Chapter 104: Oliver's Invoice
Pippa owed the studio for her rewrite; she did not owe me for a paragraph Oliver had inserted.
At 14:15 on Tuesday, the cost schedule filled my solicitor's meeting screen in three columns.
The first covered replacement production under the Midnight at Larkspur project agreement.
The second covered my reasonable verification costs for the six-line claim, supported by the technical and legal invoices already submitted.
The third proposed £8,000 in limited compensation for unauthorised use.
Oliver's draft divided every column between himself and Pippa.
His solicitor called them shared project costs arising from a shared release.
That description ignored the responsibility chain already signed and treated production convenience as though it could allocate personal liability.
Pippa's final draft had not contained the passage.
The limited log review found no supported prior knowledge.
Oliver had copied, inserted and used the lines without asking me.
Her later work removed them after preservation.
I separated production from compensation on the screen.
Pippa remained responsible for whatever share of her rewrite and studio invoice her own project contract assigned through its ordinary accounting.
I neither forgave nor enlarged that contractual production share.
It belonged to her project, not to damages payable to me.
I removed her name from the verification-cost column.
Those fees had arisen from testing Oliver's admitted use and the access route he confirmed.
I removed her name from the £8,000 compensation line as well.
Oliver's solicitor argued that a joint release had produced the public harm.
My solicitor returned to the signed factual acknowledgement.
It named one copier, one inserter and one failure to seek permission.
It did not name Pippa as a knowing participant.
The deed could not create a second responsible person for billing convenience after the evidence had removed her from that claim.
Pippa's solicitor accepted her separate production allocation without accepting infringement compensation.
PageTurn confirmed that studio accounting and rights compensation occupied different ledgers.
The platform would not offset one against the other.
I approved Oliver's sole responsibility for £8,000 and my reasonable evidenced verification fees.
The fees would be supported by invoices, review receipts and the limited scope rather than a punitive estimate of my anger.
Oliver approved the revised allocation through his solicitor.
Pippa approved only the project-side production line relevant to her agreement.
No amount bought a licence, credit or share of my future work.
No payment gave me a percentage of their project, its trial-sales bonus or any later episode income.
The revised schedule preserved the original-source hashes and deletion certificate as references.
It did not attach the sealed episode or my unpublished page.
My solicitor entered the payment terms into the limited closing deed.
Oliver would fund the compensation and verified costs through the solicitors acting as stakeholder under a client account arrangement.
Release would follow the signed deed and payment confirmation, without being offset against unrelated amounts between us.
Pippa would pay her studio share through the ordinary project account, not through my settlement.
That division reduced both the amount and the number of people I could publicly blame for this use.
It made the remedy match the evidence instead of the emotional geometry of the three people involved.
At 14:52, the closure pack generated six attachment checks.
They covered source identification, deletion, replacement, audit scope, public correction and payment allocation.
The prevention clause barred future use of the sealed six-line source without new written permission.
The rights exclusion reserved every old pen-name and copyright dispute.
All six attachments matched their stored hashes and no unrelated old-rights file entered the closing pack.
My solicitor sent the clean deed to all three parties' signing portals.
PageTurn opened its separate confirmation field for the restored project and sealed original.
The deed was complete except for three electronic signatures and the platform confirmation.