‘Of course not. I was just saying—’

‘The music side of it is all going fine but they’ve got no one to take over the literary festival bit. You’d be perfect.’

Laura shook her head. She wasn’t the right sort of entrepreneurial, feisty woman who could blag big firms into sponsoring huge events for ex-presidents who had written heavily ghosted autobiographies. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Why on earth not?’

Why didn’t Eleanora – obviously a very bright woman – get it? ‘Because I’ve never done anything like that before. I wouldn’t know where to start!’

Eleanora took a moment and then lowered her voice and spoke slowly, as if to a bewildered child or a frightened horse. ‘But, sweetie, you have done things like that before! What do you think a bookshop event is? You get the authors there, you get them to speak, you make sure people buy their books. Just the same!’

‘But we don’t have to make vast amounts of money out of the bookshop events, or hire a venue, or anything.’

‘Look, I can tell losing your job has knocked your confidence. It would. But don’t turn this down until you’ve had a proper think about it. Fen said there’s some sort of meeting at Somerby – hang on, I’ll tell you when it is.’ Eleanora took a big gulp of her wine and then started burrowing in her handbag, which had a Mary Poppins quality: it was enormous and possibly contained a standard lamp. She produced a Filofax the size of a family Bible and riffled through the pages. ‘Next week. Two o’clock. At Somerby. Do you know where that is?’

‘No,’ said Laura firmly, although a small part of her wanted to find out. Despite her reservations – and they were strong ones – she felt a flutter of interest. Anything to do with books had that effect on her.

‘I’ll get Fenella to email you some details. You are on email?’

‘Well, at the shop.’

‘You’ll need a laptop. Better get one with your redundancy money.’

Laura inwardly bristled. She didn’t like being told how to spend her as yet unspecified redundancy money. She might need to pay a gas bill or her rent with it.

Eleanora hadn’t got to be a top literary agent without knowing how to read body language or how to get people to accept challenges. ‘You might as well go to the meeting, at least. If your only other job opportunity is stacking shelves in a supermarket . . .’

Struggling to stick to her original reaction that running a literary festival was not what she wanted to do, Laura kept up her argument about practicalities. ‘That’s not my only job opportunity, and I’m working at the shop for the next two months!’

‘What else are you going to find that involves books, except another bookselling job?’