When I am not working in the bookshop or reporting on hairstyles I do the work I like the most. This is how I met Emily Nardini. It was quite a coup for me and White Jesus: Nardini had not consented to an interview in over ten years, or to a photograph in over twelve, and when I wrote to request my interview I had to insist on a photograph: most of our readers only look at the pictures. I had never seen Nardini in the flesh before, surprising really, as most of the writers who live in London pass through the shop at one point or other. I don’t think I would have missed her, despite there being only the one publicity photo in existence, taken when she was twenty-one and her first novel had just been published. It was the kind of photo that made publishers use the words ‘highly promotable’ in press releases. Dark Italian features bleached into high contrast by the rain and scour of a Scottish shipbuilding city. A formally beautiful face, with pale skin and bright eyes like a starlet in monochrome. Writers don’t look like that. They get enough attention for being averagely attractive, competently stylish; her looks are distracting. More distracting for a woman; men don’t suffer the same if we are put up on posters. The photo of her shows someone who senses exactly what the camera is taking from her. She looks straight at it, resentful, about to become furious. She is sick of being looked at like this, sick of what we are trying to claim from her. Her seriousness. Her language. So she scowls and becomes someone whom sensitive men want to patronise and cheer up. Someone whom gallants want to rescue.