‘That’s my girl,’ he’d said happily. ‘Now you’re officially more qualified than your old dad.’

With sudden sadness she thought how much she missed him. She missed his rock-sure belief in her, the way he’d bolstered her confidence if she ever doubted her capabilities.

She had ten minutes to go before getting off the train when her mobile buzzed. It was a text from Jason.

I’d like you to give the pitch to Topolino when the time

comes.

Great, she texted back. I’ll look forward to it.

Now why had he chosen her, she wondered?

Was he testing her? If so, she might fail as right now her mind was a complete blank when it came to any kind of angle. Which her father would say was a sign that she just had to recalibrate and approach the problem from a different perspective.

She was in her car and driving out of the station car park when she remembered her mother still hadn’t returned her WhatsApp message about the weekend. It was the strangest thing, but for a while now Mum had been uncharacteristically bad at staying in touch. Previously she’d always been so reliably quick to reply, but not anymore.

Martha hoped her mother hadn’t gone silent because there was a problem she was keeping quiet about. That would be so typical of Mum, not wanting to cause a fuss or a bother.

Chapter Six

Willow had been told by her supervisor at Acts of Kindness – AoK – that she had the potential to be one of their star performers.

‘You have a natural way of speaking to people,’ Kyle had said during her training period. ‘People open up to you. Do you know why? It’s because you listen, and you have empathy. And that’s not something you can teach. So be sure to make good use of that skill.’

The trouble was, this so-called empathy of hers was working against Willow and consequently she wasn’t hitting her targets. It was just a dry spell, she told herself; it happened to them all here. She had joined AoK just over three months ago, full of enthusiasm at the prospect of being a part of something that was helping to make the world a better place. It had seemed like the perfect job for her – flexible hours, a short walk away from where she was living, and being a member of a team that believed in what it was doing. But there was a downside to the job; too often she felt sorry for the people she had to call. Sometimes she even felt a bit ashamed.

‘You have to think of the bigger picture,’ Kyle had said when she had voiced her concerns. ‘These are people who genuinely care about the causes they already support; all you’re doing is giving them a little nudge to encourage them to increase their donations. Most people are only too happy to do it.’

He was right. Many of those who were ‘continuous givers’ saw it as their moral duty to increase the amount of money they donated. Just keeping up with inflation, was one way of looking at it.