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“Morning, Scarlett, glad to see you made it in at last,” he said, brushing past me. He placed some papers on Mrs. Jameson’s desk. “This is the account I was telling you about, Dorothy. Can you check the invoices back from August, please?”

“I’m not late,” I said, looking at my watch. “Actually I think you’ll find I’m early, Dad.”

“That makes a change,” he mumbled as he searched through a filing cabinet.

Mrs. J rolled her eyes at me and mouthed the words “bad mood” while my father had his back to her. So I carried on through to the tiny room Dad and I shared as an office. I heard the door close behind me.

“Good weekend?” my father inquired, as he thumbed through the files he was carrying.

“Er, not too bad,” I answered cautiously. I figured this was probably not the best of times to mention Maddie’s idea. In fact, now I was back here again, I realized it was likely there neverwasgoing to be a good time. So I decided that the best plan for now was just getting on with some work. I would bide my time and wait and see if a better moment arose later.

For the rest of our Monday morning, I chased up a few unpaid invoices while Dad spoke to potential clients about the benefits of installing a popcorn machine in their refreshment areas. Then, while Dad phoned the bank to talk to themabout extending our business loan, I surfed the net while pretending to type a letter. It was virtually the same as any other mind-numbing day at the office.

I’d soon exhausted all the movie websites I had bookmarked and was just about to log on to robbiewilliams.com when I noticed Dad was watching me from his desk.

Quickly I closed the Internet down.

“Scarlett?” he said slowly.

“Yep,” I said, opening the letter I was supposed to be typing again.

“Is everything all right with you lately?”

“Yeah,” I said, concentrating hard on the screen.

“Are you sure?”

I looked up from the monitor. What was going on? Dad never usually inquired about my state of mind during work hours.

“Yes.”

My father sighed. “Scarlett, I do have eyes, you know; you’ve not been your usual self lately. What’s wrong?”

I shrugged. “Nothing.”

My father raised his eyebrows.

“It’s nothing, really, Dad.”

“Is it David?”

“Maybe.”

“Scarlett, come on; you’ve got to give me more than that. I’m a man; I’m not good at this relationship stuff.”

I half smiled. “You always coped all right before when I had problems.”

“I had to, didn’t I?” Dad said in a gruff voice. “There was no one else to. Have you two had a fight?”

“No, it’s nothing like that,” I lied.

“Really?” Dad said, his brown eyes watching me closely over the top of his reading glasses.

“Yes…” I began. Then I stopped. Wait, something wasn’t adding up here…

“He’s been to see you, hasn’t he?” I said suddenly, as the missing link clicked into place.

My father shuffled some papers about on his desk like a newsreader at the end of a bulletin, and then he placed them back down in exactly the same spot they’d started out in. “David did come to see me on Saturday. He seemed awfully worried about things.”