NOVELTINA LITERARY AND CRITICAL AGENCY

Mudlark Cottage, The Harbour, Shrimphaven

Dear Glenda,

Thank you for your letter warning me that Neville was on his way down, mania unabated.

Unfortunately it came just too late and he has had a regrettable contretemps with Sergei Popov, who had arrived at my cottage to prepare to open the Shrimphaven Annual Festival of Culture, and thus not only read the note your husband pushed through the letterbox, but caught him lurking behind the seawall with his binoculars.

It was rash of Neville to call him a nancy-boy, because although Sergei might look a trifle languid and effete, he is actually amazingly strong and athletic due to still doing hours of ballet exercises and his own special yoga routines every day, and I’m sure he took Neville totally by surprise.

But hopefully the bruising will soon go down and no permanent damage to that eye has been incurred. I am assured that the water in the harbour, although cold, is not terribly polluted by anything particularly toxic. Fortunately it was too early for the little fracas to catch much attention, and someone walked down from the lifeboat house and dragged him out with one of those long hooked things and we left them to it because we had to leave for the town hall.

Sergei’s hand was a little bruised, but such is the perverse way of men that he seemed to actually enjoy the incident, and so was inclined to be in a happy and expansive mood for the rest of the day, so something good came of it, and with any luck this will be the absolute end of your husband’s interest in me and all our lives will go back to normal!

Yours sincerely,

Tina Devino

Linny told me the girl Nathan brought to dinner was a young, skinny blonde with big eyes and a little pointed chin.

‘Sounds just like the photograph I saw in his study,’ I said gloomily. ‘Did they seem friendly?’

‘She certainly looked as though she wanted to be,’ Linny said. ‘She was all over him like a wet mist.’

So we decided she must be the ex-fiancée, and it looked like she’d realized she’d made a mistake and had come to get him back, and who wouldn’t?

I said, ‘What about Nathan?’ Linny said he looked a bit hounded, but not too put out, since the girl was very pretty if you liked that bug-eyed sort of look, and is some sort of model. I knew I’d seen her in catalogues, modelling the sort of bras that attempt to make something of nothing, which thank God neither Linny nor I have ever needed.