I placed only one advertisement a year – in The Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook – yet I got a steady stream of manuscripts of all kinds. Not only was I good at assessing typescripts but I could fit it around the rest of my life and my own writing, so it was a terribly convenient way of surviving until I had my own bestseller.

When the postman rang I tossed the flyers aside and sprang like a hungry tigress for the door because he never rang twice. His finger barely touched the doorbell before he was sneaking off down the path again and I had to leap out regardless of how I was dressed (or undressed) to apprehend him.

This time you’d think he would have been glad to get rid of the weight, because someone had sent me the most enormous manuscript for a critique. I didn’t know Jiffy bags came in gigantic, although the cheque certainly wasn’t, because I could see at a glance that there was a lot more than the 150,000 words he’d paid me for! Besides which, I was deeply disappointed that it wasn’t a late birthday present, although really I should have been grateful for anything that helped me to pay the mortgage on my picturesque heap of loosely connected beach pebbles.

The accompanying letter didn’t bode well.

The Ramblings,

Bosson Surcoat,

Cresney

Dear Ms Devino,

I enclose a synopsis and manuscript of my thriller, Banking On It, together with the cheque you requested and a stamped addressed envelope.

I will be pleased to have your critique of the work as soon as possible, for although all my friends and family assure me that it is a fast, pacey and exciting book that they would beg to buy in the shops, the reactions of the publishers and agents to whom I have submitted it have not so far been encouraging – in fact, in some cases it does not appear that the manuscript has actually been read – so perhaps I am simply presenting the work in the wrong way?

It is topical and set in the thrilling world of international accounting, which I am well qualified to describe, but it also has ecological implications that give it an extra dimension, and I know you will be swept away by the scale of the epic story as it unfolds. Several of my friends have said that they are so amazed by the breadth of it that they simply don’t know how to describe it.

I expect you have male readers working for your agency, who will be more suited to assessing a work of this type, since it is definitely a man’s novel.

I look forward to your prompt response.

Yours sincerely,

Harold Snaith, ACA

It didn’t exactly sound a laugh a minute. I read the letter out to Sergei when he phoned later to tell me about some minor ailment that was troubling him, and he was quite indignant.