Danielle and I started out as interns at the same radio station on the same day. We were first-day-of-school friends, joined at the hip and so excited. We took our tea breaks together, went for lunch at the same time, inhaled two-for-a-fiver cocktails at the Wetherspoons across the road, starry-eyed and rosy-cheeked and still so optimistic about our first forays into the job market. At least, we were for the first three months, then we realized we really didn’t have anything in common other than the place we went to work every day. Slowly, we stopped hanging out so much – fewer lunches, far less tea and eventually, zero cocktails – until Danielle left for another job and that was that. She faded into a shadowy existence as nothing more than a Facebook friend and a number in my phone I’d forgotten I even had.

‘I would love to have a proper chat but I’m on a plane and we’re about to take off,’ Danielle interrupted without pausing for breath. ‘We should have a real catch-up when I’m back but I have the most incredible opportunity of all time, I’d be doing it myself but I’m out of town for the next few weeks. PodPad needs a producer basically yesterday and I know you’d be insane at it. Is there any chance, the slightest possible hint of a chance, I might be able to tempt you to come and work for me?’

‘PodPad?’ I repeated. ‘You’re at PodPad?’

‘Babes, I’m running PodPad,’ she laughed. ‘The programming at least.’

I knew PodPad. I turned down a job at PodPad to take the job in DC.

‘That’s amazing,’ I told her, the sound of a politely irritated flight attendant asking her to end her call crackling through my phone’s speaker. ‘I’m so pleased for you.’

‘It’s pretty wonderful,’ she agreed. ‘So, producer job. Are you interested?’

‘Um, I’d love to hear more about it,’ I replied, trying very hard not to sound as desperate as I felt. What if she wanted to know why I’d left? What if she wanted a reference?

‘You’re incredible, this is the most incredible thing that has ever happened,’ she cheered down the phone. Danielle, I remembered, was prone to hyperbole. ‘Can you come in tomorrow?’

‘Yes, absolutely,’ I confirmed, pushing negative thoughts away. ‘Let me know when and where and I’m there.’

I thought back to a chapter of Starting Over I’d read at three a.m. while the foxes behind my shed rogered each other senseless. This is what happened when you stayed positive. Take your time, stop running. Stand still and the clouds will clear, allow life to show you the way.