By nine o’clock, eight people were seated with Catherine round the table in the small conference room with their pens and paper at the ready. Stanley Heslington was notable by his absence but Win was there. Catherine glanced at her watch, waited a moment and then sent her an enquiring look, but Win did not seem inclined to have her eye caught and appeared preoccupied with her notebook. Catherine decided it would be better to start without him. She was beginning to have her own ideas about who she thought might be going to benefit from the course, but Stanley was not one of them.

She suggested that over the next two days everyone should write a short piece about a journey. It could be a story or an article but it should be two thousand words long.

‘What happens if we get so carried away that it’s much, much longer?’ asked Bunty, opening her rather protuberant blue eyes even wider than usual, a look she had worked on and perfected in her youth and still fancied gave her a kittenish charm. She was under the illusion that the Colonel might find this appealing.

‘Then I’m afraid we mightn’t have time to discuss it properly,’ said Catherine, ‘which would be a pity. Besides, if you want to write professionally it’s a good idea to get a feel for the word count. So many magazines have to turn down good material because it’s not the right length for their particular publication.’

‘I think it ought to be the author’s own instinct which decides the length,’ objected Bunty, pouting like a thwarted child.

‘Well, sometimes, yes – but if you were a dressmaker, you’d expect to make a garment the size and shape your client wanted,’ suggested Catherine. ‘We have to tailor our words in a similar fashion. If you find you’ve written too much, then cutting what you’ve done is always a useful exercise too. Most of our work is improved by cutting. You’d be amazed at how my poems always benefit from the knife – though I still find it very difficult. Have a go at two thousand words anyway.’

‘Can it be a children’s story?’

‘Of course. I expect you’ll all produce something completely different. So long as the subject and length are right it can be anything you like.’

Bunty perked up immediately.

‘Bet they all travel by broomstick on that particular journey,’ muttered Louisa to Morwenna who was sitting next to her.

‘Hmm . . . or on a magic carpet,’ agreed Morwenna, already planning how she could make her journey horticultural and finding to her own surprise that despite her usual lack of imagination she could clearly envisage a trip to Nepal with the Dendrologists Society, something she had always wanted to do.

‘Just for fun, let’s go round the table and each produce a word off the top of our heads which we’ll all include in our story or article,’ said Catherine. ‘You start, Win.’