He tucked the letter under the biscuits, mentally including it in the ‘Possibles’ pile. Before he could pick up the next letter, he heard a jingling noise. The dog had fetched his lead from the chair and was indicating that it was time for a walk.
‘All right, Noah. A bit of fresh air will do us both good.’
Although the rain had stopped for the moment, the grey clouds looked foreboding and the field was saturated. Mud built up under the soles of his Wellingtons as he splashed along the path. He had to keep stopping to scrape it off. Undeterred, the Labrador headed straight for the river and plunged in. Tom located a suitable stick and threw it for him. The game consisted of his attempting to pick up the stick, retrieved by the dog, without getting soaked as the dog shook himself. As usual, Noah won.
While he walked along the riverbank, gradually getting wetter and wetter, his mind was free to wander. This new project looked like being a breath of fresh air. And Cynthia was right. He knew he needed something to take him out of himself, away from his misery. Whether a smutty book was the answer to his problems remained to be seen.
He came to the fallen tree where they had both sat so often, watching Noah playing puppy games. He closed his eyes and saw her face again, still so clear in his memory. Not the pain-wracked gauntness of her final weeks, but her young, fresh face from the early days. His head dropped. The dark thoughts returned to fill his head once more. The dog, recognising the symptoms, realised the game was over. He came across and nuzzled Tom’s hand.
‘Thanks, Noah. You’re a pal.’
Pleased to be acknowledged, the dog shook himself again, this time at very short range. The freezing shower roused Tom and set him off again along the path.
He breathed deep and forced his mind back onto happier things. The choice of a historical period wasn’t going to be easy. As for a place, well, here in Devon was as good as any. And he knew it so very well. But the subject matter wasn’t going to be straightforward. His experience of smut was very limited.
His musings were interrupted by the arrival of a very bouncy Springer spaniel. It appeared from behind, almost taking his legs out from under him as it squeezed past on the narrow path. Wheeling round, it leapt up to greet him, catching him painfully in the lower abdomen. As he folded forwards, clutching himself, he heard a familiar voice.
‘I’m so sorry, Tom. She’s very excited today, for some reason.’ It was the lady from the house by the river. He knew the dog was called Sophie. He had been told her owner’s name but had forgotten it. She was wearing her usual shapeless waterproof jacket and a woolly hat obscured most of her head.
‘Oh, hello. Sophie took me by surprise, I’m afraid. I was miles away.’ He removed his hands from his groin and managed to stand almost upright again. ‘Here comes the rain.’ In true British tradition, it seemed sensible to turn the conversation from his bruised genitals to the weather.
‘Sophie, bad girl. Stay down. Just push her away, Tom, if she tries that again. Yes, it’s looking really grey up there now. Might be wise to head for home. You all right? You look a bit glum.’
‘All right? Yes, fine thanks. Just lost in my thoughts, I’m afraid.’
‘Cheer up. It may never happen.’ She turned away with a wave.
He kept his voice low, so she wouldn’t hear. ‘It already has.’
The other respondents to the advert all had their merits. One had clearly decided that he was a woman, the others hedged their bets. One already had a published book to her credit. Closer inspection of the title, and a quick check on the laptop, revealed it to be self-published. This was not necessarily a bad thing. At least it showed she had the will and the stamina to write 100,000 words. Over his years of fruitless attempts to find a publisher, he had also come perilously close to going it alone. Only a lingering sense of pride had stopped him. He now knew that pride is a luxury aspiring writers can ill-afford.
The Case of the Velvet Ball Gown did not immediately leap out and grab him. From the bookseller’s blurb it sounded like a fairly ordinary murder mystery. And at £13.99 in hardback he couldn’t imagine she had sold thousands. Her signature, CV and e-mail address matched. The name was Rosalind Waters, and her address was in Hammersmith, London.
Deciding on the other four did not take long. The one who assumed he was a woman sounded a bit vague. She had not bothered to enclose a CV, although she mentioned a degree in French. All she provided was her name, Penelope Grainger, and an address in Nottingham. She listed no writing credits. He decided not to allow this to colour his judgement. He had, after all, nothing but a short story and a couple of textbooks to his credit. On the other hand, she wrote clearly and correctly. No split infinitives, misplaced punctuation, or prepositions floating at the end of a sentence. He liked that. He decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.
The next was from a woman called Ariadne Anstruther.
‘Noah, have you ever met an Ariadne? I’m sure I haven’t. I suppose she abbreviates it, but how the hell do you abbreviate Ariadne? She can hardly call herself Arry? What were her parents thinking? Mind you, there was that child named after all the players in the winning world cup football team … ’
Her CV looked impressive, at least educationally. She had a first class degree in English, plus an MA in Creative Writing. She was working as a journalist in South London and wrote articles for various magazines. No book credits yet, but work in hand.
‘I like the sound of this one, Noah.’ She was given pride of place, on the top of the ‘Possibles’ pile.
The next was less impressive, at least visually. The paper was flimsy, the presentation of the letter poor, and the style rather staccato. There was little attempt at politeness. She claimed to have written a number of short stories but without any luck on the publishing front. This lack of success endeared her to him, so he added her to the pile. Her address was in Bristol, her name Maggie Perkins.
The last sounded very nice, maybe a bit too nice. She gave the names of her three ‘little ones’, along with details of a few articles she had had published. Her educational background was Oxford, no less. She wrote in a clear, open style. Her home was in Stevenage, and her name Tiffany Rossi. Whether the surname was her maiden name, or her husband’s, was not clarified. Certainly the name Tiffany didn’t sound very Italian.
In the end, he added all of the letters to the ‘Possibles’ pile. He now had to whittle his six possible co-authors down to one winner. He would need to devise a test of some kind. And he would need to decide upon a time and a place for the book. As he scratched the dog with his foot, it occurred to him that he could kill two birds with one stone: He would ask his Possibles pile as part of their test. Maybe one of them had a favourite period of history. He could then research it. A trip to the university library, a few days of study, and he would be ready to go.
His copy of Fifty Shades of Grey arrived on the Saturday. He settled down to read it that evening. It was hard going. It took him until the following Wednesday to get through it. He could only cope with short bursts, not because of the content, but the style. When he finally set it down, it left him puzzled.
He told Cynthia all about it at his next session.
‘Leaving aside the sentence construction and the punctuation, it’s nothing like as erotic as I thought it would be. It’s all relationship stuff, with a bit of sex thrown in. Well, all right, there’s more than a bit of sex, and it is a bit bizarre, but I was expecting more. I am quite disappointed.’
‘Would you have preferred more sex?’ He recognised her tactful tone. It was the same one she had used a few months earlier when enquiring, casually, if he masturbated regularly. This time he restrained himself.
‘It’s not a question of preference. This book has been hyped up as the smuttiest thing ever to hit the mainstream, and it isn’t.