The Spring of Second Chances

by Tilly Tennant

Genres: Humor & Satire; Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance; New Adult Romance; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

An uplifting rom-com about heartache and finding love again, 'The Spring of Second Chances' follows Phoebe who has spent the past year living under a cloud. She is determined to make a change in her life now and wants to fall in love for a second time after she lost the man she loved in a tragic accident. She has found her dream job, but there are a magnitude of stresses which have come with it. When single-dad Jack walks into her life, is she ready to fall in love again or is it too soon for her to get over her heartbreak? A story about second chances, this is a feel good read that will leave you grinning from ear to ear. For fans of Jenny Colgan, Lucy Diamond and Josie SilverTilly has sold over 290,000 copies.Previously published as four novellas and in the collection Mishaps in Millrise. -

Release date: January 6, 2021

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 350

Sample

The bunny ears slipped forward again. Maria puffed out her cheeks and reached up to straighten them. ‘They’re too big,’ she said, wrinkling her nose.

‘They are a little on the big side but that was the only size we had left. And your hair is so silky that everything slides around. What if I put some hairspray in to help make them a bit more secure?’

‘Hairspray?’

Phoebe rifled through her handbag and produced a small canister. ‘Turn around and cover your eyes.’

Maria clapped her hands over her face and hunched her shoulders up.

‘There’s no need to look so terrified,’ Phoebe laughed. ‘It won’t hurt!’

Maria’s shoulders shook as she let out a giggle from behind her hands. ‘I love you, Phoebe.’

‘And I love you too. Now stand still and let’s get these ears sorted or those Easter eggs will have melted by the time we find them.’

‘Or Daddy will eat them.’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised. He’s probably eaten most of them while he was hiding them.’

Maria giggled again. ‘Why didn’t you hide them?’

‘But who would have put your ears on then?’

‘Daddy.’

‘Hmmmm.’ Phoebe spritzed a light coating of lacquer over Maria’s head. ‘I’d like to see your daddy handle a can of hairspray like this. He’d probably have stapled the ears to your head or something.’

‘I heard that.’ Jack’s voice came from the back door. A gust of fresh, crisp air followed in his wake as he closed it behind him. ‘You’d better get your coats on, girls; it’s bright but it’s still cold out there.’

‘You’re such a wuss,’ Phoebe laughed as she put away the hairspray and straightened her denim jacket. ‘It’s April.’

The smoothing down of her clothing was instinctive. Phoebe and Jack had been together for four months now, but they were still in that relationship phase where everything was new and shiny and Phoebe was always conscious of how she looked when he was around.

‘I’ve been crawling through the undergrowth,’ he replied cheerfully, ‘I’m bound to be cold.’

‘We’ve got bunny ears to keep us warm, haven’t we?’ Phoebe made a final adjustment to Maria’s headband and smiled down at her.

‘And bunny fur,’ Maria added, pulling at her pink fleece.

Jack stepped over and zipped it up for her. ‘Right up tight,’ he said.

‘Snug as a bug in a rug,’ Maria laughed. Phoebe smiled. She had discovered over the last few months that it was an oft-repeated mantra but one that Maria never got tired of. It was the little things that were so endearing, that made Jack and Maria so special to be around. It was like they were sprinkled in fairy dust, and everyone who came into contact with them caught a little of it too.

‘Ready to rock?’ Jack jumped up, his hand hovering over the back-door handle.

‘Ready!’ Maria cried, bouncing up and down and giggling.

‘Never been readier!’ Phoebe joined in.

‘Let’s go hunt some chocolate!’ Jack yanked open the door and they trouped out, Maria’s chat turning into a stream of words that tumbled over one another in her excitement. Phoebe could only catch the odd syllable and half-word, but she didn’t really need to follow the meaning at all. There was no sound lovelier on earth than the sound of that little girl’s excitement and she was happy just to let it wash over her.

It was funny, Phoebe mused as she watched Maria race across the lawn to the shelter of the trees at the bottom of the garden, that only a few months ago she really hadn’t cared for children at all. They were like an alien race, to be treated with suspicion and avoided unless absolutely necessary. Her stint working as an assistant to Hendry’s store janitor-cum-Santa-cum-resident alcoholic hadn’t done much to dispel those beliefs. After a day of trying to communicate with the strange little hordes that streamed through and laid waste to the grotto on an hourly basis in the manner of a Viking invasion, she had decided that in future she would do all she could to avoid them. Maria had wiped all those beliefs clean in one afternoon. But then, she was an exceptional little girl. The cure had been so profound that Phoebe had actually been excited when Steve, her boss, had asked her to stay on at Hendry’s after the Christmas job had ended. Phoebe Clements working in a toy shop – the centre of the kiddie universe? It was a strange turn of events indeed.

