I’ll say one thing: those heady days of hedge-hopping, poetry slams and general drunken buffoonery seemed like centuries ago.

The two of us were, pretty much, abandoned in the middle of nowhere. With everything we owned in a single suitcase. No cause for alarm.

Sunday, Sunday, the perfect lazy day.

I knew exactly what Euphemia Flitter wanted me to write, and I didn’t want to write it. Not in the slightest.

Another one of those short silences passed, although, this time, it didn’t feel quite so companionable.

From the moment the owl arrived, I typed like a woman possessed.

They say that the meek shall inherit the earth. If anything, Scorpius is a walking contradiction to this statement.

It was the conversational equivalent of a runaway double decker bus travelling at full speed down a very, very steep hill, in the sense that it came out of nowhere and knocked me a little bit senseless.

‘I just want a job where I don’t have to write zombie smut,’ I said. ‘You know, maybe something with a desk. And a kettle in the office. And a lot of juicy gossiping about colleagues. A water-cooler to gossip by. Christmas parties. A stationery cupboard. Biscuits.’

You know the zombie smut is probably getting to you when you start talking to your pet cat.

First and foremost, a writer is a liar.