Anyway, after we had sorted that out, she asked me what the problem was, and after I had wittered on about various other distractions in my life, I started to talk about the plot and why I didn’t think it was working, which was the first time I’d really articulated what was wrong with it.  It was incredibly helpful to talk it through with someone who understands how plots work and how far you can go with challenging the conventions, so I was newly inspired when I put the phone down at last and went straight back to rewrite Chapter 1.

It begins with the hero, Gib, and a friend of his sitting halfway up a mountain, and sets the situation for the bet that is the crux of the whole plot.  I was determined to have them climbing, but as my experience of this particular sport is limited to weeping with fear when abseiling down a tiny rock face in the Yorkshire Dales once, I was forced to ring the very friends who had unpeeled my arms from around their necks and pushed me bodily over the edge telling me that I would love it when I got to the bottom (how wrong they were) and ask for their help in researching the scene.  All I wanted really was to be able toss in a bit of background detail to add some flavour to the scene – I had the word ‘crampon’ in my head but wasn’t sure quite how to use it – but you know what men are like: I was immediately submerged in a welter of detail, taking me step by step up a mountain.  I had to decide whether they were on snow or ice or rock, and how high they were, and how long they’d been climbing because obviously that would affect whether they were taking their jackets off or putting them on … I was left with a page of scribbled notes about pitches, belaying and carabiners, very little of which, I suspect, will appear in the book.  Still, if any keen mountaineers ever read it (always supposing I ever finish it!) let’s hope they’ll be able to tell that I’ve done my research!

OK, back to Chapter 5.  Let’s hope that I will have got a bit further by the beginning of June …