Almost as strange was how quickly she had found herself falling for Jack. After Vik’s death, she had locked her heart away and it had withered. She had believed that nothing or no one could bring her back from that point. But that was before Jack’s blue eyes had smiled at her, before those dimples that played at the corners of his mouth had worked their peculiar magic, before his soft voice and attentive nature had taken her by surprise with their power to charm and heal what she thought was forever broken. Some days she was frightened by it all. Sometimes, in her darker moments, the old pangs of guilt returned, and she clung onto the memory of Vik, forcing herself to remember his face and his voice for fear they would disappear for good. And in those darker moments were the conflicting emotions, the fear that by conjuring up Vik, she was somehow being unfaithful to Jack, and that karma or fate, or whatever strange and invisible power ruled the universe, would take him and Maria from her as punishment for her ingratitude. The only thing she ever knew for certain was that when she was with Jack, everything felt right and good. She held onto those feelings and tried to cherish them while she could.

‘Come on!’ Jack called, shaking Phoebe from her musings. ‘Maria’s got two already!’

She realised, with some surprise, that she was standing in the middle of the still frosted lawn. She must have looked like a brain-addled loon, staring into space with the absent smile she could feel on her lips.

‘Three!’ Maria shouted from the depths of the Leylandi hedge.

Phoebe adjusted her own rabbit headband, waggled her bum to shake the bunny tail she had attached, and twitched her nose, sticking her teeth out and sniffing the air. ‘Bunny powers – activate!’ she cried as Maria, watching her, dissolved into a fit of new giggles. ‘All the chocolate will be mine!’

Racing over to the trees, she pretended to barge Maria aside and proceeded to snuffle around in the bedding plants like a deranged pig on a crack-fuelled truffle hunt. Maria’s giggles became shrieks of delight, all thoughts of her own search forgotten as she watched Phoebe’s larking about become more and more absurd. She glanced up to see that Jack was watching too, a huge grin spread across his face. Phoebe sent a radiant smile back, and then pulled Maria’s arm to join her.

‘We’re bunnies!’ Maria protested in between gales of laughter.

‘We’re bunny-pig mutants,’ Phoebe replied. ‘Go with it girl!’

‘Found another one!’ Maria suddenly squeaked, pulling a bright pink egg from the undergrowth and holding it aloft with a look of triumph.

‘You’re good…’ Phoebe held up her hand for a high five. ‘I need to get a move on or there’ll be nothing left.’

And that was when she saw it, glinting from within the thorny branches of a wild raspberry bush: a sliver of gold. ‘Aha!’ she cried, carefully reaching inside to retrieve it. She winked at Maria. ‘I do believe that’s now four: one. Never underestimate the Man United of Easter egg hunting; comebacks are always possible.’ As she dropped it into her basket, she noticed this particular egg gave a dull clunk, as if it was made of something harder than chocolate. Then she saw the label.

To Phoebe. A special egg.

With a glance at Maria, who was now scouring a patch of primula as if her life depended on it, Phoebe turned her attention back to the egg with a puzzled frown.

‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ Jack asked from behind her.

‘You made me jump!’ Phoebe laughed, blushing without knowing why.

‘Well?’

‘It’s against the rules of the game, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t think anyone’s looking,’ he whispered.

Her hand was trembling a little now, but she did as she was asked, and carefully removed the gold wrapping. Beneath, was an enamel egg, decorated with intricate gold swirls and interlocking spring flowers. She held it up and gave him a brief kiss. ‘It’s lovely. Thank you.’

‘Open it.’

Now, her heart was beating like a steam engine. Fear of what she might find inside crept in. This was too soon, wasn’t it? How could she say no without ruining everything they had? But how could she say yes? They’d been together barely four months. She was happy now; why did he have to go and complicate things?

‘I haven’t put a bomb in there, if that’s what you’re worried about,’ he said with a playful nudge.

A bomb might feel less dangerous right now, Phoebe thought. Locating the seam, she took a deep breath, cracked it open and peered inside.

‘A key?’ She held it up, relief flooding through her. ‘What’s this for?’

