‘Go oooon,’ said Eve with the suspicion of a child who’d asked for candy but been given kale.

‘That way we both get what we want. Yes! We both get what we want. I’ll make her past as romantic as you like while I get to keep the Beverly I love in the present… I’ll use it to… explain why she is the way she is!’

‘No sleaze,’ Eve said sharply.

‘Definitely. No mentholing, no tea-bagging and absolutely no doming,’ promised Jemima.

Eve went quiet as Jemima waited, praying she’d go with it.

‘Aaaaaalright,’ said Eve.

Jemima silently punched the air. ‘And as this was just, you know, a bad joke, we probably don’t need to tell Shaheena about it…’

As a habit Jemima didn’t like to keep things from her woefully indiscreet agent but she knew, if Shaheena got wind of this particular draft, news of it would spread across the industry like gonorrhoea around an assisted-living complex. It was never intentional but in literary London’s rumour mill, Shaheena was the miller, her apron dusty with its tittle-tattle – even if it was about her own clients.

‘Fine but I want that draft, Jem-J. I want that draft,’ said Eve hanging up.

Jemima listened to the sound of her pulse pounding in her ears. That was close. However, now she’d got herself a reprieve, how was she, a relationship cripple, going to fix this full-fat fail and create a believable, romantic backstory for her beloved Beverly? This could turn out to be the most high-stakes shag in the history of literature.

Eve’s default advice was always to use one’s own experiences but, having spent the past two years trying to obliterate her relationship with Miles from her memory the last thing she wanted was to commit it to print forever. And anyway, Miles and the random few that preceded him were hardly befitting of Jemima’s beloved heroine. Furthermore, how could she forget, Miles also worked in the industry and was very, very well connected. It would be painfully easy for him to acquire a copy of the manuscript. If he recognised himself he could halt publication all together. Jemima grizzled. She loved being a writer. She wasn’t bothered about awards or recognition. All she wanted was to be on a beach and see someone engrossed in Beverly Blake Investigates or perhaps catch the eye of a business woman on her morning commute blasting through the 254 pages of Beverly Blake Mysteries. Even when she’d seen her first book in a bargain bin at the airport, she’d wanted to tell anyone who would listen, I wrote that! Those half-price words are mine! And now it was all slipping away. This career-defining, make-or-break nightmare was exhausting. She flopped back into her plump pillows and reached for her cold coffee. She had a month to deliver this book or that would be it for her and Hudson Hicks. She knew it. She opened up the browser on her laptop and did what any writer under pressure would do – started planning an escape route. Without thinking, soon Jemima was googling ‘LA apartments’. Her time at Rebecca’s place really had planted a seed within her and it was starting to germinate. Perhaps Santa Monica was the ideal escape not just from Miles but also Eve and her looming deadline.