And as if that wasn’t enough, several of the sexier paragraphs had been totally rewritten in the style of Tiger Tim, a novelist manqué, and not to their improvement either.

So I just made the minor sensible changes they asked for and then phoned Tim (after a battle with Jinni) and told him straight out that if he rewrote any part of the book I would demand that my name be taken off it and then tell the press, with whom I was very well in just then, exactly why he was doing this to me!

Tim backed down right away, as you would if faced with a tigress guarding her cub – and believe you me, no novelist likes to have anyone else rewrite their words, let alone their ex-husband! He said he’d just thought the changes an improvement, but he wouldn’t insist on them, and he was glad to see I’d finally been given some publicity after all this time.

Then he suddenly said he had to go, and I could hear poor Jinni bleating in the background so it looked like she was up for sacrificial goat.

Flown by a triumphant adrenaline surge, I phoned Miracle, who was ‘too busy to come to the phone’ according to Chrissy, so I outlined to her what I’d done, and she said, ‘Go, girl!’ in her warm and enthusiastically American way, and I nearly asked her what the market for religious poetry was like in her native milieu and then thought it would just muddy the situation.

NOVELTINA LITERARY AND CRITICAL AGENCY

Mudlark Cottage, The Harbour, Shrimphaven

Dear Angie Heartsease,

No, it doesn’t surprise me in the least that fairies guided you to choose my agency out of all the others, because one of my closest friends will not now perform any action, no matter how everyday, without a protracted if silent negotiation with her guardian angels.

However, I am afraid your little friends were wrong on one point: I still have to charge you the full amount for reading and assessing your manuscript, even though you are a single mother eking out a living selling fairy-inspired craft items at a tented encampment in mid-Wales, because this is how I make my living.

There is another possibility, though, since the brochure of craftwork made by your commune that you included was most interesting, especially page three: the hand-beaded, handkerchief-hemmed Midsummer Night’s Dream gossamer skirt in Titania Blue, should you happen to have one in size eight, would be perfectly acceptable payment for my services, and I would not require the matching wings.

Let me know if we can come to some arrangement.

Yours sincerely,

Tina Devino