Angel of Deceit

Why does a respectable former Professor of English, happily married to a faithful wife for 35 years, suddenly at the age of 71 have an affair with a 54-year-old local Scots woman? She is an alcoholic and had come to the nearby Church of Scotland slightly tipsy, lavishly made up and wearing a revealing outfit showing a lot of cleavage. She attends the weekly prayer meetings and before long the former professor and the recovering alcoholic find themselves in a secret relationship, but their happiness involves guilt and deceit. As she says, "I was addicted to the bottle-but now you are my new addiction, and I will move heaven and earth to keep you! I will even lie to keep you and if necessary I will lie for your sake. You see, I have become your Angel of Deceit!" The novel is a slice of life that affords an insight into the resourceful and rationalising minds of the habitual 'sinner' and the recovering alcoholic-minds to which hiding the truth, re-inventing the truth or justifying lies comes all too easily. 'Thinking on one's feet' and a ready recourse to deceit are ingrained survival strategies, if not automatic instincts of the alcoholic mind.