Page 10 of Six Days

‘Miss Fletcher… Gemma. The panel are ready for you now.’

Like a spectator at a tennis match, my eyes flitted from her to the man standing before me.

‘I’m afraid you have a half-hour wait until your next one, Finn,’ apologised the young woman, whose entire demeanour had softened as she looked at the man standing between us. ‘Let me just check there’s still enough coffee in the urn.’

I waited until she was safely out of earshot before leaning in close enough to identify the aftershave he’d applied that morning. ‘You don’t work here,’ I hissed.

‘Not yet,’ he replied with a grin.

Ignoring a very disturbing temptation to slap him, I leant even closer. ‘Then why did you say you did?’

‘I believe, if you think back, you’ll realise that I didn’t. You just jumped to the wrong conclusion. You do seem to be a pretty impulsive kind of person.’

It was a hugely inaccurate description of me, but I was still at the open-mouthed, goldfish stage where a perfect put-down was beyond me.

‘I’m here for the same reason as you are, for the feature writer position,’ he added unnecessarily, something I’d already worked out by then.

‘Finn Douglas,’ he said, holding out his hand. I made no move to take it.

‘Are you ready, Gemma?’ asked the assistant, apparently unaware of the bristling tension between two of the candidates for the job.

‘Good luck. Break a leg,’ my annoying rival called out cheerfully as we left the room.

‘Aw, that was really nice of him, wasn’t it?’ declared the assistant, so smitten I could practically see a halo of tiny cartoon hearts circling her head.

‘Lovely,’ I muttered darkly.

*

‘He couldn’t have beenthatbad,’ declared Hannah, determinedly chasing the last sweet-and-sour pork ball around the carton with a chopstick.

‘No. He was worse. I have never met such a smug, conceited and obnoxious person in my entire life. Luckily, that was the last time we were alone together, but you should have seen the other candidates fawning all over him, like he was God’s gift or something. And when I left after my interview, there he was, busily chatting up the gorgeous receptionist.’ I shuddered as though physically repulsed.

‘Ah, so he was good-looking then?’ Hannah asked, giving up on her quest and harpooning the elusive morsel before popping it into her mouth.

‘Why would you even ask that?’ I said in despair, pushing aside the remains of the consolatory Chinese takeaway Hannah had insisted I deserved after my despondent return from the interview.

‘Because,’ Hannah said, leaning back against the settee and twirling an imaginary Poirot-style moustache, ‘you sound exactly like someone who has had their pigtails pulled by the cheeky, popular boy in the school playground.’

I rose from my cross-legged position on the opposite side of our coffee table with a grace that had totally deserted me earlier in the day. ‘I can see what you’re doing,’ I said, bending to gather up the accumulation of largely empty aluminium trays. ‘You’re trying to turn this into something they make Netflix movies about. This was no meet cute. It was more of a meet want-to-punch-on-the-nose.’

Hannah chortled softly. ‘This guy really got under your skin, didn’t he? Shame you’re unlikely ever to see him again, isn’t it?’

It must have been a bad prawn or something that made my stomach flip unexpectedly. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Well, they were only looking foronefeature writer, weren’t they? So it doesn’t matter who they pick, there’s no reason you’ll ever cross paths with that Finn guy again, is there?’

6

Hannah parked her car in Finn’s allocated bay because, as William had correctly informed us, it was empty. As soon as she’d engaged the handbrake I was out of the vehicle, heading not towards the two low steps that led to the entrance, but following a paved footpath that skirted the edge of the building. Adjacent to an area where the residents’ dustbins were stored was a small section of crazy paving that bordered what might once have been a flowerbed – although I’d only ever seen it chock full of weeds and nettles.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ asked Hannah, her shadow falling over me when I dropped to a crouch beside the overgrown foliage. ‘For goodness’ sake, Gemma, get up, you’re going to get your dress filthy.’

‘Becausethatwould be the worst thing that could possibly happen to me today,’ I countered, squinting in the late-afternoon sunlight as I looked up at her.

Her face twisted at my words and she dropped down on to her haunches beside me. ‘What exactly are we looking for?’ She’d lowered her voice to a whisper, as though we were involved in something clandestine. Which I suppose istechnicallyhow illegally entering someone else’s property is usually described.

The first stone on the path wouldn’t budge, nor the one beside it. There was now a thick layer of dirt beneath the pale pink nails I’d spent over an hour having filed, buffed and polished the day before. Was I misremembering that conversation from months earlier? I shook my head and heard Finn’s voice as clearly as if he were crouched down beside me. ‘After I’d locked myself out for a second time, I decided to stash a spare key under the crazy paving,’ he’d said, lifting up a loose stone and showing me his secret hiding place.

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