Actually, maybe she wouldn’t even have to do that…

‘Perhaps,’ she suggested, ‘younger readers would be put off by the title? Maybe I should just write as Gabriella March?’

Please, please, please…

The other woman considered her suggestion for all of ten seconds before she shook her head. ‘Lady Gabriella has a touch of class.’ Then, ‘Is it your husband’s title, or a courtesy one?’

‘A courtesy one,’ she said, seizing on this. If it was just a courtesy title, it wouldn’t mean anything. Except that Mrs Cochrane was looking at her as if she expected more, and Ellie suddenly had the feeling that she’d just made a huge mistake, somehow given the wrong answer. But it was too late now, and having made the mental leap from ‘no way can I do this’ to ‘what’s the problem?’ she tuned out the voice of sanity.

Chances like this were once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, and no one knew better than she did that they had to be grabbed with both hands.

She’d worry about the children and the household management later. There were books. The internet…

As for her ‘husband’…

For a moment Ellie was assailed by such an ache of loneliness, loss. How could she do this…? Pretend…

‘Well, to business,’ Mrs Cochrane said, when it was clear she wasn’t going to add anything on the subject of her ‘title’, and by the time she’d explained the technicalities of a monthly column, the needs of word count, copy dates, etc, Ellie had recovered.

‘We’d like you to send two or three illustrations with each month’s column. Can you manage that?’

Illustrations were the least of her problems. She drew as she breathed-always had done-without even thinking about it.

‘We may not use them all, but it will give the art director a choice. Those will be paid for separately, of course.’

They would?