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be provoked. I'm sorry I spoke."
    "All the same," David said, "you did."
    "I don't need you to tell me, David." When everyone continued watching her Andrea said "Unless there's a significant increase in sales very soon we may have to look at rationalising the staff."
    "Rationing, you mean," Bill said and had to find a grin.
    As Emily's face grew pinker Helen said "Who will?"
    "I hope we feel we're all part of the firm," Andrea said. "I hope we'd want to do everything we can for it, even if that means making sacrifices,"
    "Have you thought which one you're going to make?"
    David thought of saying that, but it was Bill who did. "Let's hope it won't be necessary," Andrea told him. "I asked you all to think of ways we can promote ourselves."
    "When did you ask that?" David wondered. "I've forgotten if you did."
    "Who's in charge here, David? Here's a hint. It isn't you."
    The silence felt like suffocation until Emily whispered "You don't need to let her talk to you like that, David."
    "I don't suppose she would," Helen said not much louder, "if you hadn't been together."
    "I'm staying out of it if you don't mind, Dave," Bill muttered. "Too many ladies."
    "I hope you're all discussing how to improve things," Andrea said.
    David was assailed by a thought more vicious than he would have liked to think he had in him. Not least in a bid to suppress it he said "How about you? Any ideas?"
    "I'm asking nothing of the rest of you that I don't expect of myself." She gave this a moment for appreciation before saying "When I've printed out the offers some of you can distribute them on the street. Now that's enough of me, and let's hear from someone else."
    David mimed pondering, only to find that he'd driven every thought out of his head. He gazed at the brochures in the racks, but their sunny images seemed too remote from him. He glanced towards the window in case the posters inspired him, even if he might as well have been trying to read them in a mirror, and saw someone watching him. As soon as their eyes met the man dodged along the pavement and came into the shop to thrust his large blunt wide-featured face at David. "Mr Botham," he said. "Frank Cubbins. All right."
    Once David grasped what the last phrase had actually been he recognised the man. Cubbins had warned the speaker at the writers' group that his audience was taking notes. "Can I send you somewhere, Mr Cubbins?" David found he hoped.
    "You never said this was your day job." Before David could judge what kind of criticism this was Cubbins said "You know what I told you."
    "You needn't worry about me. As I said—"
    "You let everybody know your title and now someone's used it online."
    "I expect it was there already, but it doesn't matter. I won't be writing anything at all."
    "You're a writer, are you, Mr Cubbins?" Emily said. "What do you think of our David?"
    "If Len says he's the gear that's good enough for me."
    "There you are, David," Helen said.
    Surely she was being as ironic as he wanted her to be, and he trusted Bill was joking when he said "They'll know more about it than us." He wasn't going to be forced to articulate ideas he would rather not have. "Thanks for thinking of me, Mr Cubbins," he said, "but you won't be hearing from me, I'm afraid. Some people just oughtn't to write."
    Did Cubbins wonder if this was aimed at him? He gave David a suspicious look before leaving the shop. "You need to decide which job you're doing while you're here, David," Andrea warned him.
    "Didn't you hear what I said? I'm no writer and I don't intend to be. What have I got to write about? Can you imagine anybody wanting to read about someone like me and my life? I've got no story to tell. If everybody has a book in them, some of them ought to stay there. Mine certainly should, except there's no book. I'm just what everyone sees, and who's going to be interested in that? If my friends and the people I'm closer to are interested that's enough for me, more than enough."
    "Sounds like