This is chief among the reasons why I have now decided to risk further calumny by writing my own account of Sheba's downfall. I am presumptuous enough to believe that I am the person best qualified to write this small history. I would go so far as to hazard that I am the only person. Sheba and I have spent countless hours together over the last eighteen months, exchanging confidences of every kind. Certainly, there is no other friend or relative of Sheba's who has been so intimately involved in the day-to-day business of her affair with Connolly. In many cases, the events I describe here were witnessed by me personally. Elsewhere, I rely upon detailed accounts provided by Sheba herself. I am not so foolhardy as to claim for myself an infallible or complete version of the story. But I do believe that my narrative will go some substantial way to helping the public understand who Sheba Hart really is.

Excerpted from What Was She Thinking? © Copyright 2003 by Zoë Heller. Reprinted with permission by Henry Holt and Company. All rights reserved.