Rewrite

The manuscript was eleven months late and the publisher had run out of patience. They had also, apparently, run out of editors, because the one they sent to Beatriz's flat was Simon.

He stood on the doorstep with a red pen behind his ear, exactly as he had when they lived together, five years ago.

'They said you needed help,' he said.

'They lied,' she said, and let him in.

They worked at her kitchen table for a fortnight. He was as infuriating as ever, scribbling in margins, cutting her favourite sentences, asking questions she did not want to answer. She was as stubborn as ever. They argued about commas until midnight and ate takeaway noodles out of the cartons.

But he understood the book. He always had. In the third chapter, a scene between two former lovers who meet again, he wrote a single line in the margin: They both know. Let them say it.

She stared at that note for a long time.

'Is this about the book?' she asked.

Simon took off his glasses. 'Partly.'

The manuscript went in a week later, finished and the best thing she had ever written. The night they sent it, they sat on her balcony, exhausted, and she leaned her head on his shoulder.

'Chapter twelve,' she said. 'They should kiss there. Not chapter fifteen.'

'I agree,' he said, and did.

They spent the night revising the ending of a different story altogether. It needed no cuts.