My head was such a jumbled mess of beauty products and saying my private farewells to The Silver Ness News and its supportive community that I decided to temporarily park any thoughts about further investigations of Merry Wood and Lily Cruickshank.

There would be plenty of time to return to that particular puzzle once I started at Goddess.

My leaving lunch on that Friday in October, my last day with the paper, was a tearful event.

Doug, Frances, and I enjoyed delicious seafood overlooking Silver Ness beach, with its chilly water rushing onto the sand and the odd creak of salt-washed boats.

The restaurant, Something Fishy, was all cherry-wood dining tables, with fishing nets artfully draped across the walls and twinkling fairy lights decorating its alcoves.

Doug and Frances presented me with a mocked-up and framed front page of some of my more memorable news stories. There was the time I got up at silly o’clock to go out on a shift with Silver Ness’ most successful fishing trawler and another article I wrote about trying to become a dog behaviourist with Silver Ness’ award-winning dog trainer. You only had to look at Harley to see how that turned out!

They also gave me a gorgeous gold and blonde-wood pen, engraved with my initials.

I swallowed hard, tears cluttering up my eyes. The anaemic autumnal sun was flitting across the top of the sea in an almost biblical fashion.

Frances leant forward and bundled me into her arms, before Doug scraped his chair out opposite and gave me a peck on the cheek. He coughed. “Here’s to the future of The Silver Ness News. Ok, it won’t be how we remember it.” He sank back down in his chair and picked up his wine glass, forced joviality in abundance. “But here’s to new beginnings for all of us.”

I felt as if I had been thrown into someone else’s life and told to get on with it or drown.

Instead of sitting with Frances and Doug in our cosy little newsroom with its delicious smell of newspaper print and coffee, I was now seated at a baby-pink and white frosted glass desk that would have looked at home inside a doll’s house.

Everyone on the Goddess team seemed pleasant enough, if a little serious and self-satisfied and once Orion, Athena’s PA, had taken me around and made the introductions, she had escorted me to my new desk.

I was surrounded by lethal-looking flowers and glass pillars. My stunned freckled expression stared back.

I mentally ran through the names and faces of my new work colleagues. That was odd. Surely there was a beauty editor on the team who I would be working for? I searched my brain for the colleague introductions I had just received. I didn’t remember Orion saying anything about one of them being the beauty editor.