‘Yeah.’ Pip and he had worked together at the Dunston & Bradley Advertising Agency for the last five years. In theory Pip was senior to him, but Jake had no intention of letting it stay like that for too much longer. Out of the two of them, Jake was the more obviously mean and hungry. Pip gave the impression of being laid-back, but behind the foppish exterior of velvet chalk-stripe suits and purple shirts there lurked a superbly twisted and razor-sharp brain capable of the most obscure lateral thinking and resulting brilliant marketing campaigns. Everyone assumed Pip was heavily reliant on cocaine for his inspiration, but his particular vices were nothing more serious than the occasional six-pack of John Smith’s beer and licking the coating off Pringles.

‘Whichever way you look at it, it’s a very messy business,’ Jake complained.

Pip nodded sagely. ‘And it’s going to get messier.’

His friend was probably right. That was the most annoying thing about Pip, he usually was. Jake wasn’t sure how this whole thing with Neve had started—actually, that was a complete lie, he was sure. The fact was, the whole of the male contingent of the office thought she was totally horny, and he’d been ridiculously flattered that he was the one she’d shown attention to. ‘Shown attention to’ in that at a fabulously trendy launch-party at the Soho nightclub Snappers, she’d pressed her finger to his lips and silently led him into the ladies’ toilets where, less silently, she’d had sex with him standing up in a cramped cubicle. He could get an erection just thinking about it. And their dangerous liaison had sort of progressed since then. Dangerous because if either Lyssa or their bosses at work found out about it they’d both be for the chop—and Lyssa’s version of it would be a lot more painful and would make fatherhood an even more difficult concept in the future. But then wasn’t the fear of discovery part of the attraction of these things? Heaven knows, he was the last person to think about analysing the reasons—all of his life was spent focussed on his nether regions for one reason or another at the moment. At least in this situation there wasn’t a bunch of doctors overseeing him and telling him he wasn’t good enough. Neve seemed to think he was perfectly adequate.

The work issue was a worry though. He loved his job and was damn good at it, but fraternising between colleagues—other than a sociable Vodka Absolut—was considered a sackable offence. Gross misconduct his contract said. And some of the things that he and Neve had done could certainly be considered gross misconduct.