It was mid-afternoon and I was sitting behind the reception desk ignoring the rolling news on the TV screen that the boss insisted should be on at all times and reading Night and Day by Virginia Woolf. Growing up in Rodmell, Woolf had been a constant presence, a relic whose death had cast a shadow over the village, and because of that I’d avoided reading any of her work. I imagined the novels would be rather snobbish, full of dull descriptions of high tea and London society, but after I was sent away I found a big pile of them in the library. There wasn’t much choice. It was either Woolf or a stack of romance novels, so I picked up Mrs Dalloway and when I started to read I realized how wrong my assumptions about Woolf had been. There was something in her voice that made it feel like she was speaking directly to me. The writer who I’d thought of as dusty and as irrelevant as a museum relic slowly became my confidante. After that, whenever I was feeling tense or anxious I would pick up one of her books and the darkness would recede. The day I met Sean was one of those days.

I heard someone clear their throat. I quickly hid the book under a file then looked up and saw a man smiling at me.

‘Sorry to disturb,’ he said, a faint trace of Irish in his accent. ‘My name’s Sean Allan. I’m here for an interview with Stewart Jacob.’

He smiled warmly and I felt myself begin to blush. He had the most captivating blue eyes with thick, dark lashes. The navy-blue pin-stripe suit he was wearing was beautifully tailored and his light-brown hair was cut in an Edwardian style, long on the top and short at the sides. I found myself getting flustered as I arranged a visitor badge for him and put in the call to Stewart Jacob’s office to let them know he’d arrived. I hadn’t had this reaction to a man for a long time, not since Ben. In fact, I hadn’t even looked at a man properly. Never let myself.

‘If you’d like to take a seat, Stewart will be with you in a moment,’ I said, my face reddening under his gaze.

‘If it’s all right with you I’ll just stand here,’ he said, adjusting his tie. ‘I’ve been sitting on the tube for an age. Need to stretch my back.’

He laughed and I smiled at him awkwardly.

‘What are you reading?’ he said after a moment of silence.

‘Sorry?’

‘When I came in you were reading a book,’ he said. ‘Just wondered what it was. I’m always after a good recommendation.’

‘Oh, that,’ I said, taking the book from under the file. ‘It’s er … just a Virginia Woolf novel.’