She seems constantly surprised by how the people of York are attracted to her fame (we do have celebrities in Yorkshire, but the home-grown famous are tainted by too few degrees of separation – heavens, everyone in Leeds knows someone who went to school with a Kaiser Chief and if you experience afternoon tea in Betty’s without glimpsing Alan Bennet, I’d demand a refund.) She’s exotic and glamorous (being American) and defiantly surprising, as she’s here by choice, not the happenstance of birth. So the people come, as moths to a flame (not that Tracy would ever burn anyone, not even on an off day.) Last Tuesday they came in hoards, like their Viking ancestors. As we set out her desk with her handwritten ‘the writer is in’ sign, in a corner of the gallery, and she sat with her pen poised, I felt I had led a lamb to the slaughter. Would she survive? The crowd were bemused and buzzed like angry bees “When is she going to speak?” “Well,” I suggested, “I’m sure she’ll speak if you speak to her..” and they buzzed some more. She did survive…and the Viking bees seemed pleased to have met her.
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