I sniffled. ‘My heart is wondering if I’m making excuses because I’m a big, fat wimp who’s scared she’s going to mess this up as badly as her current job. My heart thinks that it’s made so many stupid mistakes that it can’t be trusted any more.’

‘Maybe your heart simply can’t bear the thought of being employed by Baxter Bighead.’

That made me smile. ‘That, too.’

‘You’ll figure it out in the end.’

‘In the end is tomorrow, so I really might not.’

‘Okay, if your heart doesn’t help, let’s try your head. A list of pros and cons. At the very least it can reveal which pro or con matters most.’

While I poured us more tea he used an app on his phone to create a table with two columns. ‘Okay. Pros for taking the job.’

I quickly ran through the things I’d already gone over. The work I’d be doing, the career opportunity… the money and other perks, blah, blah, blah…

‘Anything else?’

Yes, there was one more potential pro of taking this job and moving to London. While I was still trying to come up with a convincing way of pretending that, no, there were no more pros, because mentioning this one to Henry would make me feel itchy, there was a knock on the back door and the pro let himself in.

‘Hello!’ Adam called, stopping dead for a microsecond when he saw Henry and me sitting at the table. ‘Oh. Hi. There you are.’

He took a few swift steps over to me, bent down, and kissed the top of my head, handing me the enormous bunch of flowers he was carrying as his face creased in sympathy. ‘How are you?’

‘Yeah, you know. Just waiting for more news. Um, I’ll put these in a vase.’ I spent half a minute longer than necessary hunting for a vase in the dresser cupboard, then busied myself arranging the yellow and pink roses and adding water. Seeing Adam still kicked a jolt of adrenaline into my bloodstream.

‘Any update on Nana Joy?’

‘She’s stable, but we won’t know more until she wakes up.’

‘Right. Wow. Is she likely to do that soon?’

‘I don’t know. We don’t know anything, really.’

Adam looked as though he was waiting for me to say more, but I was wrung out from thinking about it and really didn’t want to go over it again.

‘I’ll leave you to it.’ Henry gave a polite nod as he got up and left.

As soon as we were alone, Adam came over to give me a hug. It was a weird sort of side-hug due to me still holding the vase, but that seemed about right all things considered.

‘I wondered if you wanted to go for a walk, maybe get a drink somewhere? It could help take your mind off things.’