My bittersweet publisher

A few weeks back, Tom the publisher asked me what my favourite word was. I replied something like, "Sumptuous" - and then, naturally, asked him the same question.

"I don't know why," he said. "But I just love the word, "bitter-sweet"."

It's an all right word, I suppose. Definitely a bit cheesey, a bit flowery.

Though most definitely not a word I have ever used. EVER.

I shrugged my shoulders and thought no more of it.

Until last night.

Last night, I was just deciding which reading to give at the Havering book fest, and I was going through The Well-Tempered Clavier in detail for the first time - and there it was: "Bittersweet memories".

Weird. I couldn't remember writing that.

I studied the text more carefully - and there it was again. And again. Bitter-sweet love. Bitter-sweet relationship.

It gradually dawned on my that somebody had been monkeying with the final draft.

I could feel my gorge beginning to rise.

Finally, finally, I got to the end of the book - and breathed a sigh of relief that at least Tom the publisher had had the decency not to tinker with the last page.

And then I turned the book over and read the back-page blurb.

Its final paragraph?

"Twenty-five years on, Kim recalls that heady summer and how their fledgling relationship was so brutally snuffed out - finished off by his enemies, by the constraints of Eton, and by his own withering jealousy. The Well-Tempered Clavier is the bittersweet story of a life-changing love."

GAAAAAAAAH!