Never Gonna Happen

by Heidi Stephens

Genres: Romance; Contemporary Romance; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

EMILY HAS SWORN OFF LOVE.
BUT MAYBE IT'S TIME TO GET BACK IN THE SADDLE . . . ?
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Emily Wilkinson has lost everything. Literally. In a hair-straightener fire. Oh, and her boyfriend (and boss) has announced he's going back to his wife. So, she needs a new job, a new plan, and somewhere to live that isn't her childhood bedroom.

Charles Hunter is looking for a live-in PA to help run Bowford Manor and Emily thinks she's the perfect fit. Well, she's spent ten years propping up demanding men, so she can definitely handle some tricky characters - like Charles's eldest son and heir, who's got plans for the estate that might raise a few eyebrows.

No one's mentioned Jamie though. The stable hand - and youngest Hunter. Dashing, of course, but totally unsuitable. And Emily's not about to make that mistake again.

Definitely not. No, really.

A hugely uplifting and totally irresistible romantic comedy that will make you snort with laughter. If you love Sophie Kinsella, Mhairi McFarlane and Sophie Ranald, you don't want to miss this unforgettable page-turner.
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DISCOVER WHY EVERYONE LOVES HEIDI STEPHENS!

'Witty, wise and romantic. Escapist fiction at it's absolute best' KATIE FFORDE

'Fun, sexy, and wonderfully escapist' EMILY STONE

'Gorgeously fun . . . the blast of escapism we all need right now!' FIONA GIBSON

'The perfect escape for anybody who loves a swoon-worthy hero and a fabulous setting!' ZARA STONELEY

(P) 2022 Headline Publishing Group Ltd

Release date: May 26, 2022

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 352

Sample

If she squinted intently at the bedroom ceiling, Emily Wilkinson could still see the outlines of hundreds of glow-in-the-dark stickers. Stars and crescent moons, tiny planets, spaceships shaped like chubby lipsticks with fins. She could clearly remember the day her dad had stuck them up for her, perched on a wobbly ladder, cursing his daughter’s art direction. Not THERE, Dad. You’ve got the spaceship flying into a planet. Point it towards the MOON. No, the OTHER way. She’d bought half a dozen packets with her pocket money in the hope of replicating a school trip to the London Planetarium, but the abiding memory was her dad telling her to sod off and leave him to it.

The haphazard distribution of the stickers had annoyed Emily when she was nine, and it still grated on her nerves twenty years later. Half of the biggest stars were piled up in one corner like they were waiting for the headline act at a cosmic festival, and the section of ceiling by the window had no moons or planets at all. One of the spaceships was aligned exactly behind another, like it had broken down and was being towed to the Martian branch of Kwik Fit. Her attempts to relocate them by standing on a flimsy bookcase had given her several torn stickers and a trip to A&E. It turned out to be nothing more than a sprained ankle, but her dad had breathed furiously through his nose in the car the whole way there.

It was eight years since Emily had left home, the last of the Wilkinson children to fly the nest. All that remained as evidence of her former occupation were the stickers and the greasy Blu Tack marks on the faded pink walls. Now the bedroom was what Mum called her ‘craft room’, which was clearly secret Mum code for a place where abandoned hobbies go to die. Emily supposed she should be grateful it still had a bed, even though it had been rammed against the wall and festooned with brightly coloured fake-fur cushions that made her itch. Instead of Emily’s swimming certificates and *NSYNC posters, the walls now featured a cross-stitch sampler in a frame which read ‘Home is Where the Wine Is’ and a foil scratch art picture of a timber wolf howling at the moon. Emily knew how it felt.

She took a deep breath and mentally offered up her current situation to the luminous papery heavens. I’m twenty-nine years old, living back at home with my mum and dad. My ex, who is also my boss, has gone back to his wife. Which means I need a new job AND a new place to live, because also my room in my crappy shared flat has been destroyed in a hair-straightener fire, along with all my belongings. Everything in my life is a burning pile of shit.

‘Moomin!’ yelled a voice from downstairs. She’d repeatedly requested that her dad stop using her childhood nickname, but her annoyance only encouraged him. ‘Dinner’s ready!’

Talking of burning piles of shit, it was Dad’s turn to cook.

