NOVELTINA LITERARY AND CRITICAL AGENCY

Mudlark Cottage, The Harbour, Shrimphaven

Dear Glenda Strudwick,

Thank you for your letter. I welcome the opportunity to assure you I have not encouraged your husband’s interest in me at all, and indeed once I began to see which way the wind was blowing did my best to put him off.

Yes, it is distressing for you that he has turned his study into a shrine to Tina Devino – it’s pretty distressing to me, too, actually – but hopefully it is just a passing phase. Yes, you are quite right – a woman in a relationship with Sergei Popov is not at all likely to be interested in your husband, and I’m not saying Neville isn’t young-looking and attractive for his age, but he is all yours and you are quite welcome to him.

Now that I have refused to meet him and also declined reading his rewritten novel, I’m hoping that will be the end of the matter and his interest in me will quickly wane. If I were you, next time he goes off to visit his friend George I would make over his study as your own, with lots of frilly flowery materials and photos of fit older men on the walls. (I include one of Sergei Popov in his role as Romeo to start you off.)

With all best wishes for a resumption of your happy marriage.

Yours sincerely,

Tina Devino

Lunch with Ruperta at Garibaldi’s, just like old times, and she said frankly she’d always thought I would be a mega success one day, due to my deeply Lawrentian symbolism and the way I managed to permeate my entire novels with a heady scent of sexuality without any blow-by-blow descriptions; not to mention roping in the readers who thought the books were about flowers, and it was about to happen for me, and she wanted my new book for her list at Crimp & Letchworth.

‘That’s fine by me, Ruperta,’ I said, ‘because I no longer feel a sense of loyalty to Salubrious since they were only too willing to dump me. Besides, I would love to have you as my editor again.’

Then I told her all about The Orchid Huntress, and said Nathan Cedar, my new agent, would send the manuscript to her as soon as he had it.

It turned out that she knew Nathan and said wasn’t he gorgeous. Then she told me he’d nearly been married three times, but something always seemed to go wrong at the last minute and she thought it was because although he was clearly Mr Right, his ex-fiancées had all without fail run off with Mr Totally Wrong But More Exciting.

‘His last fiancée was the daughter of old family friends and he’d known her for ever, so we really thought it would happen that time. I’d even bought a hat – one of those feather fascinators,’ Ruperta said regretfully.