Some had dialogue so stilted it could have been examples from a grammar textbook. Others had characters who were not even dislikeable, let alone engaging; they just didn’t have enough substance to be anything. Not one of them had a plot. She was very depressed. She decided to ring Eleanora about it the next day and leave a message if necessary. She also needed to think about buying a laptop. She’d lost her Internet connection after today, where she had it at the shop, and she couldn’t organise a literary festival without email.

Eleanora was out when she rang, but returned her call shortly afterwards. ‘Laura? Sweetie? Are they God-awful?’

‘They are dire,’ said Laura. ‘Honestly, to start with I thought I’d give each one fifty pages, just to be fair, as I’d heard the judge for a major award say that was what he does. But after a couple I just couldn’t bear to.’

‘Sweetie, don’t sweat it. Most of them will be dire, but how many have you read so far?’

‘Fifteen. They all arrived at the same time.’

‘Only fifteen? Nothing to worry about. There’ll be at least a hundred.’

‘A hundred?’ Laura took a sharp intake of breath. ‘Have you any idea of how tiny my flat is – no, of course you haven’t. Sorry.’ She paused. ‘I haven’t got to send them back, have I?’

‘Are you saying they haven’t got return postage, self-addressed labels? All that?’ Eleanora was outraged.

‘Well, I think most of them have but—’

‘Then just stick on the return labels and bung ’em off to the post office.’

‘I haven’t got a car and the post office is miles away.’ Laura didn’t want to sound grumbly but she thought it had been a while since Eleanora had ‘bunged anything off to the post office’ personally. Did she know that many small, queue-free post offices had been closed?

‘Well, wait until you can get a lift or something. These people don’t need to get their hopes and dreams thrown back at them too soon. Give them a few days’ hope before you let ’em down.’

Shortly afterwards, Laura ended the call. She needed to get to bed. Tomorrow she would address the car and laptop situation which was becoming more and more urgent. Then she had a more uplifting thought: a hundred scripts at ten pounds a throw would come to a thousand pounds. Handy! Her redundancy money wouldn’t last for long.

‘Why don’t you buy my car?’ said Grant. They had arranged to meet for coffee a week or so later so they could co-counsel each other on their bookshop-withdrawal. ‘Then I could upgrade.’