‘So what are your plans, love?’ asked Emily’s mum, not for the first time this week. They were gathered around the dining table, which seated four in its normal state and six if you put the flap up. At Christmas her dad added a piece of plywood balanced on an old camcorder tripod to make it seat eight. You couldn’t tell with a tablecloth on, and it just about worked as long as somebody sat in the doorway to the lounge and nobody made any sudden movements. There’d been talk of knocking the wall down and making downstairs open plan, but it had never come to anything. Most of this house hadn’t changed much since the Wilkinson family moved in when Emily was seven, which she found oddly comforting.

‘Leave her alone, Carol,’ muttered her dad, squeezing the ketchup bottle so it farted a torrent of red sauce over his food. Emily wafted her hand for him to pass it over. Today’s dinner was something that may once have been breaded fish, but several years of cooking had turned into some kind of carbonised brittle. She poked it with her fork and frowned as it snapped in half, resigning herself to the reality that even ketchup couldn’t save the most dehydrated piece of haddock in West Sussex.

‘I’m still waiting to hear about the insurance on my stuff,’ she said, ‘then I’ll find a new flat and get a new job.’

‘Why do you need a new job?’ asked Carol, her voice shrill with alarm. ‘The one you’ve got pays more than your dad’s ever earned.’ Emily was Personal Assistant to Mark Thompson, Managing Director of a big architecture firm in London, but she was currently on two weeks’ compassionate leave to deal with the aftermath of the fire in her flat. By all accounts her housemate Lucy had helped herself to Emily’s hair straighteners, then left them plugged in on her bed. They’d set fire to Emily’s duvet around the time Mark had taken her hand in a bougie wine bar and said, ‘I need to try to make my marriage work, Emily. For the sake of the children.’

‘No need to rub it in, Carol,’ Emily’s dad said tetchily. He’d worked his entire career as an administrator for Chichester District Council, currently in the Planning and Building Control Department. Emily’s mum was a school dinner lady and could make a bag of potatoes and a pack of frozen mince feed a family for a week. Neither of them earned much, and sadly you couldn’t pay a mortgage with vocal opinions on cowboy-builder loft conversions and Jamie Oliver’s war on Turkey Twizzlers.

‘I’m just saying, Martin,’ said Carol. ‘Jobs like that don’t come along every day, and she can’t stay here for ever.’

‘I’ve literally been here four days,’ said Emily through gritted teeth, giving up on the fishy charcoal and attacking the cremains of the chips instead. ‘My flat has burnt down, my boyfriend has dumped me, everything I own has gone up in flames.’ Including this dinner. Maybe she was being a bit dramatic – in truth Mark had never been a proper boyfriend, even though their secret fling had gone on for two years. As for the fire, the smoke alarm had alerted her housemates to the blaze and the fire brigade had been there within a few minutes. All her stuff was gone, either burned or smoke-damaged beyond repair, but the building would be fine.

‘Your boyfriend has dumped you?’ asked Carol. ‘I didn’t even know you had a boyfriend. Why didn’t you say?’

Emily shrugged. ‘It’s why I need a new job. He works at the firm.’

Carol crossed her arms in outrage. ‘Well, I don’t see why YOU should have to leave, just because he’s finished with you. Why can’t HE leave?’

‘He’s more senior than me, Mum,’ Emily explained. Just a bit. ‘It’s complicated. I’ve been there three years anyway, it’s a good time to move on.’

‘Are you not going to eat that?’ said Carol, standing up to clear the plates.

‘I’m all done,’ said Emily, patting her rumbling stomach. ‘Just a bit unsettled at the moment.’

‘We’ve only got the one loo,’ said Martin. ‘Let us know if we need to give it ten minutes.’ He chortled to himself as Emily wondered how on earth her life had come to this in the space of a week.

‘I love having you home, Moomin,’ said Carol, patting Emily on the shoulder, ‘but you can’t have that room for ever. I need it for my crafts.’

Emily thought about the paper sack of unused knitting wool, the sewing machine that had seized up from lack of use, the sealed box of glitter and pipe cleaners and rainbow pom-poms. ‘Then why can’t I have the other room?’ she asked. Number 22 Grove Street had three bedrooms; her parents had the biggest and the middle one was a guest room, having previously been shared by her two older brothers. Emily had always occupied the box room until Hobbycraft had launched a hostile takeover.

‘I need to keep that for guests,’ said Carol with a shrug. ‘Simon could come home at any time, or David might want us to look after the grandchildren.’

Emily rolled her eyes. ‘Simon’s in Hamburg and David’s in Newcastle, Mum. You’re hardly round the corner.’

‘I’m aware how far away my sons live, thank you,’ said Carol, her voice giving a tell-tale wobble.

