Not another nail bar, beauty salon or whatever it was. Well I for one would not be setting foot in La Venue. I would be much too embarrassed for them to see my gardening hands. There was that advert when I was a teenager ‘Whatever you do, your hands show too’ I often think of that when I’m looking at my nails, it was an ad for nail polish.  My seaside hair was not seen in glossy advertisements either. I tried to peer into the window without being noticed, to see what they were actually doing and wondered if any of the girls had been trafficked into the country as slave labour. They all looked very glamorous and confident, hardly downtrodden. The interior looked very up market, but there was no sign of prices. Perhaps if you needed to ask, you could not afford it.

When I went to meet Becky for coffee I picked up one of the local papers left out for customer enjoyment. Low and behold, on the front page was a glamourous lady posing by the door of La Venue. Below was a short paragraph revealing her as the manageress with an introduction to her business.

…and has since decided to specialise in more ‘high end’ treatments. She said: “The landscape of aesthetic treatments is currently undergoing a revolutionary transformation where cutting edge technology meets personalised care to create unprecedented opportunities for enhancement and rejuvenation. The field is evolving and now offers more precise, natural and accessible solutions than ever before and we wanted to bring this to …”

I could not be bothered to read more, what on earth was she talking about? I passed the paper to Becky.

‘Nowhere does it say how much, if I win the lottery I’ll treat you.’

I thought no more about it as I went home to see if Amazon had delivered the author copies of my new book Grand Designs.

YES, I stroked the cover and silken pages lovingly, never had a book felt and looked so good.

Grand Designs by Hepsibah Hampton

I turned to the back cover.

It is 1689 and Queen Mary 11 and her husband William of Orange are invited to jointly reign on the English throne. Like any young couple they want to make lots of changes to their new home, Hampton Court and invite Sir Christopher Wren to do some grand designs. The story of their sadly short reign is seen through the eyes of the head gardener and a kitchen maid.

Gardeners, food enthusiasts and romantics will thrill to this tale of two very different love stories. William and Mary’s will end with her tragic death from smallpox in 1694, aged only 32. But life in the privy garden goes on…

Hepsi could not wait to tell Rebecca, who was also her agent. Rebecca was sure Hepsibah would fill the gap left by Hillary Mantel. Hepsi tended to think of herself more as Hillary Mantel lite. She had not done quite as much research into her historic novel, relying on student memories of being a room attendant at the palace, dressed in historic costume and chatting to visitors. She had also visited several times to read the room descriptions and take photos of the huge kitchen. As lots of readers were interested in gardening and food she figured they would warm to the head gardener and the kitchen maid. As she went to pick up her phone, Rebecca called her.

‘Do you want the good news or the brilliant news first?’

I told her the books had arrived  and they were fine, what better news could I expect.

‘I won a competition for a free visit to La Venue.’

‘Rather you than me.’

‘But it will be you because the brilliant news is I have booked you a place at the Hay Festival and we need to smarten you up a bit.’

‘You must be joking, I’m not famous or posh enough.’

‘Someone taken ill, I managed to get you in tomorrow. Visit La Venue this afternoon, then we drive down early in the morning.’

I could not believe any of this. Rebecca had never been an agent before and I was her only author. I tried to call her bluff.

 ‘Okay, I’ll go, but  as myself, a sort of intellectual image.’

‘More like just come in from the garden look.’

‘Nobody will see me in the unlikely event my bit is on Radio 4.’

‘The audience will.’

Relaxing in the reclining chair for dermaplaning I felt strangely calm, perhaps that was the inner cleansing health drink they had given me. I began to rehearse what I might say when I was interviewed, or was I expected to give a talk?

The afternoon passed quickly as I was dunked into warm salt baths, had lovely tingling things applied to my lips and cheeks and then lay on my stomach for some enhancements, whatever that meant.

I was trying to look in a mirror, but the eye brightener had left everything a bit fuzzy and I was advised to wear an eye mask for the next few days.

I thought Rebecca sounded a bit worried, but as she drove me to her house she sounded brighter and said an eye mask would add to my mystery and promised to sit on the stage with me. I noticed her sofa was much more comfortable to sit on than I remembered and she said that was the enhancements.

It was a great success, I think. At home I settled to listen to our part on BBC Sounds.  I couldn’t recall what I had talked about, but there was a definite buzz coming from the audience, before I even said a word. Those two chaps who are always on intelligent programmes on Radio 4 were introducing my interview .

‘…certainly not what we or the audience were expecting, less polite commentators might suggest she looked more like a Celebrity; a good deal of body work done and her face no stranger to Botox?’

‘But her revelations about late seventeenth century life at Hampton Court certainly entertained the audience, even if they had no idea what that had to do with her new novel set in the Great Depression.’

By this time I was beginning to come out of the haze that had enveloped me since my visit to La Venue.

‘Rebecca, I don’t understand what they are saying.’

‘Ah… well, at least you got some publicity, but it turns out they thought they had booked the other author called Hepsibah Hampton, some best selling intellectual.’