change he saw in Malvina. He was so familiar—so wearily familiar—with his younger brother that he could never quite get used to the idea that nowadays Paul was a star, to most people, and meeting him was an event: something you dressed up for. When they arrived at Le Petit Blanc, and found Malvina already waiting for them at their window table for three, Benjamin lost his breath for a moment, startled by her loveliness into awestruck silence. He had seen her wearing make-up before, of course, but never quite so lavishly or artfully applied; never with her hair teased into quite such calculated disarray; and never, unless he was much mistaken, wearing a skirt
quite
as short, quite as indecent as this one. Benjamin kissed her on the perfumed cheek—how intently he anticipated that moment, and how quickly it was gone—then turned to make the introduction to his brother and saw that Paul had already taken her hand so reverently, so tenderly, that Benjamin thought at first he was going to kiss it rather than shake it.
    He watched the way their eyes met, and how abruptly they both looked away. He watched the way that Paul straightened his tie, and Malvina smoothed down her skirt as she sat down. His heart sank. He immediately found himself wondering whether he had just made one of the worst mistakes of his life.
    While Benjamin toyed with his first course—Thai chicken salad with green papaya and rocket—Paul began telling Malvina, in a likeable, self-deprecating way, about the foolish remark he had made to a journalist that afternoon; and soon he was talking more generally about the uncomfortable co-dependence, as he saw it, between the government and the print and broadcast media. Benjamin had heard much of this before, but was struck, tonight, by how knowledgeable Paul sounded, how authoritative. There was also, he realized, a
glamour
that attached to his brother these days: a glamour that derived from power—even the limited power that he was able to wield in his current position. Malvina listened, and nodded, and sometimes wrote things down in her notebook. She said very little herself, at first, and seemed rather humbled by the thought that Paul was taking time out to explain these matters to her. By the time of his second course—panfried seabass fillet with courgettes, fennel and sauce verge—Benjamin could see that the balance had started to shift slightly. Malvina had become more talkative, and Paul was no longer just imparting information: he had begun to ask questions, soliciting her opinions, and it was clear that she was both surprised and flattered. Benjamin himself had lapsed into a morose silence, which persisted into dessert. Picking unenthusiastically at his passion fruit brulée, he watched as they polished off a single dish between them: chocolate mi-cuit, smothered in warm crème anglaise, which they shared with one long-handled spoon. By now he knew, with a lumpy certainty in the pit of his stomach, something that would have seemed inconceivable a couple of hours ago: he had already lost Malvina. Lost her! In what sense had he ever possessed her? In the sense, he supposed, that while those ambiguous weekly meetings had continued, he had at least been able to sustain a fantasy about her, a fantasy that this friendship might, through some miracle (Benjamin was a firm believer in miracles) mutate into something else, something explosive. He had not bothered himself, so far, with the details; had not got as far as contemplating the pain he might cause