‘Enough about that Twat-Faced Wank Chops,’ Sumi said, invoking her favourite nickname for him, before I could add fuel to the Patrick Parker conversation fire. ‘Are you excited for your first day at work?’

‘Nervously optimistic?’ I replied. Patrick’s message had worn the edges off my giddiness but I was still a bundle of happy nerves when I thought about it. ‘I’ve got loads of ideas, I think it’s going to be good.’

‘It’s going to be brilliant,’ she corrected. ‘Have fun, be amazing and do not spend the entire day thinking about Patrick “I’ve got a PhD and not in the dirty way” Parker.’

‘But also in the dirty way,’ I reminded her.

‘Thinking about his knob is not going to improve matters, so stop it,’ Sumi warned. ‘No thinking about him, no looking at photos of him and definitely no texting him. These are my commandments, Ros, I command thee. Thou hast been commanded.’

‘I’m sure I’ll be far too busy for him to even cross my mind,’ I assured her even though we both knew I could be put in charge of air traffic control at Heathrow and I’d still manage somehow. ‘I’ll talk to you later. Love you.’

‘Love you,’ Sumi replied. ‘Don’t text him!’

‘Sorry for all the smoke and mirrors yesterday,’ Ted said, leading me out of the bright and colourful PodPad HR office and down a markedly less bright and colourful staircase I hadn’t seen the day before. ‘But we’ve signed a million NDAs for this show and I couldn’t tell you anything until you’d signed a contract.’

‘No problem,’ I answered without hesitation, jogging closely behind him. Why were we leaving the Cool Office? Why was he leading me into the basement? ‘My curiosity is officially piqued. What’s the show about?’

Ted stopped at the bottom of the stairs and gave me a grin. ‘What was your last show about?’ he asked.

Someone enjoyed exercising power wherever he could find it.

‘The Book Report?’ I replied. ‘It was a culture show, book-based, obviously, clue’s in the name. The host interviewed a different author every week, asked them about their favourite books, you know, from different stages of their life. I developed it from scratch, got to work with the authors, the publishers, everything.’

He fumbled with an enormous ring full of keys and opened a heavy security door. ‘You like books?’

‘Yes,’ I nodded. ‘A lot. You?’

‘Eh,’ he grimaced as he pulled open the door in a pantomime of chivalry. ‘Not really a book man.’

Not really a book man.