“You’ll die alone, in mediocrity,” said Rufus, flicking ash over my laptop. “A few years will pass. Then no one will remember you ever lived.”

I looked up for a moment to return his impassive stare, pretending I was immune to the sadism. Then I carried on typing - the first few stanzas of Ode to a Nightingale. Rufus couldn’t see the screen and I didn’t want him to feel my light had gone out, no matter how much he made it gutter. Besides, there is an odd feeling of progress afforded by motion. Keep your fingers busy and a large part of your brain thinks it is being productive.

“You’ve missed your chance,” he persisted, licking the salt from a margarita glass. “A twenty-something could put this behaviour down to zeal. A thirty-something should know books are never written in bars. It’s gauche. You shouldn’t bring your laptop down here. It makes you look desperate to appear like a writer when all the real ones are getting the job done at home.”

“Is that where you craft each masterpiece?” I asked. “In the shed? Before breakfast, after some Hazlitt?”

“I prefer hotels, actually,” he said. “Luxury hotels where one can be well-fed, well-massaged and left for weeks on end without distraction.”

Rufus grinned, undoubtedly because he had managed to distract me, and nettle me, and remind himself of how far he had come. The glowing Apple logo on the lid of the computer lit his face from beneath, giving it a kind of pantomime villainy. Yet even then he looked handsome and self-assured. I resented the long nose and unbroken hairline almost as much as the huge advance he was rumoured to have secured on his latest novel.

“Do you feel you deserve your success?” I asked.

“What do you mean? Morally or professionally?”

“Both.” I picked up my own glass, where melting ice had diluted the last of the gin, and managed to moisten my throat.

“If I didn’t deserve my success, I wouldn’t have it,” he said. “Simple as that.”

“You regard yourself as a good writer then.”

“Of course. Don’t you? Isn’t that why you’re still struggling?”

“Do you regard yourself as a better writer than the others at your agency?”

“What does it matter? Readers seem to like my books. I don’t give a toss what they see in them.” He leaned back, drew deeply on his cigarette, and pretended to enter a kind of reverie. “Each royalty cheque is like an unexpected love letter, stuffed full of treats and approbation, none of it conditional.”

“So you have no goal beyond material success?”

“Oh please,” he winced. “Now you sound sanctimonious, as well as a dork. Of course I’m interested in the money, and the popularity. Are you telling me you’re not?”

“I just want to be admired by the people whom I admire.”

Rufus gaped in mock amazement. “Gosh, are you writing something seminal? Have I missed it taking shape here in the corner of the bar all these years?” He made to stand up, and for one awful moment I thought he was going to involve the surrounding tables in some impromptu humiliation. “Maybe this really is the best place for your debut,” he said. “Maybe you should stand up and hail everyone when you’re ready to be taken seriously. Is that your secret fantasy?”

A waitress sashayed past, billowing perfume through the smoke. I caught a glimpse of her lithe figure under the black body suit that was standard-issue in this place, and the cutely pinched nose under long eyelashes. “Hi Rufus,” she cooed. “Babe,” he replied. She was carrying a stack of glasses but managed to trail a free hand along his shoulder on her way to the bar.

“You know what the saddest thing about you is?” Rufus asked. I focused intently on the screen but he continued anyway: “You think there are still original ideas out there, even though they’ve all gone. The classics gave us a basic fictional topography. Everything created since is spread over the same bedrock. We had all sorts of medieval strata. Then came the Renaissance, rich soil and lush vegetation. Shakespeare was a gardener of Babylonian proportions. Since then we’ve had a few impressive heliotropes reaching some kind of enlightenment - Eliot, Joyce, Plath, maybe David Mitchell in the last few years. Now there’s a blizzard of writers like you, hoping to say something truly original. All they can hope is that their snowflake is unique before it melts.”

I remained resolute, staring at the screen, which was half-blank and half-full of someone else’s words. In my peripheral vision, I saw Rufus looking away, towards people on the other side of the bar, already disinterested in my suffering. He made to leave by standing and leaning so that our faces almost touched.

“Don’t ever call my agent again,” he said. “She’d already seen your shit on the slush pile before you told her we were friends, which we’re not, by the way. You don’t need me or her or anyone else here. You need a career counsellor.”

He patted me on the shoulder and walked away. By this time, I had refused to blink for so long that my eyes hurt. Watching the bright screen against the gloom had etched certain characters into my retina: “My heart aches…”

When I was sure Rufus had his back turned, joshing with enraptured friends, I slowly closed the lid of the laptop and slid it into my shoulder bag. Then I left some money on the table for the waitress, though she would never know or care that the tip came from me, and headed out into the rain.