Chapter One

      Georgine tied the laces of her running shoes, keeping one anxious eye on the patterned glass in her front door and the two manly shapes silhouetted by November sunlight.

      One of them knocked with measured movements. ‘Miss France? Miss France? Come to the door, please.’ Then he muttered something to his companion.

      The companion answered clearly, ‘Not giving up yet,’ and leant on the doorbell, raising his voice above the sound. ‘If you could just open the door, Miss France, we won’t keep you long.’

      Everything about the men and their insistence said ‘debt collectors’. Even though she knew they weren’t as bad as bailiffs, who could lawfully gain entry, they raised too many horrible memories for her to open the door, even just to say that Aidan no longer lived with her. She wouldn’t have expected to be believed, anyway.

      Heart tumbling, she fumbled herself into her running jacket and gloves, then checked her backpack for the Christmas student show production file. Yep, there was its pretty Christmassy cover, nestling on top of her distinctly less-Christmassy work clothes. Quietly, she swung the backpack onto her shoulders and let herself silently out of the back door, heaving a sigh of relief as she turned the key. The debt collectors would have to come up the footpath behind the terraced houses on Top Farm Road and climb her six-foot fence to see her here. She hoped they wouldn’t, because that was the route she was about to use to escape.

      Breath forming a white cloud, she loped across the lawn, every grass blade rimed with frost and squeaking beneath her feet. A run and jump onto a garden chair and her gloves found enough purchase on the top of the ice-beaded fence to allow her to swing a leg over the top, then she was up, over and jogging along the footpath.

      When she reached the point where Scott Road met Top Farm Road she lengthened her stride. She’d intended to drive to work until her unwanted callers had planted themselves between her and her elderly hatchback, but it was exhilarating to race through the zing of frost on the morning air. Any number of men could bang on her door all day long without bothering her.

      Her breath came easily as she found her rhythm, legs carrying her out of the Bankside estate, soon reaching the last houses of Middledip village. The pavement petered out and her comfortably worn running shoes began slapping the road. She tried to concentrate on thinking about props for the Christmas show, but every time a car whooshed past she hopped onto the verge and held her breath in case it was the debt collectors and they’d somehow guess she was the Miss France they’d been trying to speak to.

      It was a relief, when she’d covered a mile or so, to swing left beneath an iron arch bearing a white sign with black writing:

       ACTING INSTRUMENTAL

       Performing Arts College

      Sanctuary. A place where she could leave reality behind. Her running feet ate up the final few hundred yards as she wove through students ambling along the drive, chatting or heads down over their phones.

      One called, ‘Good mawnin’, Mizz Jaw-Jean,’ in a pretty fair Midwest American accent.

      Laughing breathlessly, she raised a gloved hand. The student, Isla, was not only a drama student at Acting Instrumental, but the daughter of Sian from Georgine’s own schooldays. Her schoolmates in the huge comprehensive school in the nearby town of Bettsbrough had loved to rib her with awful parodies of her American father’s soft Georgia drawl. She wished she had a pound for every time her teenaged self had heard it. It might pay off the scary men at her door – if it had been her debt they were trying to collect. Which it wasn’t.

      She’d honestly thought she’d finally be OK for money when she landed the job of events director at Acting Instrumental three years ago, but what with Georgine’s dad and her sister, Blair, needing support at different times, and Aidan falling apart upon being made redundant, which had led to the current financial mess … Still, never a day passed without her thanking her stars that she hadn’t been daunted by the formal language in the ad for an events director of student productions. What her role actually required her to be was stage manager, producer, hand-holder, bridge-builder and breach-filler.

      Georgine specialised in that kind of role.

      She veered towards the main building. Barely slowing as she yanked off her backpack, she touched her pass to the card reader. The door clicked a greeting and glided aside.

      The first person her gaze fell on was Norman Ogden, the principal of Acting Instrumental, strolling past the as yet naked Christmas tree in the foyer at his usual deceptive pace. Peering from under his fringe, he reminded Georgine of an enormous schoolboy who’d found an adult set of clothes and tried them on. ‘Cold enough for snow,’ she panted, to draw her boss’s attention away from the fact that she only had a few minutes in which to change out of her running gear before work.

      ‘A snow day to keep us at home would probably suit the students,’ he responded good-naturedly. ‘Need a catch-up. Quick meeting, you and me, ten minutes, my room?’

      ‘Great,’ she replied as she jogged towards the staff area, suppressing the urge to point out that she was busy, busy, busy as it was just six weeks until opening night of A Very Kerry Christmas, Uncle Jones, this year’s Christmas