‘Not really.’ Pauline’s whole body was shaking, which made the sunglasses on top of her head look unstable.

‘I’m not meant to do this, but, come round.’ Janet signalled to the door that gave access to employees who worked the tills. Pauline nodded gratefully and she slipped around the side. Janet lifted the latch, which kept her and the money she took daily, safe, and let Pauline in. She was dabbing her eyes with a tissue that she’d removed from her brown leather handbag.

‘I didn’t mean to upset you,’ Janet sniffed, feeling a pang of guilt.

‘It’s not your fault. Everything is just such a mess.’ She collapsed on a tatty beige office chair, which groaned under the weight of her wide hips. Janet chewed her crusty bottom lip, while keeping half an eye on the punters standing around in the shop.

‘I don’t know where it all went wrong.’ Pauline sniffed back more tears. ‘It started off as a good idea.’ Janet nodded, not having a clue what Pauline was talking about. ‘The business, it’s sinking.’

Janet had a vague recollection of Pauline talking about a business that she and Roger had started, but couldn’t for the life of her remember anything about it. ‘It was such a good idea. It could have set us up for our retirement. That was the plan.’ Pauline looked at the rose gold wedding ring on her finger and started to fiddle with it.

‘Get it off your chest.’ Janet managed to sound sincere, even if she was only asking out of nosiness.

‘Well, you know, the van cost us a lot of money, but we saw it as an investment.’ Suddenly, it all came flooding back to Janet. Pauline and her husband, Roger, had bought a van and wanted to set up a mobile library. Now, this in itself wasn’t a new idea, but Pauline had had the brainwave of lending Kindles rather than paperbacks. The idea was that borrowers would request the book they wanted and, rather than storing hundreds of physical books, it would be downloaded to an eBook device.

Roger, who had been a teacher, was retired, and when Pauline stopped working at WH Smith she’d had the brainwave to start the business. It had been something she’d been considering for a while.

Determined to make a real go of it, the couple had mortgaged their house and bought an expensive state-of-the-art van and a vast number of Kindles. Roger had no real passion for books but was enthusiastic about the business potential. After splashing the cash, the business had hit a bump in the road. The minor detail that Pauline had overlooked, was that people were perfectly capable of buying their own Kindles and downloading the books themselves. Within a year of starting the business they had found themselves in serious financial difficulty.