Sighing, he grabbed a glass of water and headed upstairs. He should probably email Tom and touch base before he went to bed, but he just wanted to black out and forget the evening. As debut dinners in the constituency went, this one had been memorable – in the end, for all the wrong reasons.

Loosening his bow tie and shrugging off his dinner jacket, he placed both over the chair in his bedroom and then shed the rest of his clothes. His body was buzzing as much as his mind was, and when he glanced in the mirror to take out his contact lenses, he was struck by how flushed his face was – and he’d not even been drinking. Holly had really got under his skin. Should he text her? Or should he let things calm down between them and try to speak to her when they’d both had a bit of breathing space? Perhaps he should calm down too.

Sighing, he decided on a cold shower and a good night’s sleep. Perhaps then he’d be able to face Holly tomorrow.

23

‘I can’t believe you let that twat wind you up,’ Rachel chided the next morning when she popped round for a post-mortem of the grisly night before. ‘Miles has always had it in for you, ever since you bought this place. Why on earth would you let him get to you so badly last night?’

‘I suppose I was wound up already at the thought of going to the thing, and I’d held my tongue so much all night, that Miles just pushed me over the edge.’ Holly shook her head. The remnants of a Prosecco-induced hangover were pounding at her temples and the matcha tea was making her feel nauseated rather than improving things. She cast around the shop for her supply of milk thistle leaves, which made the best hangover cure, since the matcha wasn’t cutting it.

‘Why don’t you get your head down for an hour?’ Rachel said. ‘I can mind this place for a bit longer – I don’t have to pick Harry up from nursery until twelve thirty.’

‘How’s he settling in?’ Holly asked.

‘Loving it,’ Rachel said. ‘Can’t wait to get there in the mornings. Makes me feel quite redundant, actually!’

‘As if,’ Holly snorted. ‘But I’m glad he’s getting on well.’

Harry was a lively and outgoing little boy, who seemed to take everything in his stride, and the nursery school had been more than reassuring about making sure he took his Creon at snack times, and alerting Rachel if any of the other children had particularly bad coughs or colds. A simple cold, if Harry was to catch it, could rapidly turn into an infection, which meant, at the very least, a round of antibiotics, or, worse, a hospital stay.