‘Me? Good God no! Why would I do that? If anything was designed to give him writer’s block for ever, it’s something like this.’

‘You knew about his writer’s block?’

‘Of course!’

‘He was hoping you didn’t know.’

‘Who or what does he think I am? Stupid? I’m his agent, for God’s sake. I know when my writers aren’t writing, even when they’re telling me they are! No, the poor boy’s been blocked as hell for years. We just keep up the pretence that I don’t know.’ She paused. ‘He told you?’

‘Mm.’ Laura didn’t explain the circumstances, or that they’d exchanged deep secrets. Eleanora didn’t need to know everything.

There was a long pause. ‘I think you’d better come up to London right away. We need to make a plan.’

‘But the festival—’

‘The festival won’t have it’s star act unless we can think of something. This has to be a priority. Fenella will understand.’

Laura was explaining all this to Fenella and Rupert when her phone chimed to indicate she had a text message. It was from Dermot. ‘Your festival can take a flying jump.’

It felt like a physical blow, not because the festival needed its star so badly, but because he might think that it was she who had betrayed him. Somehow, she had to tell him that she hadn’t.

‘I think we can take it as a no,’ she said, fighting to sound calm, having shown her message to Rupert and Fenella. ‘It’s quite polite, really, for him.’

‘Maybe he doesn’t know you can text the “f” word,’ said Rupert.

‘You can?’ said Fenella. ‘I didn’t know that!’

‘We can be thankful for small mercies,’ said Laura, proud of her lighthearted remark. In the circumstances it was a triumph.

‘You’d better go to Eleanora’s straightaway,’ said Fenella. ‘She’s the one to get us out of this mess. If she says she needs you, go.’

‘Maybe Laura would prefer to recover from the journey first?’ suggested Rupert. ‘She’s only just got back. I know your family always do jump when Eleanora snaps her fingers, but there’s no reason for Laura to do so too.’

‘I think there is, actually, Ru,’ Laura said. ‘The sooner we can get this sorted out, the better. If we can get it sorted out.’

‘If we could just find out who did it,’ said Fenella. ‘Then we could send them hate mail.’

‘You’d have sent them fan mail when you first heard it,’ said Laura, indignantly.

‘That was before I knew what a disaster it was.’