Despite all that, I had to crack on with my new novel, Dark, Passionate Earth, now I’d mastered the basics of the new computer. I simply had to make it big with this one. I felt I couldn’t go on scrimping and saving for the rest of my life, and despite my policy of attending every literary event I could beg, borrow or steal a ticket for, hovering on the fringes, hoping that some of the magic fairy dust of Instant Bestsellerdom would rub off on my wings, I didn’t seem to be getting any further.

Salubrious Press would probably give my next book a publicity budget of about a fiver, as usual, whereas if I were a bestselling novelist they’d pour thousands into it, when it would sell anyway. But so it is in the world of writing: I mean, the people who win huge book prizes are usually bestsellers who are already so loaded they don’t actually need the money … and come to that, they’re so ungrateful, too. If they win the Women’s Prize for Fiction, half the time they say they don’t see themselves as a woman novelist, or, if the award is the Romantic Novel of the Year, they say they’re not a romantic novelist at all. Though they still pocket the cheque in front of hundreds of women who would admit to being anything for a bit of publicity and a fat cheque, and pardon me for the sour grapes but my cash flow had been more of a thin gluey trickle lately.

Then one morning shortly after my signing, bright and early, I had a phone call from a friend in publishing and she said, ‘Don’t look now, but your editor at Salubrious Press has just decided to “resign” and she’s being replaced by a “suit”!’

‘But Ruperta can’t go,’ I said incredulously. ‘She loves my books and she believes in me, and I know I haven’t made Salubrious much money yet, although I sell more hardbacks than most of their literary novelists, so you can’t really call me a midlist author, but I’m sure this next one will be a big breakthrough novel – and what do you mean, “suit”?’

‘Tina, Ruperta’s being replaced by a man from the marketing department, so cost-cutting might be on the agenda and midlist heads will definitely roll – and maybe one or two others,’ she added hastily, but I wasn’t fooled and I could see she thought I was for the chop.