She hears the sound of the front door opening on the ground floor, and tentative footsteps walking towards the stairs.

‘Layla?’

Surprised, she peers down the staircase and sees Jemima.

‘They’re wasting your time,’ Layla calls out. ‘I’ve already told Grayson what I want.’

Jemima reaches her, holding a takeaway coffee. ‘Everyone says you’d be a fool not to take the job back.’

‘Why, when I can get a redundancy package instead?’

‘Enough to pay a paralegal?’ Jemima asks.

Layla can’t hide her surprise.

Jemima gives her a look. ‘Offer me a job or you’ll end up with someone like that crap paralegal from Leeds who couldn’t understand your writing.’

She holds out the coffee. ‘Latte with half a sugar?’

Layla can’t help a smile.

‘What else do we need?’ Jemima asks.

We. Paralegal: tick.

Her phone beeps again. ‘If you’re going to work for me, start by reading this.’ She hands the phone to Jemima. ‘And if it’s a threat, delete it.’

Jemima studies the screen. ‘Sounds more like a come-on than a threat.’

‘Jimmy?’

‘Nope. Someone called Rachel.’

Layla’s heartbeat is back to out of control. Forgive me, Jimmy, she thinks, but a come-on from Rachel Ballyntine is what I need at the moment. ‘What does it say?’

‘Let’s do this.’

Bee came to stay with Bish and even took him out for brunch at an old church converted to a café on Westferry Road.

‘My treat,’ she said when they were seated at an outside table. It was one of London’s drearier autumn days and Bish and Bee couldn’t have been happier with the weather as they enjoyed spectacular eggs and coffee under a filthy sky.

‘Is this because you’re impressed that I sort of saved your girlfriend?’ he asked, reaching over for the last of her bacon.

She sipped her coffee before answering. ‘First, she’s not my girlfriend. Second, you didn’t sort of save her, you did actually save her.’

Not according to Grazier. ‘We’d rather you don’t get identified as having anything to do with what happened in Calais yesterday,’ he’d told Bish on the phone. Bee had found out from Marianne.

‘Anyway, I was impressed long before that,’ Bee said. ‘When you rolled around in the rubbish with Gorman at the campground.’

‘Really? I was oblivious to impressing you for a couple of weeks?’

‘No. You haven’t impressed me for a couple of weeks, you impressed me a couple of weeks ago. Bum crack showing and all.’ Bish could tell she was trying not to laugh. ‘Even Crombie admitted you weren’t as useless as you looked. He was also impressed.’

‘With the bum crack?’

This time she did laugh. But then she set her coffee cup down on a precise spot. ‘I’m going to tell you something and you can’t get mad.’

There was a look in her eye that said he wasn’t here for a treat. ‘I can’t promise you that, Bee.’

‘Of course you can.’