Dear Tony,

Just to say a belated thank you for another memorable Christmas. I am entirely panettonied out.

Sorry I had to rush away, but as I explained, not only did I have a heap of manuscripts waiting for their critiques, I also had to see my agent and promote my new paperback, Spring Breezes. The latter job is even more important now because my agent has dropped me, and if Spring Breezes isn’t a mega success so will my publishers.

I must say, considering that by now we only have about a teaspoon of diluted Italian blood in our veins, you are sounding more and more like something out of The Godfather, Tony, and I’m sure poor Mary would much prefer her given name than Maria, which is terribly Sound of Music, let alone inflicting Bruno, Dino and Fabia on your unsuspecting children’s heads – though actually, come to think of it, there are worse names you could have chosen and the boys do seem to like theirs even if they sound strange in a Welsh accent.

I quite understand your interest in tracing your ancestry like that American book Roots, and commend your attempt to learn Italian at your age, but frankly I feel suddenly assuming a broken Italian accent makes you look slightly ridiculous, so please don’t carry your identity crisis to extremes, will you?

Oh, and another hint – ditch the shades when you are indoors.

Give my love to Mary and the children.

Your affectionate sister,

Tina

I had spent almost the whole of the previous ten days working my butt off on the new novel, and felt I’d added a whole new layer to its rich compost heap. Maybe Miracle would change her mind when she saw it. And Tim would regret his words to me when he read my wonderful prose … and pigs would be flying backwards over Shrimphaven.

To look on the good side, the day after Miracle gave me the chop, Sergei sent me a lovely bouquet of thrusting great lilies with a deeply sympathetic and encouraging message regarding my writing situation, not to mention a rather nasty slur on Tim’s parentage and sexual prowess – or lack of it – so clearly Linny caught him at home and told him all.

It was so terribly comforting knowing he cared that I entirely forgot to ask about his visitor when his phone was fixed and he began ringing me again.

Thanks to Mel’s lessons I’d become quite used to my computer, but which pervert programmed the spellcheck facility? It took my perfectly innocent English vocabulary and tried to substitute the most peculiar – not to mention obscene – words, and it definitely had an oral fixation. It did cross my mind to wonder what a novel would be like if I accepted all its suggestions. Maybe I’d try that sometime and see what happened?