She speaks clearly, but haltingly, as if she and the audience are not yet sure of one another. One American, and a body of Scots however, quickly find assurance in one another, and she reflects how we find her current state.

She begins with a childhood anecdote - her father suggested she should be a nurse, and this spurned her quicker up the literary path. You have, she tells us, to be persistent and lucky. Nothing we haven’t heard surely, the distance between speaker and audience feeling especially wide. She confesses she hates teaching creative writing - it is difficult to teach what can’t necessarily be learned. We have given four pieces of advice, reasonable but not revealing, as she exercises a certain air of superiority. Or maybe it just feels as if we can never reach her heights. At the moment it is almost alienating; she is not divulging anything of herself.

Moving away from Kevin she gathers speed; we have a mutual understanding, the effort of direct communication bringing us to level ground. She becomes a person, not a figure.

At first her new book does not spark much interest in me - a tale of whether to cheat or not to cheat on a partner with parallel consequences. However, she expresses her own and her novel’s intentions as both poignant and real. The delicate framework makes the content original in our minds.

It is worse, she says, to be the betrayer. To be betrayed may leave you hurt, confused, but with the knowledge you have done nothing wrong, you have no guilt to restrain you.

The triangle affects how the protagonist ‘sees herself’, the kind of person she is, and who she becomes. This one choice reveals not what you do, but who you are choosing to be.

Although Lionel projects great energy when reading, it is really when she answers questions that she is at her most compelling. She takes the time to simply make sure she answers the question as delicately and as in depth as possible. Revealing her many false starts and pitfalls in her writing career, saved by a little radio time and eventually journalism, we all can feel capable.

Change track, cut your loses, and experiment with resources, but there is nothing telling us we can’t too, be lucky. Perhaps the most crucial question comes near the end, when one man sums up the dilemma posed in her forthcoming novel, Integrity of Self.

This novel will address illness and death, how does integrity of self come into play? She is interested, she tells us, in how illness affects just that, for what greater test of this is there "apart from, of course, death!" she quips.

During the course of the talk I find myself persistently regretting not asking for an interview, but true to form, she turns this too, on its head. Somehow warmly she reveals she’d be glad if "I never had to do an interview again".

She is also "sick of hearing about the book". It seems warm because it is truthful; having broken the ice she does not need to tiptoe around us. The book of course, is We Need To Talk About Kevin, and I feel glad this is my first impression of her, rather than her acclaimed prose.

Not having brought cash enough to buy her book, we scamper, leaving Lionel, her high heels and a converted group of smiles. By listening to her audience, she proves her power as a speaker. We looked to her for answers, and found her remarkably honest.