Tara looked at him. Was it?

‘Tara, I think we can do something really special here,’ he went on. ‘Not just repair what’s been damaged, but make it even better.’ His eyes twinkled with good humour. ‘Something everyone can be proud of.’

‘I hope so,’ she said, because she couldn’t think of anything simultaneously literal and profound.

Keith smiled, and slipped his sunglasses out of his top pocket. ‘Would you do me a huge favour, Tara? I’ve never met a committee that didn’t have some inside track, and it would help me enormously if we could have dinner beforehand. I don’t need to know where the bodies are buried, so to speak. Just … whether there are any bodies.’

‘OK,’ she said. The words came out without thinking, but the sky didn’t fall in when she said them. She could always cancel.

‘Thank you.’

Tara stepped back before he could try to kiss her goodbye. To his credit, Keith didn’t flinch, but just smiled. Sadly? She wasn’t sure.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said.

And there he was, thought Tara, as he headed to the car. Dad, back in her life. It was as easy as that.

CHAPTER TEN

‘When was the announcement about the homebrew competition? Was that on the Summer Party poster? Because I didn’t see it.’

Self-conscious already in her Summer Party outfit, Tara stared in horror at the array of multicoloured bottles lined up on the table nearest the canapes. They ranged from a startling yellow to a murky green, in a variety of recycled containers. It looked like a sample selection from the UTI clinic in Sodom and Gomorrah.

‘It was on the invitation. Great British Brew Off. But it’s optional,’ Jacqueline added. ‘No one expected you to join in, not with your current workload.’

Tara wasn’t even sure she’d seen an invitation. Verbal invitation, yes, but a proper one … That might explain how the Summer Party had crept up on her so quickly this year. She raked through her memory. It might have got lost in the admin pile, now rammed in the third drawer down in her desk. She’d left a tiny stack of paperwork for show in the in-tray. Tara had a reputation for efficiency in the office, which was, these days, largely down to her desk having more drawers than anyone else’s.

‘I mean, it’s wonderful that you’ve dressed up!’ Jacqueline added. ‘Very … festive!’