Give me strength, thought Emily. ‘I’ve got a call with the insurance people tomorrow, and I’m planning to look at jobs this evening,’ she said, standing at the sink and pulling on a pair of yellow rubber gloves. She’d actually been planning to watch a cheesy romcom on Netflix, but anything to get her mum off her back. The Wilkinsons were a close family but living at home at twenty-nine was far from ideal.

Her parents headed into the lounge to watch EastEnders, so Emily rinsed the ketchup off the plates and plunged them into soapy water while she considered her CV. She’d been in secretarial roles for eleven years, five of which had been at personal assistant level. She could organise diaries, plan parties, haggle travel deals and defuse all manner of professional and domestic crises. She was never late, always discreet and typed so fast her fingers were a blur. She was brilliant at shorthand, liked dogs and children and could sniff out bullshit artists from a hundred yards. Why wouldn’t anyone want to give her a job?

Not that it didn’t grate a bit that she needed to leave. She liked her job at Thompson & Delaney, and she’d loved working for Mark. To her credit, Emily had never chased him, and she’d fought the head-over-horn battle for months before the conference in Dubai, when the lift to their rooms had taken long enough for Mark to lean against the gilded wall and give her a look that liquefied every inch of her body from her neck to her knees. By the eighteenth floor Emily had known for sure that, when the doors opened on the thirty-second, she was going to let Mark take her hand and lead her back to his suite. It felt like something that she had no control over, and it was hard to worry about consequences when she was being banged into next week against a backdrop of fireworks over the Burj Khalifa.

And actually, when it became apparent that the Dubai trip was never going to be a one-off, it had worked out OK. Mark wasn’t needy or demanding; there were no cheeky office winks or sleazy texts. They simply devised a series of subtle signals that indicated he was free if Emily wanted to stay at his flat. Sometimes she went, sometimes she didn’t. Sometimes she went but they didn’t even have sex; they just sat and drank wine and watched a film or chatted like two people who enjoyed one another’s company. It had been two years of no-strings fun between two consenting adults who knew the score.

Which was why Emily had been surprised at how shaken and upset she’d been when Mark had delivered his soap-opera speech about giving his marriage another chance. Not that she’d let him see her distress at the time; a deadpan face is an essential weapon in the personal assistant’s armoury. But before she’d had time to think through her response, she’d had a call from one of her flatmates saying her room was on fire, which had taken the evening in an unexpectedly stressful direction. Other than a bunch of company flowers delivered to her parents’ house, Emily hadn’t heard from Mark since. Sometimes the silence speaks volumes, she thought, yanking off the rubber gloves and taking Rudy the ancient family hound upstairs to help her look for a new job.

‘It’s good to see you, Emily,’ said Mark with an attempt at a warm smile. His right foot was crossed over his left knee, jiggling frantically. Emily could tell he was nervous, which was no big surprise. She’d asked for a meeting with him and the head of HR at Thompson & Delaney, so he was probably wondering what kind of hell-hath-no-fury truth bomb she was about to drop.

‘How ARE you?’ asked Laura from HR, making zero effort to conceal how little she gave a shit. Laura had never liked Emily, who prevented her from gaining unfettered access to Mark to offload her daily list of petty grievances.

‘I’m fine.’

‘I’m so sorry about the fire,’ said Laura, in a tone that suggested she’d be more sorry if she broke a nail or lost a fake eyelash. ‘That must have been such a shock.’

‘It was,’ replied Emily. ‘But nobody was hurt, which is the main thing.’ The corners of Mark’s mouth twitched in response to Emily’s dead-eyed platitude, but it washed over Laura.

‘Well, quite. Awful to lose all your belongings though. I hope there was nothing precious.’

Emily briefly considered making some random things up. Her childhood rocking horse, a collection of PVC gimp masks, a signed picture of Justin Bieber. Mark would know she was taking the piss, but perhaps now wasn’t the time. ‘Not really, mostly just clothes and stuff. A couple of gifts with sentimental value.’

She saw Mark’s eyes flicker in her direction as he registered what she was referring to. For her twenty-ninth birthday in March he’d bought her a beautiful notebook from Smythson of Bond Street. It was covered with the softest sea-green leather, monogrammed on the cover with ‘EW’ in gold lettering. Later she’d sneaked a look online and seen that it would have cost Mark nearly £200 – an insane amount for a notebook, but still the loveliest gift she’d ever received. Emily had kept it in the box for seven months, unable to bring herself to use it. Now it was a pile of ashes.

