‘Have it.’ I thrust it at her. ‘Seriously, you more than deserve it. I insist !’

‘Okay, thank you, I accept !’

‘Pass me that other package. What is it?’ I read the sender’s details and exclaimed, ‘It’s my planting trowel!’

‘Open it!’

Like me, Brianna ‘dabbled’ in gardening.

Pulling the stainless-steel implement from its packaging, I bounced it in my hands. ‘Feel how light it is!’

She took it from me. ‘Even though the handle is cherrywood.’ We marvelled at such ergo-dynamic efficiency.

‘You can never have too many trowels,’ I said.

‘Or watering cans.’

‘Or hoes.’

‘Or shears.’

And it was the truth. Once you started down the path of buying gardening tools, there was always going to be something fancier, stronger, lighter, in a better metal, or in a nicer colour.

Like I said, I could get addicted to anything.

7

In the staff room, Carey-Jane was microwaving her revolting minestrone soup. The smell would stay on my clothes for the next seventy years. Hell is other people’s food. Trying to numb myself to the different stenches doing battle—Priya’s tuna bap, Yasmine’s beetroot salad—I ate my own (civic-minded, stench-free) hummus and crackers and zoned out for a while, thinking about Luke.

I’d see him tomorrow. Which was almost unimaginable. A wash of gratitude for Quin hit me.

Granted, my feelings for him weren’t what I’d felt for Luke. But how could they be? Quin wasn’t Luke. And I wasn’t the starry-eyed hopeful who’d fallen in love with Luke, but someone older and wiser.

Sometimes, when I considered that things with Quin might not have happened, I went cold.

The relief I’d felt during the LovingKindness exercise at the meditation weekend had been real—but in the twenty-four hours afterwards, I’d wondered if, actually, it had had anything to do with Quin? Perhaps it had just finally been time for me to forgive myself and Quin had appeared as a catalyst? ‘When the pupil is ready, the master will appear.’ (That’s the kind of thing we say in ‘personal-growth’ circles. Nola says it, Anna says it, even Brianna says it occasionally and she believes in nothing unless it can be signed for or filed.)

Less than two days after we’d met, Quin texted, then rang. ‘So. We should meet. Properly.’

His self-assurance was impressive. Entertaining, almost. But to say I was out of the habit with men was a giant understatement. In the previous year I’d gone on a couple of dates, once with a cousin of Brianna’s and another time with a colleague of Claire’s—but only because Brianna and Claire made me. It was no surprise that nothing further had ensued.

‘Let’s do an escape room,’ Quin said. ‘If things go south and we’ve nothing to say to each other, at least we’ll have fun trying to unlock the puzzle.’