Chapter Eighteen
My TV performance hung in the air like a bad smell, infecting everything I did for the rest of the week. Colleagues avoided eye contact, students sniggered as I passed in the corridor, neighbours smiled politely and avoided the subject. The people I would have liked to hear from, my publishers and Cardinal Amarunto, were conspicuously silent.
Jackie did what Jackie does and attempted to spin it into something positive. She said people were bound to want to know more and I could explain myself a more controlled environment, like a newspaper article, or even a podcast. I had my book, I had my job, I was an esteemed academic. It was just one slip of the tongue. But it didn’t work.
When she saw how distraught I continued to be she suggested we disappear for the weekend, som
