She had taken a moment to feel flattered that he had confided in her. ‘Have you ever thought about writing for children?’ It seemed an obvious thing for him to want to do.

‘No way. Far too hard, and far too much responsibility. If I write a book and someone hates it, that’s OK, they can just toss it aside and pick up another one. If a children’s writer produces a duff book the child who reads it – or who tries to read it – may never read another one.’ He obviously felt very strongly on the subject.

It was after this conversation that Laura had thought he’d be a good person to ask about how to pitch her short-story idea to the local schoolchildren.

Now, after she had received his congratulations and slightly smug ‘I told you you could do it’, she moved on to the competition itself. ‘So all I’ve got to do is line up a suitably keen judge. I’ve got a couple of retired teachers to do the first cut.’ She paused. ‘It’s all right, I’m not asking you. I’ve got a children’s writer in mind. Right,’ she went on briskly, ‘how did you get on with the last batch of scripts I sent you? What about the one set in Greece?’

‘A pile of crap,’ said Dermot.

‘How much did you read?’ Laura was disappointed, it was important he trusted her judgement.

‘Not very much. Why should I?’

‘Read on. It gets better.’ She was firm. Having selected her thirty manuscripts, had them copied, and sent to Dermot a few at a time, she now felt protective of them. They were her babies and she was going to fight for them, even though they had to be whittled down to ten.

Dermot was dismissive. ‘It’s no good it getting better. No one will read that far. I thought you were supposed to know about these things.’

She knew him well enough by now to know when she was being teased. ‘I do. In the editing, we’ll tell her to get rid of the first three chapters and start the book from there.’

‘OK, I’ll read a bit more and ring you back. But it had better improve.’

Laura put the phone down, smiling.

She had done the washing-up, written a few emails on the laptop Rupert had acquired for her courtesy of Jacob Stone, and was making a list of phone calls for the following day when he rang back. ‘Ah,’ he said without preamble. ‘I see what you mean.’

‘So shall I put her on the “maybe” pile?’

‘OK, but if the “maybe” pile gets too huge, I’ll send it back.’

‘But we could do that with a few suggestions, don’t you think? So these writers get help even if they don’t get on the course?’