Because it wasn’t any good. Worse, it was boring. She’d read it a few times, and each time it got worse. The main character – a woman in her early twenties – came across as whiny, the plot was thin, the ending weak. But the problem went deeper than that. It was forced; it didn’t sound like her.

She hated it. She loved that she’d done it, but she hated the novel itself.

And so she started again, and this time it worked. The first line came to her unbidden and then the rest followed.

I told them I was trouble.

She loved it at every stage. Sketch, rough draft, final draft. The main character, Janet, mid-twenties, was mysterious and intriguing. She was engaged to Marcus – they had got engaged soon after they met, to the shock of her friends, because, on the face of it, their relationship was not a healthy one.

Marcus was cold and distant and rude to her and to her friends; they all assumed she would see she had made a mistake and break up with him.

But she claimed to everyone she was happy and had no intention of ever leaving him. They joked she must be trapped.

It wasn’t a joke.

She had a secret, and Marcus had discovered it when they met. If she ever left him, he would tell the world.

And she could not let that happen.

But she could not marry him. Which meant – although he did not yet know it – Marcus was not as safe and secure as he thought he was. Janet had a plan to escape, and she knew the perfect person to help her with it.

She loved it. So did Matt. And she sent it out to the three agents she had selected – after hours of research – as the most suitable to represent her book.

Only one replied, with a cursory: Thank you for sending your novel. We receive a lot of submissions and unfortunately yours is not something we think we can take on at this point.

So she tried some more. Months went by, and then they too politely declined. It wasn’t what was selling at the moment, or they had another book too similar to it, or it was promising but not for them.

Eventually she had sent it to every agent and every publisher she could find. None of them were interested.

The only one she hadn’t tried was Guy. He had taken a job as an editorial assistant at a small agency in Oxford.

Why not ask him? Matt said.

It’s not fair. He’ll feel obliged. And it’s no good. No one wants it.

I love it, Matt said. I’m not just saying that. I really do.

Which was great to hear, but meant the same as your mum or dad saying they liked it.

That was, nothing.

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