Will JFK’s lover spill enough beans?

More than 30 years before Monica Lewinsky and President Bill Clinton had an "improper relationship" in the White House in the mid-1990s, a 19-year-old intern from another generation, Mimi Beardsley, embarked on an affair with the then president, John F Kennedy. Tall, slender and beautiful, she was on a summer break after her first year at college, working in the White House press office, when she met Kennedy and began an affair that lasted 18 months until his assassination.

After years of keeping her silence - she told neither her parents nor her children until recently - she has now started work on her memoir. The question is: will her publishers get their money's worth? Not everyone in publishing circles is holding their breath.

Random House are thought to have paid close on $1m for the memoirs of Mimi, now 66. Her secret first came out six years ago with the publication of a biography of Kennedy by Robert Dallek. It contained portions from an oral history recorded by Barbara Gamarekian, who was deputy to Kennedy's press secretary, Pierre Salinger.

Gamarekian made the recording in 1964, a year after Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas. She described a White House in which young women were considered fair game by the young president. Mimi was one of several "cute, young, attractive" interns who enjoyed a "special relationship" with Kennedy. "The thing that amazed me so," Gamarekian said, "was these two or three girls were great friends and gathered in corners and whispered and giggled. There seemed to be no jealousy between them. This was one great big happy party."

Just how happy, Random House is hoping to discover when Mimi finishes her book, Once Upon a Secret. Susan Mercandetti, executive editor at Random House, bought the rights after reading only 20 pages. "I've seen enough to know what an extraordinary heart and soul exists in this book," Ms Mercandetti said. "It's about a loss of innocence. I was just completely struck by how simple, yet how profound, it was."

But according to Mimi's agent, Mark Reiter, it will not be a tell-all memoir. "She's just not that type of person, where she's going to spill her guts about intimate stuff for the whole country to see," Reiter said. "The story has three acts to it: before the White House, during the White House, and then the really powerful part is what happens afterwards. What's the impact on your family life, your marriage, knowing that this happened to you in your early life and you have chosen to keep it a secret."

"That's all very well," said a bookseller, "but what about the sex?" ·