Retreat or treat? When five writers arrived in Bath last month, we didn’t really know how it would pan out. We intended to work, but it was the first time we’d seen each other since meeting at the Romantic Novelists’ Association conference fifteen months earlier, so would there be too much gossiping going on? Or even a frosty silence as we realised we didn’t actually like each other that much after all.

We certainly started being very polite. Cassandra Grafton (no stranger to Bath with her Austen-esque novels) found an enormous Georgian house we could rent from Bath Boutique Stays and there was quite a bit of ‘after you – no, after you’ as we chose our bedrooms.

It soon became clear that our centre of operations would be the kitchen with its windows either end and huge table. We had no plans to cook, but Kitty Wilson and I had raided M&S on the way (she is one serious snack shopper) and what with our booty and all the wine, the fridge was filled to bursting point. But did we open a bottle straight away? No – we made a nice cup of tea.

So the first myth was busted open – we were not destined to spend our three nights drinking ourselves into a stupor. A drink with dinner (we tried a variety of local restaurants, culminating at the amazing Aqua) then another one or two afterwards was about our limit and while the vodka bottle was hit pretty hard (you know who you are, ladies), the gin went almost untouched and only two half bottles of Prosecco from our stash were consumed.

We did drink on the second morning though as we celebrated the launch of Kitty’s second book. Champagne and cake well before the sun was anywhere near the yard arm, flowers smuggled into the house and hidden the previous day, and a gift from us all. Of course, before we could touch any of it we had to stage a photo or two for social media. And then spend a great deal of time sharing them to all our followers.

Second myth – we had no real intention of doing any work. Wrong again. Susanna Bavin wrote more twenty pages in longhand towards the trilogy of sagas she’s working on. I completed the structural edit of the second book of my Sapere deal. Kirsten Hesketh was busy reworking the draft of her second novel while Kitty focussed on guest posts for her blog tour (not to mention keeping up her daily word count) and Cassandra worked her way through her ‘to do’ list following the announcement of her contract with Canelo.

But more than anything we supported each other in ways small and large. I helped Kitty with her guest blogs (I’ve done so many of them) and she and Susanna critiqued the outline I’d prepared for Sapere. Kirsten’s agent had started to send her manuscript to publishers and had received a few initial rejections – and there always are rejections – but that doesn’t mean they hurt any the less. I like to think we were all there for her.

The two days and three nights flew past, mainly because we were in the company of other writers. It’s a profession where you have no colleagues, no daily water cooler moments and just to be around each other and chat authorly things was utter bliss. Noone understands writers like other writers – the highs, and the lows, and the mundane bits in between.

We left Bath on the Friday morning with the firm resolve to do it again. But something else had happened along the way; bonds had been formed and friendships deepened. We’d become, as Kitty put it, sister scribes.