Oh! The reporter! She'd nearly forgotten that she'd asked the publishing house to send him a copy, too, though how she could have forgotten she wasn't quite sure. She'd spent so long puzzling over his letter before she'd eventually written back. His handwriting had seemed familiar, and she didn't want to give hers away if he was someone she'd written to in another capacity. She had eventually reasoned that lots of people had similar handwriting and she was probably just being ridiculous, or paranoid; life wasn't like something out of a thriller novel, and this reporter was probably no one. So she'd written back, but kept the letter brief, just in case. What was his name? Something vaguely gaelic, she thought, or Irish. He certainly didn't look Irish — no red hair. (Dark hair — darker than she'd expected? a small voice inside her thought, but she pushed it down — now she was really being ridiculous).

"I think the recommendation of someone who isn't an academic is worth even more, when it's being marketed as a book," Jules pointed out, hesitant to end the conversation though she couldn't have said exactly why (well, she could have said, but was not at the point of admitting it yet even to herself). "It could have been a series of journal articles just as easily, but I expect Forfang was trying to reach a wider audience."