A Record of the Evening

For nineteen years, he ran a private dining room in Barcelona. After every dinner he recorded who came, what they ate, what surprised him, and one sentence about the evening itself. Fifty-two years of memory now fills 214 boxes in his East End home.

A burst pipe brings Dermot Lowry into the house: a tradesman who says what he means through repairs, invoices, shared meals, and the jobs he returns to finish. Julian understands every line of an invoice. He is less certain what to do with a man who keeps coming back.

Then an auction catalogue falsely claims that eleven valuable pieces once stood in Julian’s dining room. His polite correction brings a generous offer: let us catalogue your archive, free of charge.

It is the last easy decision he makes.

As Julian’s meticulous records pass through other people’s hands, every document remains genuine and every procedure remains lawful. Together, they construct a Julian Essex who never existed — and one he may not be able to disprove.

When Julian’s past becomes evidence against him, Dermot offers the one thing no archive can provide — someone who sees him as he is.

To save his name, Julian must trust another man with the history he has spent a lifetime controlling. To claim a future, he must ask for what he has never been able to request: help, forgiveness, and love.

A tender, open-door love story between two older men, wrapped in literary suspense about the terror of being accurately misunderstood.