50 pages 1 hour read

Ian McEwan

Sweet Tooth

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012

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Chapters 21-22Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 21 Summary

The night before she returns to work, Serena struggles to sleep as she thinks of everything she might have done differently. As she prepares to leave the house the next morning, she discovers a postcard from her ex-boyfriend Jeremy with a confusing message. She pockets the postcard and heads to work, where she is summoned to a meeting with Tapp, Nutting, Max, and the rest of her operations team. They grill her about the newspaper article and her romantic relationship with Haley. Haley is to be cut loose from the Sweet Tooth operation, she is told, and they do not think his novel has any merit. They make plans to kill the story in the press and—after Max leaves the room—Nutting accuses Serena of ruining Max’s engagement. He wonders whether she is more trouble than she is worth. With nothing to lose, Serena asks the men about the reasons she was hired and about Tony Canning. Nutting reveals that Tony was blackmailed by the Soviets, who arranged for a young agent to seduce him and then threatened to reveal the affair if he did not cooperate. As a parting gift, Tony left an envelope with MI5 addressed to Serena.

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