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made to speak to us.'
    'It's a pity more didn't. Jack and Virginia have enough problems without this.'
    The Cremornes seemed less than wholly grateful for her parting comment. They watched the nurse wheel her out and the tribunal murmuring to one another. Ellen tried not to appear too hopeful or the reverse while she gazed out of a high window at a treetop entwined with powerless coloured light bulbs. Eventually Jack Cremorne said 'Any idea how long you're likely to be? Our parking's nearly up.'
    Ellen was sure this provoked the chairman to say 'I'm afraid we'll have to defer judgment until it can be put in writing.'
    'It isn't only us that wants to hear,' Virginia Cremorne objected. 'You can see Miss Lomax is anxious.'
    'I think you'd best be seeing to your car,' the lawyer murmured.
    He conducted them out and held the door open for Ellen. Peggy had been wheeled away, but Muriel was keeping her vigil beneath the photograph of quieter times. As the Cremornes marched off with their lawyer, Ellen said 'We have to wait.'
    The words made her feel clumsy before Muriel whispered to the nurse 'What have we got to wait for?'
    'Sorry, Muriel. I meant me.'
    Muriel's whisper was even more piercing. 'Why have we got to wait for her?'
    'You haven't. I'm the one who has to wait. Not here, for them to make their minds up. They haven't time today. There are other people they have to see.'
    Ellen might have expected those to have arrived, but perhaps they were watching along the corridor. 'I'll tell you the decision when I know,' she said.
    She felt weighed down by her mass of words and Muriel's vague patience and the tardiness of the tribunal. 'I'll keep in touch,' she said and turned away, to find that they and the nurse were alone in the corridor.
    The impression of a watcher was no more than a lingering smudge on her consciousness. She hurried to the end of the corridor, but the wide stone stairs to the ground floor were deserted too. She was taking the first step down when she faltered with a hand on the chill banister. Muriel's whisper was loud enough to be heard in the committee room. 'Who was the fat girl? Did she think she knew us?'

THREE
    'Hate the title.'
    Charlotte thought she heard or otherwise sensed the faintest rumble of a train worming underneath the basement office. She looked up from the printout of Take Care to find Glen Boyd leaning over the partition around her desk. His high straight black eyebrows gave him a routinely eager expression confirmed by his bright-blue eyes, and in general his lean face seemed pared down to essentials: broad blunt nose, wide lips slightly parted for the next remark, round prominent chin sporting today's crop of stubble. Three furrows were sketched on his forehead, underlining how his short bristling hair had started an early retreat. Perhaps that came with the senior editorship of Cougar Books, Charlotte reflected as she said 'You do or I should?'
    'How about both?'
    'Too English, do you think?'
    'Hey, I've nothing against the English,' Glen said while his accent grew more nasally Maine. 'I wouldn't be here if I had.'
    'So what is it about it you don't like?'
    'Sounds like a caution manual. Caution doesn't sell our kind of books.'
    She might have asked what kind he was saying those were, but she wanted to know 'Apart from the title, what did you think?'
    'If she can give us enough of a rewrite I'd say we might take a chance on her.'
    Charlotte felt disloyal to be surprised. She had been taken aback by how childish some of the writing was, the characterisations in particular. Though she knew there was nothing more pitiless than authorship when it came to betraying any hidden immaturity of the writer – that was why she'd abandoned her own literary plans – she hadn't been ready to discover it of Ellen. 'How much are we talking about?' she said.
    'She has the idea, now she needs to make it work. As long as it's nearly the weekend, why don't I tell you more over a drink.'
    Perhaps she was too