I arrive early at the publishers’ office, which is a whole tower block on the Euston Road, so I go and have a coffee in the EAT restaurant nearby, where I eavesdrop on lunching editors, talking about authors. It feels like I am going on a blind date.

I manage to find the right floor of the tower block after having to ask for help to get into the lifts – the system seems to be designed to confuse nervous writers.

My one hour meeting with the publishers (the editor who loves CUCKOO and her boss) goes into two hours. We get on very well, we have people in common, and they ask not only about my next novel, but the one after that. I come away feeling very positive and call husband, who is in Tokyo, to tell him how well it all went. He is a bit dismayed, because he had promised everyone in the bar he was in (it was late at night for him) that he would buy a bottle of champagne if it was good news. That was before he found out how much they charge for champers in Japan.

‘I think they might be interested in three books,’ I whisper as I debrief to Simon.

‘Wow,’ is his reply.