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run for pleasure,’ Patti continued. ‘I mean –’
    ‘I do,’ said Hope, feeling old and sad. She could then think of nothing useful or intelligent to add. Jack Valentine took the headphones off again.
    ‘So,’ he said. ‘You wanted to talk to me about your fun run.’ He looked enquiringly at her.
    ‘Well, it’s publicity, basically. We’re hoping to… well, I was hoping I might have an opportunity to have a chat to you about it sometime. You see, we’re… well, I was wondering if perhaps I could buy you lunch sometime soon and discuss it.’
    She really didn’t feel it remotely necessary to waste money on buying lunch for some swanky danky DJ, but Madeleine had been insistent on that point. Chat him up. Charm him. Buy him lunch.
    ‘Lunch, eh?’ said Patti, winking at Jack Valentine.
    ‘Hem hem,’ said Jack Valentine, on a rising note.
    ‘They don’t feed us much here,’ said Patti to Hope. ‘Do they, Jack?’
    Jack Valentine winked back at her. ‘You’re on,’ he said to Hope. ‘Call me here later. OK?’ Then his put his headphones back on and the woman in the sweater came in to escort Hope out of the studio, leaving her with the impression that she’d missed some in-joke. These radio people were really very odd.

Chapter 5
    It was apparent to Jack as soon as he got to the Hilton that to agree to meet Hope Shepherd there was a singularly bad move. Would she now assume that they’d be having lunch there? Or worse – he pulled back his cuff to take a look at his watch – be already in the lobby waiting for him? It was a distinct possibility.
    Perhaps he should have been less firm in the matter of who was buying who lunch in the first place. When she’d called him, which she’d done that very same afternoon, she had been insistent that the meal would be on her, for the very sensible reason that it was she who wanted something from him and not vice versa. But he had countered with the less obvious but (to his mind) laudably honest point that if an attractive woman from a strapped-for-cash charity were to buy him lunch he would feel very uncomfortable about turning her down, should her proposal not be to his liking. Besides, he had added with what was turning out to be a possibly misjudged flourish, he would like to buy her lunch. Which had effectively ended the debate.
    He had started the day in an unexpected and pleasingly buoyant mood. It had caressed him along with the sun-shaft that had tracked his little bedroom, and hauled him steadily from the mire of his early morning stupor, with the promise of spring, and new beginnings, and hopefulness, and the feeling that his new and better life was surely due to start. Until he stood up, at least, and found he had a headache. But only a two-can affair – very minor. All in all an excellent start to the day.
    He had breakfasted on the one remaining Pop Tart (pausing only to make a note on the little wipeable memo on his fridge to get more before Ollie arrived later) and had toastered it to perfection. No bubbling brown scorch stripes raked down the front. No incendiary effect on his tongue as he bit into it. Jack knew Pop Tarts could not become a fixture in his life, but this small charge-taking exercise had pleased him no end.
    As had the prospect of taking someone out for lunch. Despite Patti’s endless ribbing about shagging fairy princesses, he’d found himself rather pleased that Hope Shepherd was not a cardigan-clad worthy. That she had all the right bits and in all the right places. That she was normal and friendly and, well, so nice . But now he was all anxious again. It occurred to him that he could still, if he was quick, whiz into the Hilton and see if they had a table in the Razzi, but Hope Shepherd’s appearance, as a slim blur of charcoal hurrying across the concourse, effectively scotched that one.
    ‘Hello!’ she said, while she was still fifteen yards away, waving a gloved hand around as if she’d just picked him out at an