Dean is walking behind me and as he gets nearer I hear him whistling softly under his breath. I turn and grin at him. He winks at me. ‘That’s better,’ he says. ‘It’s the first time I’ve seen you smile. I hope there’s going to be more where that came from.’

‘I think so,’ I answer and a weight lifts from my heart. My little friend skips along beside me, her tiny hand so trusting in mine as she leads me along and I suddenly realise that my nerves have melted clean away. My step is confident and free. Dean grins back at me. I haven’t felt this light or carefree in a very long time. There’s a serious danger that I might actually be enjoying myself.

Dean reaches down to Sajani and swings her onto his strong shoulders, both of them chattering away in Nepalese.

‘What is she saying?’ I ask when I hear Dean laugh.

‘Sajani thinks you are a very beautiful woman,’ he answers. Then he catches my eye. ‘And I told her that I agree.’

I’m so shocked that I nearly fall off the path and into the paddy field. Dean and Sajani giggle again as he grabs me and holds me steady.

‘Hey,’ Dean says, ‘I’d better keep my compliments to myself if that’s the effect they have. We don’t want any accidents on your first day. Otherwise, I might have to swing you up onto my shoulders too.’

‘I’m fine,’ I say, straightening my baseball cap with a nervous cough. ‘Absolutely fine. Just fine.’

I wonder what my sister would think if she could see me now.

Chapter twenty-nine

Chapter twenty-nine

‘Have we arranged to meet here so that you can tell me why you’ve got a pouty lip?’ Pip crossed his legs and sipped at his Peroni beer.

Jake gazed out of the window of the Pig in Muck pub, out over a road gridlocked by taxis in every shade of the rainbow except the traditional black. This was a trendy place where advertising and media types mingled with City boys in the meagre fifteen minutes that generally counted as a lunch-break. It could take all of that time to get served in here. Today they had been lucky. Two beers and two rather limp sausage sandwiches were providing adequate sustenance. Jake chewed on his before he said thoughtfully: ‘My heart is a burdened thing.’

‘Oh dear,’ Pip said. ‘This doesn’t sound good.’

Jake turned from the window, returning his wistful stare to his friend instead. ‘You know that Neve nicked the egg project from under my nose.’

‘I did know that, I’m afraid,’ Pip told him.

Jake sighed heavily.

‘I’d be very careful there,’ his friend warned. ‘She’s stolen your heart and now she seems to be working the same magic on your client portfolio.’

‘You don’t trust her, do you?’