NOVELTINA LITERARY AND CRITICAL AGENCY

Mudlark Cottage, The Harbour, Shrimphaven

Dear Limpet,

Thank you for your letter and manuscript, and the money that was pushed into my shopping basket in used five-pound notes on Saturday while I was in Waitrose. You will be pleased to know that I didn’t spot the person who did it, and indeed, did not even notice the envelope of money until the girl at the checkout tried to scan it.

I enclose my full critique, but I am afraid that as it stands your work is more a fictionalization of your wartime experiences than a novel. So even under a pen name it is probably still actionable under the Official Secrets Act. However, it is all a long time ago now, so perhaps if you get in touch with the appropriate authorities they might agree to an edited autobiography in due course? After all, none of it seems to particularly merit secrecy at this stage, although I am not at all trying to belittle the very, very important role you clearly played in winning the war.

I hope this is all helpful to you. By the way, in view of your desire for absolute secrecy, perhaps I should point out to you that you have inadvertently printed your real name and address in full at the top of every sheet of the manuscript.

Yours sincerely,

Tina Devino

Sergei was back to phoning me up for frequent little chats, just as he used to do, mostly to give me an update on his health, but sometimes also to talk about his book’s progress towards publication in July, and to ask me what I thought about the book itself, which of course I had read instantly.

Well, there was no doubt in my mind that it would sell like hot cakes for the photos of Sergei alone, and the narrative certainly hotted up as you got towards where I came on the scene, especially that bit in the tropical greenhouse, which I had forgotten about – and there is something terribly primordial and sexy about the smell of hot, damp, steamy plants, isn’t there? Clearly any shreds of cover I might have had had been blown.

Nathan continued his chatty calls, too – often still at strange times of the day or night, sounding oddly furtive (I must remember to tell him I found his expensive gold fountain pen down the back of my sofa) – but although I enjoyed talking to him he was definitely more flirtatious when he was not within reach, so I couldn’t figure him out at all.

Also, now I’d got to know him, I simply couldn’t use him as a model for my sexy hero in The Orchid Huntress any more, because he was quite ordinary really, whereas my male protagonists always had a bit of extra something. In fact, a lot of extra something.

I definitely needed a new hero.