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intelligent; ready for anything.
    This was the beginning of something great. I wasn’t going to be a receptionist for the rest of my life; I was going places. As I wished it, so it would be mine. I opened my eyes, blue sky broke through the clouds, and I smiled again. The old biddy sitting across from me looked disgusted at such obvious cheerfulness, but then I smiled at her, and smiled at the wall-to-wall complement of office drones off to jobs as boring as mine had been at the dealership, and at the mums coming on the bus with their prams, and at the little children trailing in behind, who answered with a middle finger or an expletive. Nothing was going to bother me.
    Competent; intelligent; ready for anything.
    The address was for a plush address in West London—a converted Georgian townhouse. The concierge directed me to the second floor, and I skipped through the security frontage into the hallowed halls of my new place of employment.
    Competent; intelligent; ready for anything.
    I wandered the passageways, puzzled. They seemed awfully luxurious, with deep cream carpets and dark wood-panelled walls and deep-set doors that looked understatedly antique; surely an office building would have been a little more utilitarian?
    So ! I thought. New colleagues . I was always a bit daunted when it came to starting a job and meeting a whole bunch of new people. I felt a little twinge for the dealership. What was Victor up to right at that very moment? Probably screeching with rage over my resignation. And poor Sharon, all alone on the switchboard. Of course they’d get a temp in no time, but still. It’d be nice to be nibbling Custard Creams with her right now , I thought wistfully. But I put the thoughts out of my mind: after all, this was a brave new world! Things were changing for little Ava Parkwood.
    I stopped in front of the door bearing the designated number—apparently the only place on the floor. I straightened my shirt and jacket and smoothed my hair with the slightly damp palms of my hands, and as I rapped smartly on the door I felt a thrill of butterflies.
    It swung open and a slight, dark-skinned woman, in jeans and a vividly patterned headscarf, came into view. Although she was short in stature, she had that unmistakeable bearing that said in a quiet, unruffled voice, Do not fuck with me.
    “Good morning, Miss Parkwood,” she said.
    I’m always thrown when strangers know my name. “H-hi,” I stammered.
    “Mary Hazel.” She stuck out a tiny, dainty hand that felt rough as a commercial fisherman’s. We shook hands, her looking me dead in the eyes with a penetrating, although not unfriendly, stare—I was unable to meet it for long.
    Was this a colleague? Can’t be , I decided. Although I knew I couldn’t be accused of being inappropriately dressed (sedate charcoal skirt suit; modest yet crisply feminine white shirt; the lightest touch of neutral makeup), something in the lithe-limbed, Caribbean look of her made me feel hopelessly gawky. I felt like a public schoolgirl who’d run into one of the cool kids from the local state secondary.
    Then she broke into an enormous, dazzling smile. “I’ve been waiting for you. You wan’ some tea?”
    “Y-yes,” I said, hugely grateful. Now I was the public schoolgirl who was blushing with happiness that the cool kid had offered her a cigarette.
    “Well, come on, now,” she said, still smiling at me.
    Something weird happened just then.
    I don’t know why, exactly, but for a moment I hovered in the doorway, unsure of whether I should follow her. Of course I knew she was expecting me to; but for some reason I felt rooted to the spot. Maybe I was afraid of something—I couldn’t be sure. It was as if there was some kind of magic threshold in front of me, and I needed to know what the consequences would be should I cross it.
    She turned back to me and said, “He’s not ‘ere, you know.”
    For a moment of a moment, I met her eye.
    And then, just like that, I