But I was uneasy as I sat down with the other guests in Southampton. Our surroundings didn’t help. The Globe was an airport restaurant serving airport food. That was the best and the worst I could say of it. The bright lighting and open-plan configuration, spilling into the terminal, didn’t help. We might just as well have been eating on the runway. Also, I still wasn’t convinced that Alderney was a good idea. With just six weeks’ notice, I hadn’t had time to prepare and I still had no idea how Hawthorne would perform when he was put on a stage. Talking about Alex Rider or Sherlock Holmes was one thing, but having the subject of the book sitting next to me would put me well outside my comfort zone. And it wasn’t just that. As I joined Marc, Anne and Maïssa at the table, I immediately felt that I was an outsider, that I didn’t belong.

I recognised Marc Bellamy from the photograph I had seen of him on the festival website. He was even wearing the same clothes: a bottle-green jacket, an open-neck shirt with a double-sized collar and a pair of half-rim reading glasses on a gold chain around his neck. Like many of the television celebrities I had met, he was actually much smaller than he seemed on the screen and although his teeth were very white and his tan very deep, he didn’t look well. Perhaps that went with his persona. After all, he specialised in unhealthy food, railing against vegans, vegetarians and pescatarians (‘the worst of the lot . . . there’s something fishy about them’) on his show. Of course, he was only having fun, delivering his jokey insults with an exaggerated Yorkshire accent accompanied by a nudge and a wink. He was overweight – chubby rather than fat. His hair was swept back in waves with a little silver around the ears. His nose was a road map of broken blood vessels. I guessed he was about forty.

‘How do!’ he exclaimed when he saw us. This was actually one of his catchphrases. ‘You must be Anthony and Mr Hawthorne – or is it the other way round! Hawthorne and Mr Anthony.’ He laughed at that. ‘Don’t be shy. Come and sit down. I’m Marc. This is my assistant, Kathryn. That’s Maïssa, with two dots over the i, and I’m talking about her name, not her forehead. And Anne Cleary – rhymes with dreary, but she’s anything but! Scribblers United . . . that’s what we should call ourselves. You’ve got time for a bite. Plane’s on the runway, but they haven’t finished winding the elastic.’ He laughed again. ‘Anyway, we’ve already ordered. What are you going to have?’

We took our places. Hawthorne asked for a glass of water. I went for a Diet Coke.