‘Brilliance requires originality,’ said Simon. ‘A novel about a woman with a broken heart’s not original, not if it’s written in 1999.’

‘Does he really mean that?’ Olivia asked Charlie.

‘Carry on, Liv. Ignore him.’

‘There are different kinds of broken hearts, Simon. I hope you never have to find that out.’

‘What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Liv,’ Charlie waved her hands in front of her sister’s face. ‘Carry on.’

‘Senga was a bit embarrassed about having picked Martha Wyers.’ Olivia glanced at Simon as if she planned to deal with him later. ‘Her first novel turned out to be her only one. She sank without trace.’

‘That’s death for you,’ said Charlie. ‘It tends to impede productivity. ’

‘Wyers never wrote anything else, and faded into obscurity soon after the feature went to press. Some of Senga’s colleagues who’d picked these up-and-coming stars—the music critic, the drama critic—their choices are now famous, household names.’

‘Such as?’

‘Pippa Dowd was the music choice.’

‘From Limited Sympathy,’ Charlie told Simon. ‘He hasn’t heard of anyone,’ she explained to Liv.

‘And the actor was Doohan Champion.’

‘He’s a talentless streak of piss!’

‘As well as a multi-millionaire, yes,’ said Liv drily. ‘I suppose it must be hard to predict which careers will succeed and which fail—no one can foresee the future.’ Seeing the look on Simon’s face, she went on quickly, ‘Anyway, then Senga said something I remembered later on, when she emailed me the article and I saw that all the bits apart from the section on Martha were missing. She said, “At least I wasn’t the only one who got it wrong. The art critic and the comedy buff ended up with egg on their faces, too. Their picks also sank without trace.” I thought: I wonder who the art critic chose? I wondered if it was Mary Trelease.’

Simon turned on Charlie. ‘What does she know about Trelease? ’

‘Plenty,’ said Olivia. ‘I know there’s a woman called Ruth Bussey who’s got a thing about Charlie, whose boyfriend Aidan Seed thinks he killed an artist called Mary Trelease even though she isn’t dead.’

‘You told her the names?’

Charlie looked away. She’d told Liv a lot more than she normally would. They’d needed something to talk about that wasn’t the cuttings on the bedroom wall and how Charlie felt about them. She’d had a good story and she’d used it. You can’t make a story come to life without naming the characters.

‘So what if the painter in the article’s Mary Trelease?’ Simon demanded. ‘So what if Trelease and this Martha Wyers woman were part of the same colour supplement feature in 1999? So fucking what?’