He would blow up and then back down. But he’d irritated Shannon now. ‘Actually, I have my laptop, so I may as well work here until I go and meet her. Otherwise, I’ll be wasting time on the Métro. If I come in to the office, I’ll only have an hour before I have to head to Gare du Nord.’ She pronounced the ‘d’ again.

But he didn’t bite. ‘Well, I’ll see you at the Louvre later, after the tour. Maybe we can have coffee together when they have their free time this afternoon?’

The ginger snaps were doing their thing and Shannon felt less like she’d just come off a rocky sea voyage. ‘Maybe.’

Her laptop was charging by the apartment door, beside a full-length mirror. Shannon stood in front of it and straightened her skirt. There was a definite pull in the fabric across her stomach, even though she had eaten hardly anything in days. For the last two weeks, she’d barely been able to keep her breakfast down. She couldn’t put this off any longer. She would find out today. Like she told the sales guys when they panicked about cancelled orders, there was no point worrying about it until she knew for sure.

Chapter Three

Kate

Despite the taxi driver’s penchant for Kiss Radio, it was quite nice to be a passenger without being responsible for crowd control on the back seat. Most long car journeys for Kate these days involved alternating between threatening ‘don’t make me come back there’ and throwing packets of sweets over her shoulder.

Kate had caught Nina — the one school mum friend she’d managed to make — and Nina had kindly agreed to collect the kids from school with hers if Luke couldn’t make it back in time.

Kate had almost made it back to the safety of her car, when a familiar strident voice rang out. ‘Kate! Kate!’

Could she ignore her? Just keep walking? No, she couldn’t do it. Kate took a deep breath, plastered on a smile and turned around. ‘Melissa?’

‘Gosh, you can move fast when you want to, can’t you?’ Melissa put a hand to her throat. ‘Just checking whether we can rely on you for a cake for the bake sale?’

There was something overwhelmingly irritating about people who spoke about themselves in the plural. The damn bake sale. Kate had forgotten all about it. Why the bloody hell would she want to make a frickin’ cake on top of everything else? She’d rather boil her own head in baby oil. Kate swallowed. ‘Of course, Melissa.’

Melissa smiled. ‘Great. I’ll ping you an email with the deets.’

God, she was irritating. Kate wished she could ping her and her flippin’ ‘deets’ into outer space. ‘Great. Sorry, I have to dash off.’

At least the traffic wasn’t too bad, and the taxi driver seemed as keen to get to the station as Kate was, so being caught by Melissa wouldn’t make her late. She checked her mobile again. There was a reply from Shannon: Can’t talk but would love to see you. Text me your train details. I’ll meet you at the station x.