Jake was sitting staring vacantly at his computer screen when Pip sloped into the office.

‘Hey!’ Jake shouted over.

Pip stopped in his tracks and, after a noticeable hesitation, came towards him. Jake wondered briefly if his friend had been going straight to his desk instead of coming over to shoot the breeze as they normally did.

‘Hi,’ Pip said and sat on the corner of his desk.

‘Good weekend?’

‘Yeah,’ Pip said. ‘Not bad. You?’

Jake looked round. ‘Not great.’ Neve wasn’t at her desk. They’d travelled in together, but she’d disappeared the minute they’d arrived and was still nowhere in sight.

‘Home alone again?’

‘Yes,’ Jake said. He nibbled the end of his pen. ‘Is it me, mate? Am I being too demanding?’

‘Is that what she said?’

‘Not in as many words,’ Jake admitted, ‘but I think that’s what she’s getting at.’ Jake puffed out his cheeks. ‘I hate women. They’re just too…too…different.’

‘They’d be worse if they were the same as us, mate.’

‘Yeah.’ But maybe that was half the problem. Neve was exactly like a bloke. Not in the looks department, obviously—but she behaved like a bloke. She wanted to spend her weekends at the gym and out with her mates. She had no idea about shopping—unless it was in designer boutiques—and he didn’t think she’d ever been involved with the working end of a vacuum cleaner. There wasn’t a single duster in the apartment. It wasn’t that the place was a mess, far from it—but whoever cleaned it clearly had to bring all their own stuff with them. Women weren’t supposed to be like this. Lyssa had never been like this. Lyssa had tackled all domestic duties with something approaching joy. He was sure she had.

Jake opened the brown paper bag that Pip had put on his desk and examined the contents. ‘Mmm.’ He helped himself to a chocolate croissant while Pip looked on with a pained expression.

‘Still no food at Neve Towers?’

‘Cupboards full of the stuff,’ Jake said. He had actually eaten breakfast, but only because he’d spent a good part of his leisure time pushing a shopping trolley around the supermarket with all the other reluctantly domesticated mugs. Jake bit into the pastry. It was very tasty. ‘I’m doing this for the benefit of your waistline.’

‘You are charm itself,’ Pip said. ‘So what did you get up to?’

‘Tagged along after Neve at the gym, which I’m not sure she was overly keen on,’ he admitted. ‘Not so easy to flirt with the hunky instructors if you’ve got the old man in tow.’ Jake gave a philosophical shrug.