Chapter 1

      ‘See you later.’ I dropped a quick kiss on Josh’s lips and we exchanged a knowing smile. He pulled me towards him and went back for a second lingering kiss, his hands finding their way inside my coat to slide down my bottom and then start inching up my dress.

      ‘Sure you don’t want to stay a bit longer?’ His voice held a note of husky suggestion.

      ‘No. I can’t. You’re going to be late, and,’ I glanced over my shoulder, ‘Dan might walk in at any second.’ His flatmate had the unerring ability of a Labrador sniffing a crotch to interrupt at precisely the wrong moment. My flatmate, Connie, had much greater diplomacy; in fact she had social skills.

      He let go of me and picked up his cereal bowl, leaning against the kitchen counter, lazily eating as if he had all the time in the world.

      ‘See you later.’ He winked.

      I picked up my laptop case and closed the front door of his, far nicer than mine, flat, and hurried down the road to the tube station mentally reviewing all that I needed to get done that day.

      After two years of seamless travel to work, albeit sweaty, stuffy and crowded with the regular frustration of delays and hold ups, I missed my stop. The first time ever. This travel hiccough should have registered. In London, you have to be on the ball all the time. Checking your emails, phone messages, social media threads, it was endless. I missed my stop, simply because I was too absorbed in thinking what a load of bollocks as I read an article on some latest lifestyle fad over someone’s shoulder. Hygge. My flat mate Connie had been muttering about it the other night, waving some book about and lighting candles left right and centre in a woeful attempt to make our dismal flat homelier. As far I was concerned a couple of candles were never going to compensate for our landlord’s hideous taste and before I knew it the doors had closed on Oxford Circus.

      Having to get off at the next stop and go back down the line didn’t make me late, only later than usual. I’m always at work super-early. Showing my commitment. How serious I am about my job. Not that I mind or I’m trying to score brownie-points, well maybe just a few. I just can’t wait to get there. Oh, God that sounds real eager, arse-licker, beaver. It’s not like that at all. I love my job, as a public relations Account Director. I work for one of the top PR agencies in London. I say I love my job, I do most of the time. The office politics and promotion manoeuvring I could do without and the pay could be an awful lot better. But hopefully that was about to change, I was overdue a long-promised promotion. Then I’d be earning a bit more and I could afford to move to somewhere where there isn’t a ten-inch Mohican fringe of blue mould growing down the living room wall.

      Tube stop fiasco aside, there was time to treat myself to a Butterscotch Brulée Latte and it was only when I was in the queue that I saw a text from my boss, Megan, asking if I could pop in and see her first thing.

      With a quick smile, I shoved my mobile back in my bag. There wasn’t going to be time to see her before heading up to the boardroom where every other Friday all fifty-five people in the agency met for our bi-monthly staff internal comms briefing, where new business wins and general big news – like promotions – were announced. I had a pretty good idea why she wanted to speak to me. I’d been waiting long enough for this day. Two weeks ago, following my shining, yes you are the dog’s bollocks appraisal, I’d made my case for the vacant position of Senior Account Director, which I was reasonably, no very, confident had been well-received. Megan had been hinting there might be some good news soon.

      Despite wanting to bounce with anticipation as I took the stairs up to the third floor, I tapped up on my heels, decorous and professional, taking small neat steps as dictated by the tailored, fitted black dress which Connie insisted on describing as my Hillary Clinton funeral look.

      I took a seat in one of the ergonomic chairs which my posture flatly refused to co-operate with. The lime green, moulded plastic wave shapes were supposed to make you sit properly but my back had made it quite clear that it was more than happy to sit improperly.

      Trying to sit comfortably, I checked out the room as people slowly filed in. Recently re-decorated, the boardroom now sported a Mother Earth look, complete with one green wall of plants about three metres square. I wasn’t convinced that it didn’t harbour a huge variety of bugs and beasties. Supposedly it was inspiring as well as practical; apparently it produced fresh oxygen (was there such a thing as stale oxygen?) to help stimulate creativity. At the same time a little Zen indoor waterfall had also been installed to promote calm, mindful thoughts, although I found if I needed to go to the loo, it stopped me thinking about anything else.

      Despite the pretentiousness of the boardroom, every time I looked around, I relished the sight of it. I’d made it. I worked for The Machin Agency – one of the top London public relations companies. Well on the way to the next step of my five-year plan. Not bad for a girl from Hemel Hempstead, allegedly the UK’s ugliest town. And today, I’d take another step.

      The Managing Director took the floor and two seconds later Josh sidled through the door. Just in the nick of time he slipped into a seat on the front row, catching my eye very briefly as he passed me. I hadn’t saved him a seat and he wouldn’t have expected me to. We’d agreed that no one at work needed to know that Josh Delaney and Kate Sinclair were seeing each other, especially when we worked in the same team in the consumer department of the agency.

      Ed,