As the main weather presenter for our local, East Midlands news, I covered most of the lunchtime and early evening news programmes as well as updating the website and apps and writing any additional weather-related stories. When a few months ago Summer had joined the team straight out of drama school, I’d imagined we’d develop some sort of mentor-mentee relationship where I passed on my meteorological expertise, gained from an environmental studies degree, a year training at the Met Office, and a lifelong passion.

She’d be grateful for the time and investment I was willing to offer, and we’d swiftly become friends. Fellow women cheering each other on in the cut-throat world of broadcasting.

That wasn’t quite how things had turned out.

While I wanted to blame Summer’s passive-aggressive snarkiness on her five a.m. starts, I suspected it was more of a basic personality trait than unsociable work hours.

And as for the recent performance ‘hiccups’? They were nothing to do with my ability to provide weather reports. My aim was to make people feel as though I were a friend who’d popped round to tell them exactly what they needed to know about the forecast, and my popularity ratings showed how much viewers appreciated my answering their queries live on air. But after I’d broken up with my boyfriend Adam in June, my organisational skills had taken a hit. I’d missed a couple of important meetings and got the wrong deadline for a feature on local flooding. While my producer had initially been understanding about my eleven-year relationship coming to an abrupt end, I had been firmly informed last month that I had Christmas week off to rest with the proviso that I’d be returning back to my ‘old self’.

While no one who’d met my family would consider a week at Charis House anything close to restful, someone did once say that a change was as good as a rest, and it was certainly nothing like my usual life.

‘I guess you’d better be off, then,’ Summer said. ‘Wouldn’t want you to get caught in the snowstorm.’

‘The snow won’t hit us for at least a couple of hours,’ I said, deferring to Walter’s prediction. ‘Why are you here, anyway? Didn’t you leave straight after lunch?’

It was then that I noticed her outfit. While I tended to push the boundaries of the dress code with fun, personal touches like flowery headscarves or, as in today’s case, the snowflake tights, Summer stuck to shift dresses and suits. This evening she was in a silver sheath dress with a neckline that dipped below her ribcage in a sharp V and a hemline revealing several inches of toned thigh. Because I tried to avoid looking her in the face, I’d also not spotted the sweep of dark eyeliner and fake lashes, or the scarlet pout.