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close to the book or its author, and her inability to see how to improve it was why she'd begun to feel shut in. 'I'm free,' she said.
    'I'll see you at the elevator in five. Here's a title for you in the meantime. Bad Old Things .'
    The long-suffering residents of the Pantaloon Rest Home could hardly be described as villainous, even if maltreatment eventually provoked them to wish their infirmities on their tormentors so passionately that their shared imagination did the rest. Charlotte boxed the stack of pages in the file on which Ellen had painstakingly inked the title and her name, and then she stuffed another typescript into her shoulder bag before tidying her laden desk.
    Glen was summoning a lift in the corridor narrowed by lockers. A threesome of their colleagues from the erotica imprint Ram followed him and Charlotte into the windowless grey cage and stood in a corner. 'Beats me,' Fiona was saying to Tasha and Niki, who appeared to share her position. As the doors lumbered shut Charlotte thought for an instant that someone else had slipped between them, but only a shadow could have been so thin. She could think a shadow had dimmed the indirect lighting, which was already meagre enough.
    On the ground floor various Cheetah personnel – editors from Koala and Antelope and Little Deers – were spilling out of the other lift. Beyond the lobby New Oxford Street was crowded too. The side street along which Glen turned beneath a curved blue strip of August sky was deserted, but she'd had little chance to relish any spaciousness when he stopped short of Charing Cross Road. 'Here's my favourite,' he said.
    Presumably he wasn't addressing the doorman outside Shelves, who inspected her bag and Glen's briefcase before Glen led the way to the cellar. The wine bar earned its name at once, constricting the steep staircase with bookshelves full of dilapidated volumes. At least the bar was relatively roomy, though it smelled of the musty volumes on the shelves that covered practically the whole of the walls up to the bare brick ceiling. Three businessmen with loosened ties were taking peanuts with their white wine at the bar. A balding man whose grey hair was as dishevelled as the rest of him was inspecting the books with such dissatisfaction that Charlotte guessed he was a bookseller. 'Shall we get a bottle of red?' Glen suggested.
    'If you'll be drinking more than half.'
    'However it works out,' he said and, once they were ensconced at a corner table, gently fended off the share of the price she tried to hand him.
    'That's fine, Glen. That's even finer. You have some.' When he moved the bottle of Argentinean Malbec to his own glass Charlotte said 'Why is here your favourite?'
    'I like dreaming how it used to be. You could publish anything that took your fancy and if it tanked, nobody would give you too much of a hard time. I think I'd do a better job than some of those guys, mind you. No wonder all their picks are buried down here, books you never heard of by writers nobody remembers, and I'll bet most of them weren't even known while they were alive.'
    This seemed to intensify the smell of stale books, and Charlotte couldn't help reflecting that their authors must be even dustier – indeed, little more than the substance. She felt stifled enough to admit 'I've a confession to make.'
    'Tell me anything you like.'
    'It's just that Ellen Lomax – we're related.'
    'I don't know any rule at Cheetah saying people can't be too close.' Glen waited for the unkempt bookseller to shuffle to a further bookshelf and said 'I'd say she's less exceptional than you, whatever she is to you.'
    'Cousin,' Charlotte said and made her smile quick.
    'It could work to our advantage,' Glen said, holding up his glass until she raised hers. 'You can say whatever she needs to hear.'
    'Anything in particular?'
    'Hey, no call to get protective. She wants to be published or she wouldn't have sent us the book.' He replenished the glasses, though Charlotte had