‘For this place,’ Jack smiled. ‘I know you think it’s too soon to move in and I respect your decision, but I want you to feel as if you belong and that you can come and go as you please.’

‘Wouldn’t that be a bit weird and awkward?’

‘I don’t walk around the house in a gimp suit, you know. You won’t find me doing anything kinky if you call around unannounced.’

Phoebe giggled. ‘Now, there’s an idea…’

‘So, you’ll take it in the spirit in which it was intended?’

She reached to kiss him, that warm glow spreading through her again. ‘Thank you.’ As she pulled away and nuzzled into his embrace, a slow smile spread across her face. ‘I’ll call around tomorrow with the whips and chains,’ she whispered.

Midnight revved up the tiny car and watched it flirt across the shop floor as she let go. She turned to Phoebe with a grin.

‘You really couldn’t work anywhere else, could you?’ Phoebe asked with a wry smile.

‘Where else would I get paid for playing with toys all day long?’

‘You’re not actually supposed to play with them. Your job is to sell them so that other people – mainly the small people they were intended for – can play with them.’

‘Those funny little people who aren’t quite the right size and are always covered in sticky substances?’ Midnight asked.

‘Yes… commonly referred to as children.’ Phoebe made little speech marks in the air.

‘I’m testing. To make sure everything is play-worthy.’

‘Hmmm, I wonder if Steve would buy that.’

Midnight waved a dismissive hand. ‘What Steve doesn’t know won’t hurt him.’

Phoebe glanced up as a figure approached. ‘You’d better look sharp; otherwise he will know in the next few seconds!’

Midnight leapt to her feet. ‘That brain donor will have to get up early in the morning to catch me. In fact, he’d have to get up the night before and camp out.’

Phoebe stifled a giggle as he made his way over.

‘What are you two looking so cheerful about?’ Steve’s nostrils were flared in a way that suggested a permanent state of near-fatal high blood pressure. At first, Phoebe had been alarmed by this sight whenever she had the misfortune to witness it. But as the months progressed, she realised that this was actually her boss in a good mood. Steve in a bad mood looked like an atomic bomb ready to go off.

‘We love being here,’ Midnight replied with a cheeriness that Phoebe knew would set the Steve-bomb ticking. ‘We’re delirious as soon as we set foot in the door. In fact, when I say my prayers at night, I ask for an extra special favour from God. I ask him to please make sure nobody shoves a box of lit fireworks through the letterbox of Hendry’s toy store so that I can just have one more glorious day of working there.’

Steve’s jaw tightened. He seemed to be labouring for an appropriate reply but then abandoned the cause. ‘Is that doll display finished, as I asked you half an hour ago?’

‘Yup. I left Barbie and Ken doing a sixty-nine over the bonnet of a beach buggy.’

Steve snorted, his face transforming from crimson to a dangerous shade of puce. ‘You’d better not –’

‘The display looks great,’ Phoebe cut in, trying not to laugh. ‘Midnight has a real creative flair. You should give her the window dresser’s job.’

‘Her!’ Steve jabbed a finger in Midnight’s direction. ‘God only knows what gothic monstrosities we’d have in there. She’d have Frankenstein complete with bolts scaring the children half to death.’

‘The monster didn’t have bolts and he wasn’t called Frankenstein,’ Midnight fired back. ‘And I’m not a goth…’ she glared at him. ‘Ignoramus,’ she added under her breath.

‘What do you call that then?’ He flapped a dismissive hand at her purple hair. ‘Left to me we’d have a policy against that sort of weirdness in my shop.’

‘You’d be the first one to get sacked then,’ Midnight pouted. ‘And it’s not actually your shop. It’s owned by people who aren’t narrow-minded bigots with no concept of creativity or artistic expression.’

Steve opened his mouth to argue, hesitated for a moment, gaping like a basking shark waiting for a fishy feast, and then shut it, clearly deciding that, once again, he had no reply for Midnight’s assertions. Phoebe wondered whether he had even understood most of it. ‘Just get the place ready before the doors open.’

‘Chill… it’s a Wednesday in April. It’s not like we’re going to get mobbed, is it?’

‘Ten minutes!’ Steve called behind him as he marched away.

Phoebe glanced around the pristine shop floor and shrugged at Midnight. ‘You can’t help yourself can you?’ she asked. ‘It’s like catnip to Mr Tiddles… throw a Steve in your path and you have to wind him up.’

‘The man is a prize dick,’ Midnight replied as she watched his retreating figure.

