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Nicola hissed.
    As she said it Jane felt an unexpected sense of relief. Nicola hated Tom. Good.
    ‘Please tell me you're not one of his,’ said Nicola.
    ‘Uh, one of—? Oh, I see. Well yes, I am—as you say—one of his,’ said Jane, adding an apologetic shrug since Nicola's sombre expression seemed to demand one. ‘Tom's going to publish me.’
    Nicola took her hand and patted it consolingly. ‘I'm so sorry.’ She pursed her lips in an expression of graveside condolence, bowed her head and departed.
    Jane watched her slip out, the triangle of her pinaforedress swinging like a tolling church bell, and felt herself smile inwardly; whatever Nicola's experience of working with Tom had been, it bore little resemblance to her own.
    ‘Jane?’ he called from the office. ‘Is that you?’
    She never tired of hearing him say her name. She floated inside on a cloud of happiness ready to embark on the next leg of their voyage of collaboration and constructive criticism, of intellectual discussion and high-minded debate.
    ‘Your notes,’ Jane spluttered. ‘Your notes are burning cigarettes stubbed out on the bare arm of my creativity.’ She stepped away from his desk only to return immediately. ‘Oh, and there is no such thing as
constructive
criticism. The phrase reeks of foul-tasting medicine forced down gagging throats “for your own good”. Constructive criticism is a fallacy; weasel words designed to lure innocent writers like me into an ambush.
This chapter is too long. There's too much set-up. This plotline doesn't pay off
. Uh, perhaps that's because you cut the set-up?
This character is underwritten. Show, don't tell! This chapter is still too long. I like this scene, this is a great scene—it must be cut
.’ She stood before him, her face flushed, her breath shallow and rapid.
    ‘Are you quite finished?’ Tom responded with irritating calm.
    She brushed her fringe from her eyes and sniffed. ‘Yes.’
    ‘Good, then we shall continue.’
    Two months into the edit and Jane had lost all sense of perspective. Was he a brilliant editor or, despite his earlier disavowal, simply a sadist who enjoyed torturing novelists? Currently, she was leaning towards the latter. She half suspected that were she to pull at the antiquarian volume of
Frankenstein
squatting atop his bookcase a secret door would swing open to reveal a shadowy chamber and the gaunt, moaning figures of his other novelists, hanging from bloodstained bulldog clips, notes on their last drafts carved into their skin with his annoying and ubiquitous little red pen. It pained her to admit it, but Nicola Ball's expression of pity had been prophetic.
    She occupied her usual spot, squirming in the low chair opposite his desk. They sat in silence as he went through her latest revisions, the only sounds the dismissive flick of manuscript pages and the scratch of that damn pen. She watched as he adjusted the bust of Napoleon, turning it precisely one inch clockwise, then two inches anti-clockwise. He did this with some regularity, but it was only latterly she'd realised that the tic inevitably preceded his delighted unearthing of a particularly egregious flaw in her manuscript.
    ‘This makes no sense at all,’ he muttered on cue, striking out a paragraph with a flurry of red slashes.
    ‘What are you cutting now?’ Sometime on Thursday she had given up any attempt to hide her irritation.
    He looked up and she was sure that his smug, infuriating face evinced surprise at her presence.
Why are you even here?
it said.
What could you possibly have to contribute to this process? You are merely the writer
. Jane struggled out of her chair—she'd meant to leap up for added effect, but her prone position made it tricky.
    ‘I've changed my mind,’ she said, reaching across the desk for her manuscript. ‘I don't want to be published. By you. Thank you very much.’
    She had no practical reason for retrieving the manuscript; if she'd really meant what she said she