Twenty minutes later we’d agreed a regular news item, covering the region’s environmental and community issues, a weekly catch-up on some of the people who I mentioned in my forecasts and how their events or activities had gone, as well as several other features online, and a promise to cover the Charis House funding campaign.

‘What time do you finish this evening?’ Mike asked, once we’d shaken on it.

‘I usually leave by seven-thirty. You should really know that.’

‘We can sign the contract over dinner.’ He threw out a smirk and a wink that had every muscle in my body clenching in distaste.

‘Emailing it through will be fine.’

‘Your loss,’ he muttered, back on his phone before I’d had time to stalk out of there.

No, Mike, it really isn’t.

I spent a good portion of the evening posting messages about a big announcement the next day in between follow-up conversations with various people I’d contacted earlier on. The rest was spent alternating between pacing up and down and sprawling on the sofa with a cushion over my face while trying not to agonise about the two men who’d so rudely invaded my head space over the past week.

Tomorrow was New Year’s Eve, and once the planned dramatics were over, I was going to stick to my commitment to see if there really was anything worth salvaging with Adam. But I knew my heart wasn’t in it. My heart couldn’t stop wondering what Henry would be doing to celebrate the New Year, and whether he would be wondering about me.

32

I caught an early train the following morning, and Dad picked me up from the Hatherstone bus stop.

‘Any new additions to the schedule?’ he asked as we bounced down the drive.

‘No, still BBC Breakfast at eight-twenty, Lorraine at nine-fifteen and then back to the BBC for the lunchtime news. I’ll need to catch the two o’clock train to be in time for work, but Jed should be back not long after that.’ I checked my phone for the hundredth time that morning, but so far there was no breaking news about Nana Joy, or the school. ‘Have you managed to persuade anyone else to be there?’

‘You could say that. Things have been rather hectic since you left yesterday.’

‘Oh?’

He merely nodded up ahead, where the main house was coming into view around the corner. A huge banner had been strung between the pillars flanking the front door, ‘Save our School’ emblazoned across the background. There were numerous cars spilling out of the car park and into any other space they could find, along with two news vans. I spotted a few of the other staff members, along with dozens of pupils, past and present, accompanied by various family members, milling about in the grounds.

‘What’s this?’ I asked, utterly dumbfounded.