‘Prize dick or not, I’ve got to keep on his good side for the next week. At least until this interview is done.’

‘Ah, I wouldn’t worry about that. Steve likes you.’

‘How do you figure that out? He’s vile to me.’

‘He hasn’t actively tried to get you sacked yet, though. Always a good sign.’

‘It won’t last if you keep riling him. I’ll be targeted by association.’

Midnight gave her a sideways look. ‘You don’t have to hang out with me.’

‘That’s true. But you’re about the only person working here who doesn’t have hair on their palms so I’ll take my chances.’

‘I won’t tell the others you said that.’

‘You don’t talk to the others.’

‘I do!’ Midnight said in a hurt voice. ‘I talk to Jeff.’

‘Only to see if he has a spare drop of whisky in his hip flask.’

‘And I talk to Sally in Pre-School.’

‘Only because she always has ciggies.’

‘You make me sound horrible.’

‘You are,’ Phoebe laughed, ‘that’s why I like you so much.’

‘I wonder if you’ll still like me when you land this new job in promotions. I’m counting on you to get me another elf stint at Christmas.’

‘You want to do that again?’ Phoebe said with a faint look of disbelief. Apart from the fact that she had met Jack and Maria whilst working as an elf, which was undoubtedly the best thing that had ever happened to her, Phoebe shuddered at the memory of the days she’d had to endure in the claustrophobic and pungent room that served as Santa’s grotto. She was much happier working out on the shop floor sans rosy cheeks and green tights.

‘Are you kidding?’ Midnight raised her eyebrows. ‘That was the most fun I’ve had in ages. Do you remember reading all the kids’ letters? They were hilarious! And Janitor Jeff as Santa… that choice of personnel was so mental it was genius!’

‘You wouldn’t get me in those curly-toed shoes again for anything.’

‘Well, my little friend, if you get this job next week you get to hand out the curly-toed shoes instead of wearing them.’ Midnight swung herself up to sit on the sales counter and grinned. ‘What does Mr Stalker think about you going for this new job?’

‘Jack?’ Phoebe asked. She’d never been able to convince Midnight that it was Maria who had instigated most of the stalking. And then Phoebe herself. If anyone was actually innocent of that moniker it was Jack. ‘He’s all for it; thinks it’s a good move for me.’

‘It’s funny…’ Midnight swung her legs as she sat atop the counter, ‘you say that I don’t talk to anyone at Hendry’s but you’re not exactly Mrs Sociable yourself, are you?’

‘I don’t need to be.’

‘Surely in promotions you have to be a bit jolly and friendly?’

‘I don’t think it’s all that important,’ Phoebe replied amiably. ‘I think the job is more about organising silly costumes and events for the rest of you minions. As promotions coordinator I have to dream up new and excruciating ways for you all to humiliate yourselves.’

‘See… you haven’t even got the job yet and all that power has gone to your head.’

‘I’ll go easy on my friends though. So you make sure you stay in my good books.’

‘Roger that!’ Midnight gave a neat salute. ‘Bagel and coffee for lunch, ma’am?’

‘Followed by a nice foot massage… maybe you can do something about my bunions while you’re at it.’

‘Don’t push it, blondie!’

Phoebe chuckled. From the corner of her eye she could see the car that Midnight had sent racing across the shop floor peeking out from beneath a shelving unit. She bent to pick it up and handed it over. ‘You’d better hide the evidence before Hitler comes back.’

Midnight leapt down from the counter and pocketed the car. On the way past a giant pink Barbie display she stopped and looked at the dolls thoughtfully. After doing an elaborate impersonation of an artist measuring up his subject, she began to rearrange two of them.

As she walked away from the stand, Phoebe looked over to see that Barbie and Ken were top-to-tail, lying on top of each other across the bonnet of a beach buggy.

‘You know Steve will kill you if he sees that,’ she laughed.

‘He won’t have any idea what they’re doing,’ Midnight replied carelessly. ‘Only people who’ve actually had sex would know, so that clearly exempts him.’

Phoebe shook her head with a smile as she watched her friend head to the stand where the toy cars belonged.

