No sooner had she put the phone down than someone rang me from Salubrious and told me that there had been a change in the editorial staff due to unavoidable restructuring, and my new editor would like to meet me, and what about Friday at eleven? So I assumed big surprise and said I would, yes. And if it was Friday at eleven I expect the Suit would take me to the little Italian restaurant round the corner, like Ruperta always did, and I could make an impression on him so he wouldn’t even think of losing me.

I thought him suggesting the meeting so quickly boded well, too, though I couldn’t think what to wear that combined ‘Professional Woman’ with ‘I’ll Do Anything to Stay Published’.

Four

I Believe in Miracle

The Ramblings,

Bosson Surcoat,

Cresney

Dear Ms Devino,

I do not yet seem to have heard from you about my thriller Banking On It, even though it has been three weeks since I sent it. (And I note that the cheque has been cashed.)

I would therefore like to remind you that with a topical work of this type time is of the essence, and I would be grateful if you could get back to me as soon as convenient.

Yours sincerely,

Harold Snaith, ACA

On the following Monday, Sergei commented on how distracted I was – by which he meant I was not paying enough sympathetic attention to his latest interesting medical symptoms. I told him I felt nervous about my forthcoming meeting at Salubrious, but I wasn’t sure he quite grasped the importance of my making a good impression on the Suit.

In fact, I found it hard to concentrate on anything else that week, though I had a ticket to a literary lunch at a very grand hotel on the Thursday, which I was looking forward to because I knew several of the novelists who would be there and I could pick up the gossip about Salubrious Press and also maybe find out where Ruperta had gone to.

But the literary lunch turned out to be a bit of a let-down. They’d put me right at the back near the loos, I couldn’t see any of my friends, and there was this tall, skinny photographer who kept running up and down in front of the table, hunched double like a mad stork, trying to get good shots of the guest speaker. There was a man from an important newspaper on my left and someone’s boring relative on my right, and finally the man from the newspaper looked at me and I smiled, as you do, and he said, ‘Are you a novelist?’

‘Yes, I’m Tina Devino, author of several scintillating sex ’n’ gardening novels,’ I began eagerly, never one to let a publicity opportunity go for want of trying. ‘My new one, Spring Breezes, has just come out, and it’s—’