Giles had texted mid-afternoon to apologise for radio silence over the weekend and to ask if I fancied meeting him in town for a drink after work. He suggested The Cheshire Cheese, a favourite haunt of his, conveniently located for both my office and my former Hotwells home, and somewhere he and I had met often when I was still with Jason.

I had replied with an immediate ‘yes’, despite feeling as anxious about seeing him as I was eager. Because although I now felt ready to talk through Friday evening – and was keen to find out whether he thought his relationship with Kerry might be salvageable – I was not at all looking forward to telling him that I planned to resign. I knew he’d try to talk me out of it, but while I respected him way too much to hand in my notice before updating him, I was nevertheless determined to go through with it. As far as I was concerned, my relationship with Alison Gerrard Ltd was broken and irreparable and, that being the case, I felt that the sooner it was over and I could pick up my career elsewhere, the better.

Cameron was out of the office all afternoon, making the day not quite as unbearable as it might otherwise have been. But it was still grim enough for me to be heading for the lifts by five fifteen, to the obvious, but silent, surprise of Roger, whose eyebrows were slightly more raised than usual as he waved goodbye. Luke, meanwhile, paid more vocal attention to my early and rapid departure, yelling various quips after me about getaway cars, hot dates and an appointment to view a retirement home – all of which I ignored.

In terms of meeting Giles, I had no need to dash off so early. He had already told me that he was unlikely to be at the pub much before seven, and that six thirty would be the absolute earliest he could get there. But Cameron or no Cameron, I needed to get away from the office and I had judged that half an hour or so on my own with a glass of wine before Giles arrived would be no bad thing, as I braced myself for a post-mortem of Friday and for his reaction to my decision to resign.

However, within mere seconds of entering the pub, it became horribly plain that that plan was not going to pan out.