Laura had spent several seconds in shock before she picked up that Monica was joking. ‘Why beat around the bush, Mon? Why not just come out with it?’ Laura was giggling now, as Monica had intended she should. But there was an edge of hysteria to it.

She tried again. ‘What about: “Have you ever acted out the sex scenes in your books and if so when?”’

Laura stopped giggling and became indignant. ‘No! There are no sex scenes in his books that would give us the remotest clue!’

Monica shrugged. ‘Sorry, haven’t read them.’

‘That’s blindingly obvious!’

‘Hang on! I’m doing you a favour, don’t forget!’

Laura was apologetic. ‘I’m sorry! I’m being a bitch. I got myself into this, I should get myself out of it really. Why should you embarrass yourself for me? If only I wasn’t such an idiot!’

‘Look, it’s OK. You don’t need to beat yourself up more than you already have done. Hair shirts are so last century, or even several centuries before. I’ll think of something at the time, so it sounds more natural.’

Laura was not reassured. ‘I’ve set up a lot of signings, readings, Q and As, and been to a few I haven’t arranged, and no one ever, ever, asked about the author’s sex life.’

Monica was dismissive. ‘But I’m a scary rock chick. I can ask stuff you literary types wouldn’t.’ Monica put on an expression of insouciance that might have convinced Laura when she first met her, a couple of weeks before, but by now she realised that the ‘scary rock chick’ or in her case a ‘scary swing band chick’ was an image that went on with the pink wig and false eyelashes.

‘I should do this myself. I’m sure if I got drunk enough – hell, when I got drunk before I was ready to have sex with him!’

‘Yes, and you were so drunk you can’t remember if you had sex with him or not,’ Monica reminded her kindly, in case this had slipped Laura’s mind. ‘Much good it’ll do us if you tank yourself up so you can ask him, and then can’t make sense of the answer, or forget what the answer was. No, I’ll do it.’

Shamed by the truth of this, Laura shut up.