‘You don’t sound very sure.’

Laura tried to make herself clear. ‘I’m sure I won’t starve – there are always jobs for willing workers – but it’s unlikely I’ll find anything book related, which I love so much. Not in this town anyway.’

Eleanora narrowed her eyes in thought. ‘I might have something.’

Laura turned to her, not sure if she’d heard properly. ‘Have you?’

Eleanora leant in. ‘Mm, something frightfully exciting!’

Laura’s little flicker of hope died. She didn’t do ‘frightfully exciting’. She wouldn’t be right for the job. It would probably involve marketing, or starting a business from scratch – not her sort of thing at all.

‘Well, don’t you want to hear what it is?’ Eleanora demanded through a slice of tomato and feta cheese.

Laura speared a black olive with her fork. ‘Of course. It’s so kind of you to take an interest.’ She hoped Eleanora wouldn’t hear her apathy.

‘It is, actually,’ agreed Eleanora, possibly slightly annoyed by Laura’s lukewarm response. ‘And if it wasn’t in my interest as well, I wouldn’t bother. Too busy. But what it is, is this!’

At that moment a phalanx of waiters descended on the table, whipping away Greek salad and taramasalata and replacing it with sizzling platters of moussaka, sinister fish dishes and more bottles of wine.

While all this was going on, Laura framed an elegant and polite refusal for whatever Eleanora might be about to suggest. She didn’t think anything this brightly coloured parrot of a woman could offer her could possibly be up her street. They were too different as people.

‘I want you to set up a literary festival!’ Eleanora announced with the assumption that this would be greeted with clapping and shrieks of delight, as if she was a conjuror who had just produced a particularly endearing rabbit. ‘Well, help set up one, anyway.’

Visions of the major festivals – Cheltenham, Hay, Edinburgh, with their phalanx of stars, many of them famous for something quite other than writing books – made her feel weak. ‘I don’t think—’

‘But it’s not just an ordinary lit. fest.’ Eleanora flapped a heavily ringed hand as if it were boredom that made Laura doubtful. ‘There’s a music festival going on too. It’s at my niece’s house.’

‘Oh. Big house,’ said Laura. For a moment, her wayward imagination was distracted by the notion of a two-bed semi with a literary lion in one room and an X Factor entry-level band in another.

‘Huge. A monster, millstone round their necks, but lovely, of course. They’re trying to make it pay its way so they can keep it. The music festival should make them a bit, but my niece, Fenella, wanted a literary festival too, to make it a bit different.’

‘I think there is a festival already that combines—’

‘Doesn’t mean they can’t have one too, does it?’