‘So are you ready to return to work?’ asked Laura, clearly keen to move things along so she could get back to her day job of making staff feel like they were only one social media infraction away from her office guillotine. ‘I assume that’s why you’ve asked for this meeting?’

‘Yes,’ said Emily, sitting up straight and putting her clammy hands on her knees, ‘but only to work my notice. I have a new job.’

Laura froze and Mark held Emily’s gaze for a long moment, the jiggling foot slowing to a stop. ‘Oh,’ said Laura, glancing at Mark and clearing her throat, clearly waiting for him to say something.

‘I’m really sorry to hear that,’ said Mark quietly, looking like he genuinely meant it.

‘I think the fire and everything just gave me a chance to re-evaluate,’ said Emily, keeping her voice strong and her head high. ‘You know, think about what’s next for me.’

‘Mmm,’ said Laura tightly. ‘But sorry, why did that require a meeting? Usually you would just write a resignation letter.’

Emily took a deep breath, letting the lie take shape in the back of her throat. ‘Because I’m going to work for one of your competitors. I can’t say which one at this stage, but I thought I should let you know.’

Mark’s eyes bored into Emily’s, but she didn’t look away. She knew exactly what he was thinking – is she lying to secure a quick exit, or actually that petty and vengeful? She watched the cogs chunter in his brain as he arrived at the inevitable truth, his face softening into an expression that looked almost like admiration.

Laura shuffled some papers. ‘Well, I’m not really sure your contract . . .’

‘I’ve checked,’ said Emily, with the calm certainty of someone who did attention to detail for a living. ‘There are no restrictive covenants or non-compete clauses.’

A glimmer of a smile played across Mark’s lips. ‘Emily, could you step outside for a few minutes? This is obviously something Laura and I need to discuss. We won’t keep you waiting long.’

Emily nodded and stood up, willing her knees not to knock together. She closed his door quietly and sat in the familiar chair behind her desk, taking a bottle of water from her handbag and downing half of it in one go. A few of her colleagues spotted her through the glass wall and waved, so she lifted the handset on the phone and swiftly dialled 123 for the speaking clock. As a softly spoken Scottish man informed her that the time was four-fourteen and twenty seconds, her friend Kirsten from the Finance team swerved in her direction on the way to the kitchen. Emily pointed at the phone and rolled her eyes, holding up her hand to indicate she’d come and talk to her in five minutes.

Emily knew this approach was risky; it wouldn’t take much for Mark to find out that her competitor job offer was a lie, and she needed a good reference. But she was also sure of two things – firstly that she definitely couldn’t go back to working for him now her compassionate leave was up, and secondly that he would almost certainly let her go without any fuss. Mark liked things clean and simple.

By the time Laura opened Mark’s office door and nodded at her to come back in, the time was four twenty-seven exactly. Emily took a deep breath, smoothed down her skirt, and went back into the fray.

‘Wait, are you saying you’re on full pay for a month, but you don’t have to go to work?’ Shona’s eyes boggled as she took another sip of wine. They were in a pub a few hundred metres from their shared flat in Stratford, all oxblood leather booths and oversized Edison light bulbs. Emily liked it because it was quiet and classy and not in Westfield Shopping Centre. There was something deeply unsettling about having a relaxed drink with friends while people nearby had their eyebrows threaded.

Emily nodded. There had been very little resistance in the end, although Laura’s mouth had puckered itself into the tightest of cat’s bums as she supervised Emily’s desk clearance. There wasn’t much; just the usual things every good PA keeps to hand – tissues, deodorant, hairbrush, sewing kit, tampons, spare pair of tights, plasters, various hangover cures and painkillers, a compact umbrella. She extracted the nude heels that lived under her desk, kept permanently at work so she didn’t have to commute in them, then shovelled everything into a Tesco bag for life.

Within five minutes she was following Laura down the back stairs, avoiding the open-plan office so there wouldn’t be any drama. That had been the deal – just leave quietly, no drama. Laura had given her a look of purest loathing in reception, then said, ‘I’ll email you details of what Mark agreed,’ before stalking off, her heels clacking on the tiled floor. What Mark agreed, not Laura. Like Emily gave a shit either way.

