‘Yes, but isn’t there anyone important sitting at this table?’ he interrupted rudely.

As you can imagine, I was absolutely delirious with pleasure when the icing sugar on his Snowy Heart Meringue with Strawberry Coulis went up his nostril so he looked like he’d been snorting something and gone a bit far.

The next day I turned up at Salubrious Press on the dot of eleven o’clock, wearing a well-cut dark suit with a short – but not too short – skirt, something frivolous and low cut underneath it, and killer heels.

Normally I conduct a mild flirtation with the elderly man on the front desk while waiting for Ruperta, but today everyone seemed subdued. A little red-haired girl collected me – she seemed to be wearing a knotted hankie over one shoulder and a small paint-splattered bandage round her hips, but I expect it is very cutting edge – and whisked me straight up to what used to be Ruperta’s office, only it looked subtly different already. There was, however, nothing subtle about the shock it gave me to find out that the Suit sitting behind the desk (and he didn’t get up) was my ex-husband, Tim.

I hadn’t seen him that close up for years, he having been an early mistake tried on for size and briskly discarded in Sergei’s favour, so it took me a moment to take it in.

Sitting down uninvited, I just stared at him, thinking that he looked a lot better when he had hair.

‘Well, Tina,’ he said, with a cold smile, ‘glad you could make it – I know your little secretarial jobs take up a lot of time.’

My spine suddenly went all rigid and my mental faculties returned with a whoosh. ‘You know very well I’ve always been a writer, and just used to temp when I needed the money, which luckily hasn’t been necessary since my first contract with Salubrious.’ I didn’t mention my little lit. crit. thingy, which just about kept my head above the waves financially, because it was none of his business.

‘You surprise me. We don’t pay our midlist authors very much and I’d have thought you would have trouble living off your advances. You certainly don’t seem to have done much more than earned them out, so there can’t have been a great deal in the way of royalties on the sales of your books.’

He shuffled some papers together as though my entire life history was written down in front of him, which for all I know it was because he’s that weird, and then he gave me the cold smile again. ‘But I suppose you’re still shacked up with that old ballet dancer, even though current rumour says it’s boys he’s more interested in than girls – what was his name?’