Scratching her head through a mop of bed-tousled hair, Phoebe yawned widely. Although… the word tousled implied something sexy, a little bit of effortless glamour. As she caught sight of herself in the mirror, she decided that this was more like the coconut matting she had out by the door of her flat. The inside of her mouth felt similar too. Inwardly, she cursed herself for getting so worked up about her impending interview. No matter how many times she had told herself that it didn’t matter whether she got this promotion or not, as she’d tossed and turned the previous night, running over every possible interview scenario in her head, she’d realised that it did. The fact was, she had the overwhelming feeling that it was somehow a tipping point in her life. It felt huge, like the break she had been waiting for, the final end to the run of depressing, dead-end jobs she’d had since school. This was the chance to get a proper career off the ground.

She had never been much for studying, although all her teachers had told her she was bright enough to go onto higher education, but there were days, as she had stood behind a crowded bar, or shoved a toilet brush down yet another urine streaked bowl, that she seriously regretted her decision not to. And then, after a few years, it had all felt too difficult to unpick. When Vik came along, she’d been so happy that it really didn’t matter what job she did as long as she came home to him at night. It was just another way in which Vik’s death had undone her life completely that first year. She’d been left without the man, without the education, without the career… without anything that made life worth living.

But Jack had ignited her spark again and now she wanted to get back on track. She was tired of feeling like a failure, of the pitying looks from people she bumped into from school, friends she had lost touch with who had gone on to bigger and better things. Even her own parents had that look when they asked her how work was going, on visits that were becoming increasingly rare: that ever-so-slightly disappointed smile when she replied. They told her they loved her and didn’t care if she worked in a sewer as long as she was happy. But Phoebe heard only their bitter disappointment in her life choices. They loved her, of course, but that was biological conditioning. It didn’t mean that they approved.

This year, she had resolved to change all that. Baby steps, she had told herself back in January and she had begun slowly. She had moved from the damp flat she had endured for three winters, where the walls crawled with mould that set off her asthma during every cold snap, and had taken a better one, closer to work. It was smaller than her old one, but that had kept the rent within her budget and what it lacked in space it more than made up for in cosiness. She had taken the opportunity to part with trinkets that meant too much: reminders of days gone by. It had been hard, but she began to see that if she held onto Vik’s CDs, his books, even his things in the bathroom cabinet, she would never be able to move on. She owed that much to Jack at least. It seemed strange to her at first that she never saw anything in his house that looked as though it had once belonged to Rebecca, Maria’s mother, but perhaps, she reasoned after a few visits, he had come to the same realisation much sooner than her. After all, Rebecca had been dead for five years. Phoebe wondered what her own thoughts and feelings about Vik would be after five years.

Despite her resolutions to stay focused, however, there were times, like now, when she wavered. She was beginning to wish she had accepted Jack’s offer the night before to stay over with him, but she’d known that if she did she would drink too much and stay up too late and wouldn’t have felt ready for the interview. As it turned out, the same thing had happened at her place, only she’d spent the evening alone when she could have been with Jack having a lot more fun being unable to sleep.

With a deep sigh, she wandered into the kitchen to retrieve her coffee and took a swig. She grimaced; she’d let it go cold while she’d stared into space feeling sorry for herself. At least she’d had the foresight to pack a decent outfit the night before to take with her today. Replies to her enquiries about the dress code for an internal interview had been vague at best, but somehow she felt that her usual Hendry’s uniform – a red polo shirt and black skinny jeans – weren’t going to give the right impression.

‘Morning, gorgeous! You’re just in time and I think it’s my turn to buy.’ Midnight handed Phoebe a coffee she had just lifted from the vending machine. Phoebe tried not to make her distaste too obvious as she peered into the cup. Midnight insisted on subjecting them to this ritual at least once a week, despite the fact that they had a kitchen equipped with a kettle and perfectly acceptable instant coffee from the corner shop.

‘It was either coffee or death by cyanide,’ Midnight said as she turned and punched in the code for her own drink. ‘I thought coffee would be kindest.’

‘I think I prefer the cyanide. Hand it over and stop hogging it all for yourself.’

Midnight laughed. ‘Are you nervous about today?’

‘About the interview? Of course not,’ Phoebe lied. ‘How hard can it be?’

‘What’s your presentation on?’ The machine whirred into life as it prepared Midnight’s drink, and she was distracted for a moment as she watched the milk squirt in with a hiss.

‘Presentation?’ Phoebe asked in a dazed voice, suddenly feeling as if her legs had been replaced by jelly replicas.

‘You did know they’d want one, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, of course…’

Midnight turned to Phoebe and raised her eyebrows. Phoebe’s lie crumbled instantly.

‘Well of course I bloody didn’t!’ she said. ‘What am I going to do?’

Midnight shrugged carelessly. ‘You’ll have to write one.’

