Page 118 of The Next Chapter

I take another aggressive bite of the half-eaten chocolate bar I’d picked up this morning.

‘Good morning to you too.’ My voice is strained. That’s what insomnia and three cups of filter coffee on an empty stomach will do to a person. My fingers are flying over these keys.

‘You need to take a break, Lily.’ He comes to lean against the desk next to mine, looking down at me.

‘What? No! I don’t need a break. I only have seven emails left.’

‘You just replied to Clementine with “Love you, Lola”. One, pretty sure that’s not your name, and two, let’s stick with best wishes, shall we, for the sign off?’

I start frantically scrolling through my sent items.

‘Are you checking my emails now?’

‘You cc’d me into it. Same as you have every other email. I can’t believe you pulled out an as per my last email to Mr Vandergilden.’

‘He wanted to confirm when our next meeting was. Apparently, he has edits.’

I try to roll my eyes but clearly my eyeballs aren’t working anymore. They feel like sandpaper. Probably all the caffeine. Wow, what a mess.

My phone buzzes on the desk.

Noah: I miss you. I want to talk. Call me?

I look away from my phone and then check again because I don’t trust that I haven’t hallucinated it.

Well, that’s… that. Definitely not hallucinating. Imagining him thinking of me makes me warm in a way that’s all nice and cosy and lovely. I miss him too. Like an ache that just won’t let up.

I look at Seb, my eyes wide. ‘Oh my god,’ he says, ‘you’re going to ask me to drive you to Skye again, aren’t you?’

I shake my head. ‘No. Dramatic as that would be, there’s no way we could execute a plan like that in the morning traffic. But I do think that maybe I need to resolve things a little better than I did.’

‘What, not fleeing in the dead of night, you mean?’

‘Yeah…’ I push my thumbs into the side of my eyes. ‘God, it’s all so messed up.’

The door to the office opens behind us and Clementine says, ‘Hi Lily, we thought you weren’t back yet.’

‘I decided to come back early,’ I tell her, turning round to smile.

She’s wearing pink hot pants, even though the weather has (finally) cooled down. Never has a person been happier to see a black cloud as I was this morning. Let’s be honest here, summer just isn’t my season. Give me a pumpkin spiced latte over a mojito with a little umbrella in it any day of the week.

‘Summer’s over, I think,’ Phil says.

Everyone hums their agreement.

‘Did you bring us a present back?’ Clementine asks.

Is that the done thing these days? Bringing your colleagues gifts from a working holiday? Five weeks on the edge of civilization and I’m all out of the etiquette loop.

‘Er…’

‘Don’t worry, she won’t have forgotten to bake something for the staff meeting. She’s never missed one yet.’ Phil goes to sit by his desk, opening a new bottle of Gaviscon. He once admitted that he gets a real thrill out of the crack that comes with opening a new bottle.

That’s not what’s distracting me, though. No, it’s the fact that I have forgotten to bake something for the staff meeting. And it doesn’t matter that I’ve had an awful lot on my plate lately, so much that my plate is now invisible under the mound of stuff on there. I’d never have let what was going on in my own life distract me from baking for the staff meeting before. Even the first meeting after Dad died, there I was with a chocolate tray bake.

‘Well, the thing is, see…’ I start, the urge to say sorry so patently strong that I have to wrestle it down. Because I shouldn’t be sorry for this, I don’t think. Isn’t that one of the things I learned on Skye? That I can do hard things. And anyway, me making baked goods each week is not what is keeping the world turning.

‘I actually haven’t had time to bake this weekend. Maybe we could start a rota where we each bring something in when we have a staff meeting?’