Jemima smiled. This was the one silver lining to her writing predicament – having a place like this to figure things out. She took her latte and planted herself in her usual window seat, basking in Nostromo’s roughly-put-together charm and the quiet murmur of its customers. Opening up her notebook she once again pondered her dilemma. Staring back at her was one word: Miles. She scored it out with a thick, black marker and thought back to her other possibility. The girls. Perhaps they would agree if they were unrecognisable. That had been Troy’s mistake. If Jemima wrote some sample passages for them, it might help. Then again, if Simi and Meagan saw a sample and vetoed the whole thing, she would be screwed. No, if she did this and it was a big if, she had to present them with the finished article so they knew exactly what they were dealing with. Jemima began mulling over stories from the girls’ current situations. Immediately, Meagan’s ‘arrangement’ with Todd came to mind. She wondered if Beverly might have had something similar in her past. If she did, unlike Meagan, she would at least know his last name. Or maybe, like Meagan, Beverly had once loved a married man. At the time Meagan had brushed it off as a fling but when it had ended Jemima knew her feelings went much deeper than that. Parker. Jemima wasn’t sure if that was his first or last name. She only met him once. What she did know was that Meagan had loved him and since then, any man who got entangled with her was always kept at arm’s length. There was always a reason, the most hardy being Meagan’s ‘plan’. Though she daren’t say it, Jemima wondered if it wasn’t a plan at all but some kind of defence. Against what, she wasn’t sure, but there were definitely morsels she could plant in Beverly’s past. Jemima then thought about Simi and seeing her things neatly piled up in Oscar’s basement. Beverly would never have allowed that to happen… unless, thought Jemima, it was the catalyst that turned her into the solitary, work obsessive she’d become… A quiet excitement brewed as ideas coalesced. Perhaps Beverly had lived with a man once but he had never shown her the respect she deserved. Maybe the experience had hardened her. That was justification for her transformation into the single-minded insurance sleuth she now was. Jemima had to admit, that was a pretty solid backstory. As she began scribbling down more ideas her attention was taken by a medic in blue scrubs outside helping a tall, athletic-looking man on crutches into a cab. Something about the doctor captivated her. She watched how, with absolute patience and good humour, he guided the man into the car. The taxi pulled away and her heart lightened at the display of generosity. But as she enjoyed the goodwill afterglow, she saw the doctor step back into a pile of poo so big it looked like a baby rhino had deposited it.