‘This morning?’ Phoebe squeaked. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t think to tell me about this until now!’

‘Hang on a minute, how is this my fault? I thought you’d checked the application pack about a million times. At least, every time I’ve seen you this week you’ve had your nose buried in it.’

Phoebe took a scalding gulp of her coffee and winced. ‘I’m sorry… you’re right, of course. So why don’t I know?’ She mentally went through the interview paperwork now sitting on her dresser at home. She was as certain as she could be that there was no mention of a presentation. Had she somehow, despite her best efforts, managed to miss that bit? Had there had been a page missing? Whatever the answer, nothing was going to help her now.

‘Deep breath… Okay… So I have to write one this morning.’ She looked up at Midnight, who nodded acknowledgment to a male colleague who was hanging his coat on a peg. ‘What can I write about?’

‘Write about toys.’

‘Brilliant! Write about toys…’ Phoebe tried to rally her muddled thoughts into some sort of order. Toys was a rather vague and obvious subject area. What could she write about toys that would really fire them up? She supposed, anyway, that they would more likely want something incorporating promotions and PR and toys. She had no visual aids, no notes, no plan of any kind and her interview was straight after lunch. She would have to work for the whole morning too, down on the main shop floor at ground level, Steve’s favourite hunting ground, so no opportunity to sneak off and write something.

‘What if I do something about enthusiasm and how that’s like fifty… no, seventy-five percent of the battle when it comes to promotions?’ Phoebe said, brightening as the thought occurred to her. ‘Hearts and minds, you know?’

‘Sounds amazing. What are you going to do? A little song and dance number for them?’

Phoebe opened her mouth and then closed it again. Midnight took a sip of her coffee and continued to eyeball Phoebe as she waited for a reply.

‘I’ll do a rap!’

Midnight grinned. ‘Oh. My. God! I so wish I was in on that interview panel! Please, please, do the rap for me now!’

Phoebe gave her a sheepish smile. ‘You’re going to have to help me write it first.’

Throughout the morning, Phoebe and Midnight threw lines across the shop floor at each other and Phoebe wrote down the most promising ones, trying to get them into some form of rhythm and rhyme. What had started out as a stupid and desperate idea began to look less so. It was even becoming fun. Phoebe wondered whether the humiliation she had envisaged might actually give way to triumph. Nobody else’s presentation would be quite as original as hers, she was sure, and even though the thought of the performance had her running for the toilet every time it popped into her head, perhaps thinking outside the box (oh, yeah, she watched The Apprentice, she knew the buzzwords of success) could win her that job after all.

At lunch, Phoebe watched with some regret as Midnight finished off her chicken and sweet chilli wrap from the Bounty. Usually, the days when she got to fetch one of Stav’s legendary lunches from the local deli instead of her own paltry attempts at making sandwiches were a highlight of her week. Today, she had hoped that it would encourage at least some appetite in her, but she had picked at the edges and given up after two mouthfuls. She was often plagued by migraines if she skipped meals. Today, there was no way she could eat and she just hoped the adrenaline she was running on would be enough to see her through the next hour or so.

‘I think it’s more or less finished,’ Phoebe said, turning her attention back to her notepad as she chewed on the end of a pen.

‘I think you’ve got bigger balls than Steve going in with that,’ Midnight mumbled through a mouthful of chicken and rocket.

‘I don’t have much choice, do I? I really need to know how you knew about the presentation, and I didn’t.’

‘You have to wonder if someone in HR did it on purpose.’

Phoebe threw her a questioning look.

‘You know, maybe one of the other candidates is a mate or something, so they sabotaged everyone else’s pack…’

‘Great. I feel so much more confident now you’ve planted that little seed of doubt.’

‘Could happen.’ Midnight shrugged.

‘So how did you find out it was part of the interview if no-one else knew?’

‘I’m not saying no-one else knew. It’s just a hypothesis, you know? Anyway I heard Valerie Cox mention it to Steve the other day.’

‘Valerie Cox is going for it? She never said… bloody hell, she’s good and Steve actually likes her.’

‘Luckily for you, the decision isn’t Steve’s to make. You’ll be okay.’

Phoebe chewed her pen and read over the page again. ‘Perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘My mum always says things happen for a reason.’

‘So long as the reason isn’t someone else getting the job…’ Midnight crammed the last of the wrap into her mouth and chewed with a thoroughly contented look that reminded Phoebe of an alpaca she h