She was sure that some people would have done a full Bridget Jones, bad-mouthing Mark then sashaying out of the office to Aretha Franklin like an absolute sass queen. But Emily wasn’t the type, and Mark really didn’t deserve it. She’d got what she came for, and the look on Mark’s face had told her that he understood why she needed to go. Maybe he’d get in touch later, maybe he wouldn’t. For now, Emily needed to leave him behind and get on with the rest of her life.

‘They’ve already got somebody there who can take my job, so they didn’t see the point in keeping me around,’ she told Shona. This was the second big fat lie she’d told today, but it kept things simple. Shona and Eddie shared her flat, along with Lucy of the burning hair straighteners, but they’d never known much about Mark. They all got on fine as flatmates and often went out or watched a movie together, but it wasn’t like they were best mates who disclosed all their secrets over late-night cocktails. They knew Emily had been seeing someone, but didn’t press for details.

‘You lucky bitch,’ said Eddie. ‘A month off on full pay.’

Emily shrugged. ‘I’ll be spending it looking for another job. Wait, where’s Lucy?’

‘She said she had bad cramps,’ said Shona. ‘I don’t think she can face you, to be honest. She still swears blind that she’d turned your straighteners off at the wall, even though the fire inspector guy showed her the melted remains.’

‘I didn’t know she was borrowing them,’ said Emily. ‘What was she even doing in my room?’

Eddie shook his head. ‘She used them all the time when you weren’t there. I thought she’d asked. Sorry.’

‘What’s the hotel like?’ asked Emily. The landlord’s insurer had moved Shona, Eddie and Lucy into a hotel until Emily’s room was repaired and the flat was repainted. The window and carpet had been replaced and they were now redecorating before the new furniture arrived. Emily had been offered the hotel too, but had decided her parents’ house was marginally preferable. It would be nice to have her room back while she was doing job interviews though; commuting from Chichester was a faff.

‘It’s fine,’ said Shona, topping up her wine. ‘Annoying not to be able to cook, but the insurance guy said only one more week.’

‘Did they manage to save any of your stuff?’ asked Eddie.

‘Two pairs of silver earrings and a photo frame,’ replied Emily. She supposed the upside of not having much was that you didn’t have much to lose.

Shona sloshed the rest of the wine into Emily’s glass and put the upturned bottle back in the ice bucket. ‘So what’s next?’

‘I’ve already got two job interviews lined up and I’ve just heard about another one,’ said Emily. ‘It looks interesting.’

‘What kind of interesting?’ asked Eddie.

‘Another personal assistant role,’ she said, sipping her wine. ‘But working for a retired businessman instead of a firm.’

‘What does he need an assistant for if he’s retired?’ asked Shona, plucking an artisanal cracker from the jam jar on the table and munching the end off.

Emily laughed. ‘He’s retired from business, Sho, not from life. Maybe he’s got lots of other interests, or likes to travel a lot, I don’t know. I’ll find out more when I go for an interview.’

‘Will you be staying in London?’ asked Eddie.

Emily shrugged. ‘No idea. I expect so. It’s a live-in job, so it could be anywhere.’

Eddie looked horrified. ‘What, you live in his house?’

‘I don’t think I’m going to be on the sofa bed in the spare room, Ed,’ she said. ‘I’m guessing it’s a pretty big house. Or maybe he travels all the time, so I’d live in hotels.’

‘That sounds super-weird,’ said Shona, her brow furrowed as Eddie nodded emphatically. ‘Are you sure he’s legit? What if he’s a sex trafficker and this whole thing is a scam?’

Emily rolled her eyes. ‘It’s been organised by a specialist agency,’ she said. ‘They only deal with high-end assistant jobs, so I’m pretty sure they’ve checked he’s not a sex trafficker.’

‘Still sounds weird to me,’ said Shona.

‘It’s no different to being a nanny or an au pair,’ laughed Emily. ‘Loads of people do live-in jobs for rich people. It might be really interesting.’

‘Until he murders you and dissolves your body in his acid-filled swimming pool,’ said Eddie, nodding ominously at Shona.

‘Oh my God, you’re both insane. I’ll let you know after I’ve met him.’

‘Bet he’s a sex trafficker,’ said Shona.

‘Murderer,’ said Eddie.

Emily sighed and shook her head. It was a live-in job that had nothing to do with architecture and offered little in the way of dating opportunities. Right now that ticked a lot of her boxes.

