NOVELTINA LITERARY AND CRITICAL AGENCY

Mudlark Cottage, The Harbour, Shrimphaven

Dear Glenda Strudwick,

Thank you for your letter.

While I am delighted to hear that Neville has had good feedback from Rangerider Books Ltd, when I encouraged him to write Westerns I certainly didn’t imagine for one moment that he would then embrace the whole cowboy lifestyle, let alone insisting on being called Bullwhip O’Sullivan and wearing a Stetson all the time, which must be deeply embarrassing for you!

I do sympathize, and I can only think that he must be going through a sort of late male crisis of some kind, especially those strange ideas he was having about you dressing up in a gunbelt and cowboy hat too … Well, quite frankly, Glenda, I would only go down that route if the idea does something for you, otherwise I’d tell him to go live in his little log cabin until he’s regained his senses.

No, I didn’t realize that the farm actually belonged to you – and perhaps you ought to give a timely reminder about that to your husband? You never know who he might meet at the Western Re-enactment Society, after all, though at least you can always cut your losses, as you say – if I read your reference to ‘culling the old bull’ correctly.

How practical you farming folk are!

With admiration and best wishes,

Tina Devino

Twenty-Nine

Cross Currents

Dear Tony,

Here is some news that will, I hope, gladden your heart: Sergei and I are not only together again, but are also engaged to be married.

But don’t immediately jump to conclusions and start organizing a wedding or anything, because that is the only step I am prepared to take towards respectability. Everyone is getting engaged these days as a way of signifying the permanence and depth of their love for one another – it’s terribly trendy.

There will be full-colour coverage of our engagement party in a magazine too, always helpful to my career, which is actually the only reason I am telling you about plighting my troth, so you don’t get too overexcited when you read about it.

Your affectionate sister,

Tina

Sergei threw himself into organizing our big, fat Greek engagement party with passion, and although we’d only booked half of Lemonia all the rest of the customers were soon sucked into the festivities too, for while there may be no such thing as a free lunch, wherever Sergei was, the champagne ran like water. I sincerely hoped both his book advance and his investments were still flourishing.

We’d invited an eclectic mix of people between us: there were ballet dancers (including Grigor), choreographers, ordinary friends, literary contacts, a journalist or two, a photographer, his editor, my old (and now new) editor, Ruperta, and Tim (how could I resist inviting him?), who came with his colleague Jinni in tow.