“A ploughman’s lunch!” Benton said. “Like the ones I used to have in Surrey.”

“I’m glad you like it,” Grace said.

“I like everything about you,” he said.

You are not in love.

Benton helped Grace carry everything to the teak table outside, and they sat down with their feast, within full sight of the garden.

Together, they dug in, piecing together bites for each other: radish, sweet butter, and mustard. A slice of bread spread thick with farmer’s cheese and topped with sausage.

Grace’s hands were shaking as she fed him. He nibbled at the tips of her fingers.

He said, “Do you know the song ‘Loving Cup’ by the Rolling Stones?” He started to sing. “I’m the ploughman in the valley with a face full of mud.”

Did she? She said, “I think so?”

“Here,” he said. “I’ll play it.” He plugged his phone into the outdoor speaker, and music filled the backyard.

Benton took Grace’s hand and pulled her to her feet. They started to slow dance to the song right there on the deck, Benton’s arms around Grace, Grace’s face resting on Benton’s chest. She hadn’t even known such happiness existed. What a beautiful buzz, what a beautiful buzz.

When Benton left, Grace ran up to her study.

She needed to call Madeline.

MADELINE

The apartment, which had seemed so freeing to Madeline initially, now felt like a jail cell. Madeline had to drag herself there, and when she walked in, she experienced something like panic. She had paid twelve thousand dollars for the place, and now she needed to make it earn its keep.

Pressure.

She couldn’t write a word under such pressure.

She had no ideas for another novel. Not one.

She was plagued with all kinds of upsetting thoughts. They were running out of money, she had promised more than she could deliver, they should never have invested the fifty thousand with Eddie. Trevor would have to ask for it back, since Madeline’s plea had done no good.

She was past her deadline, the deadline Redd Dreyfus had extended for her. Redd had called her cell phone and left two exasperated messages, and both Angie and Angie’s assistant, Marlo, e-mailed and then called. They needed the copy; otherwise she would be bumped from the list and there would be “financial repercussions.”

Madeline capitulated. She had no choice. She would write a sequel to Islandia.

But when Madeline sat down with her legal pad and began an outline, the book she described wasn’t a sequel to Islandia. The book she described was a hot, steamy love affair between a stay-at-home mother of two and her contractor.

I am not writing this, Madeline thought. I am not writing this. But she was writing it. The words were flowing out of her like something she spilled on the page.

Grace had said it herself: Everything was normal and boring. And now… now, my life is a novel.

Madeline didn’t even commit to giving her two lovers names. She called them B and G.

The male protagonist, “B,” is the project manager of the female protagonist’s home renovation. The female protagonist, “G,” is a stay-at-home mother of two girls—Irish twins, born eleven months apart. B and G start conferring every day on the renovation. Did G want an undermounted porcelain sink in the kitchen or a double stainless steel? What kind of countertops—granite, limestone, Corian? Backsplash of decorative tile or plain drywall? What kind of hardwood flooring—maple, cherry, antique knotty pine? What style for the cabinets? What kind of cabinet pulls?

B and G end up kissing for the first time in the first-floor powder room, during a discussion of fixtures for the sink. The quarters are tight—and dark, as the electrician has yet to come hang the lights. G is in the powder room when B walks in, and they accidentally bump hips. The next thing either of them knows, they are passionately kissing.

B starts bringing G Moroccan mint tea every day, as well as a box of four pistachio macarons from the local bakery, which they would share.

Madeline didn’t even bother changing the kind of cookie. She supposed she could have made them white-chocolate melt-aways or peanut-butter truffles. She could have changed the Moroccan mint tea to an iced vanilla latte.

I am not writing this. I am not writing this. She couldn’t turn this in. Grace would sue her. Or kill her. Or both.

But it was good. Madeline could see that it was good. It was spare and compelling. Grace’s affair with Benton Coe did contain all the elements of good fiction: loneliness, desire, sex, betrayal.

B and G fall deeper and deeper in love as work on the house progresses. G’s husband, a real-estate attorney named Ren, short for Renfrew, pays all the bills, including the astronomical bill for B’s services, without complaint. He tells people he’s happy that his wife is happy.

Madeline wrote one sample scene, and that was the scene of the two lovers eating a ploughman’s lunch on the sunny deck. They feed each other; B nibbles on G’s fingertips. And then they slow dance to “Loving Cup” by the Rolling Stones. Madeline couldn’t even bring herself to change the song—“Loving Cup” was too perfect.

She could not write this novel. But she had nothing else, and so she typed up the outline and added the sample scene and e-mailed them to Redd Dreyfus with the subject line I TRIED.

EDDIE

He had a love-hate relationship with Memorial Day weekend. On the one hand, he couldn’t wait for it to arrive, announcing, as it did, the start of summer.