Emily stood in front of the full-length mirror in her freshly painted Stratford room, doing a final sweep for missed details. Her only surviving suit was the one she’d been wearing on the day of the fire, but it was also her favourite – a tailored blazer from Reiss in a pinky-beige colour, paired with a matching pencil skirt that fell just above her knees. Dresses didn’t really work on her, because even though she was five foot seven, her top half was a size ten and her bottom half was a twelve or fourteen, depending on the time of the month. She’d inherited her mother’s classic pear shape – no boobs and a curvy bum – and whilst the gym and running and swimming stopped her edging from pear to butternut squash, there was nothing she could do about her proportions. Suit separates in different sizes were her salvation, but there was no point buying anything new until she knew where she would be working next. Some places expected PAs to be fully suited and booted; others were fine with jeans and trainers.

The insurance company had paid out £2,000 for everything she’d lost in the fire, but she hadn’t mustered the energy to go shopping beyond pyjamas, underwear, some basic gym gear and a few casual bits to mooch about in at home. Her make-up bag and phone had been in the handbag she was carrying on the evening of the fire, and other than the melted ghd hair straighteners they were the most valuable things she owned. Once she knew where she was working and living next, she’d go on a shopping trip – work clothes, shoes, the lot. Maybe she’d take her mum and buy her something nice too. They drove each other round the bend sometimes, but there wasn’t much spare cash at home for Carol to treat herself.

Emily turned sideways to look at her profile. The suit was a good fit – she’d neither gained nor lost weight in the three weeks since the fire, which was a miracle considering how inedible her dad’s cooking was. Mum cooked lunch for over a thousand secondary school children every day and regularly couldn’t face the kitchen when she got home, so Dad did his best. Emily had offered to cook on a few occasions, but Martin had declared her stuffed courgettes ‘too much pissing about for not nearly enough actual food’, so that was the end of that.

She’d had the suit dry-cleaned and asked her dad to polish the heels she’d rescued from under her desk, just to make him feel useful. Her mum had insisted on giving her some new tights, even though they were a foul gravy-tan shade and made her legs look like hot dogs. Her long brown hair was pulled into a tidy bun, a few strands left loose around her face so it didn’t look too severe. Minimal make-up, pale pink nails, tiny silver hoop earrings. She would have to do.

The alarm on her phone told her it was time to go, so she threw the heels in her bag, put on her coat and trainers, then headed for the tube and her appointment in Mayfair with Mr Charles Hunter.

Emily watched Mr Hunter scan her CV and wondered what he was thinking. Probably disappointed that she went to a bog-standard comprehensive rather than a fancy private school, or maybe pondering why she’d never gone to university with those A-level results. The answer was a simple one, really. She hadn’t fancied being saddled with a hefty debt, even though at the time the fees were nothing compared to what students had to pay now. And she’d wanted to start earning a living and saving to get her own place, since there wasn’t any money at home and she definitely didn’t want to stay there for ever.

She’d worked a summer temp job at her school since she was fifteen, helping out with all the admin for the new September intake. Not only had she enjoyed it, but she’d been really good at it. She looked at ads on online job boards and saw that top executive assistants for law firms and management consultants in London could earn £70k or more, so why not aim for that as a career goal? She’d got an entry-level secretarial job at a building firm in Southampton and started doing evening courses at the local college to gain more qualifications, and by the time she was twenty-one she had enough experience to move to a shared house and a new job in London. Lots of her friends had gone off to uni, but now she was earning more than most of them without the student loan payments. Most of the time she had no regrets.

Charles Hunter was a handsome and powerful-looking man in his late sixties, Emily guessed. Tall, full head of salt-and-pepper hair, well dressed in a shirt and tailored suit but no tie. His handshake was firm and his smile was kind. He looked a bit like Pierce Brosnan and was what her mum would call a ‘silver fox’, a term that was usually followed by ‘get in my box’. Carol could be quite the poet when the mood took her.

They’d already talked about her qualifications and work history, the kind of stuff she’d been doing for Thompson & Delaney. She’d answered all his questions confidently and felt sure that she was more than qualified for this job. So now it all came down to whether she was the right fit.

‘Well,’ said Mr Hunter, putting her CV on his desk. ‘I’m sure you have some questions for me.’

‘I do,’ said Emily with a smile. She’d pre-prepared some simple but smart questions, stuff that was easy to answer but suggested she’d given it some thought. ‘I’ve never worked for a private individual before, so I’m interested to know what kind of work it might be.’ It was hard not to put on a posh accent in a place like this; it felt like the kind of thing you should do to fit in with the fancy furnishings and the huge wooden desk. But she swallowed the mouthful of fake plums and decided he could take her as. . .