I don’t know why there were two rival groups of romantic novelists. The reason for the schism went back to some argument lost in the mists of time, when apparently there had been such a heated discussion that it was practically drawn fountain pens at dawn and one faction flounced off to start up their own association, which I hadn’t realized until after I’d joined the SFWWR. Although we often attended the same literary events it could be a bit West Side Story sometimes, because we didn’t actually mix but eyed each other over our wine glasses from opposite ends of the room, while trying to guess whose party dress came from M&S and who had gone down the vintage chic route (usually me).

Anyway, I arrived at the SFWWR meeting to find a lot more men there than usual, most of them looking a little weird, so I said to Freya Rample that perhaps romance was in the air, and were they all spouses and significant others?

She said no, they’d had a sudden influx of male members due to amending the constitution at the last AGM so that Rule 14 now read: ‘All men applying to become members shall, if qualified for acceptance (see Rule 13 of the Constitution of the SFWWR), henceforth be honorary women for the purposes of membership.’

At this point I’m afraid that schoolgirl giggles got the better of me, and every time dear Freya’s puzzled and slightly enquiring gaze rested on me during the ensuing meeting they broke out again. Eventually I just had to leave early and go home before the stewed coffee and rich mixed biscuits.

So I never actually got to talk to any of the honorary hermaphrodites, but they were probably mobbed at the end for their novelty value anyway, so I wouldn’t have got anywhere near them: several of the female members were much bigger than I am.

Still, it gave me a future pleasure to look forward to.

Truth is stranger than fiction.

Nine

Insalubrious

Dear Tony,

No, I don’t think there is any market for a book about the Devino family history, even if you threw in bogus Mafia connections and the Ice-cream Wars of the early years.

You are really getting into this family research thing, aren’t you? Let me know if you find anything juicy as I might get some publicity out of it. And you could write the book just for yourself (and the family) to read, couldn’t you?

Anyway, I hope you get this before you fly off to Italy on a pilgrimage to the village of our forefathers, from which our family was so brutally torn by poverty and expediency, as you rather graphically put it, because I distinctly remember Granny telling me once that it had been shrugged off the mountainside by nature years ago.

With love to all the family,

Tina