Page 15

“Gemma, brilliant, you picked up,” Fleur said. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

“No, not at all. I’m just out for a drink with Nina.”

“Oh, okay, well, I won’t be long. I just wanted to know if you’ve got plans on Monday night?”

“Monday night?” Gemma’s mind flickered forward to Monday. All she could think about was how she would be face-to-face with Kent for the first time, but she pulled that thought back. That probably wasn’t what Fleur wanted to know. Besides, that wasn’t in the evening. Gemma’s Monday evening was completely free, like most evenings that didn’t involve the book club.

“No, I’ve got nothing planned for Monday. Why?”

“Perfect! How do you fancy coming on a double date?”

CHAPTER 21

It was a good job Gemma had already finished her drink; if she hadn’t, she was pretty sure she would have spat it out everywhere. This was definitely something Fleur had never suggested to her before.

“Sorry, did you say a double date?” she said. Across the table, Nina’s eyes widened, but Fleur was still talking down the phone.

“So there’s this new guy. He’s joined Henry’s firm, and from what Henry says, I think he’ll be just perfect for you.”

“Okay…” Gemma replied, intrigued to know what had given Fleur this impression.

“He is thirty-four,” Fleur started, only to stop. “Do you have time to go through this now?” she said, a hint of worry in her voice. “I don’t want to interrupt your time with Nina.”

“It’s fine. Nina will want to know everything anyway, so you might as well tell me now. He’s thirty-four, and…?”

Fleur cleared her throat before she carried on. “Yes, and he studied law. That’s probably obvious, given that he’s a lawyer and everything.”

“Right, thirty-four and studied law.”

Gemma struggled to see what could’ve made Fleur assume they would be a decent match, but she didn’t say as much. She wanted to hear what else Fleur knew about him.

“He moved to Maldon about a year ago, but unfortunately, he hasn’t settled in that well. Not because he’s not lovely, he is, he just spends a lot of time working. You know what these lawyer types are like. Anyway, he’s a right foodie. Absolutely loves going to coffee shops, trawling through antique markets, that kind of thing. I don’t know. Something about him made me think you two would be a great fit. We were just going to go for a drink on Monday night. Nothing as arduous as a meal or anything, so what do you say?”

Gemma took a moment to pause before reciting everything that Fleur had just said to Nina.

“She’ll say yes, obviously,” Nina shouted from across the table.

Nina was one of those people who came across as ever so quiet, and was most of the time, until she’d had a couple of drinks and was in the company of people she trusted. Then, she really came out of her shell.

“I don’t know. I think Monday is going to be a bit of a stressful day for me,” Gemma said, only for Nina to jump in.

“That’s why you need to go for a drink. This is perfect. You’ll be too busy thinking about what to wear for your double date to stress about anything Kent does while you’re at work with him.”

While Gemma didn’t believe that was wholly true, she could see the logic in Nina’s thinking. She would almost certainly want a few glasses of wine after a full day working with Kent. Why not have them meeting someone new?

“Okay, count me in,” she said.

“Brilliant, well, we’ll meet you at the White Horse at seven. Looking forward to it. Oh, this is going to be just perfect. I can feel it.”

CHAPTER 22

Sundays were different at the Waterfront Café. They still served an impressive selection of drinks, cakes, sandwiches, and panini. Still, they didn’t do the breakfasts or jacket potatoes they sold the rest of the week. It was a structure that Oscar had put in place long before Gemma worked there, and she saw no need to change it. It also made things far easier when managing rotas. That day, she was working with Dawn, a forty-something mum of four, who worked one day a week and one weekend a month. From what Gemma knew of Dawn, she didn’t do this for the money. After all, she was the only staff member Gemma had ever encountered who would spend all day traipsing around the café in a pair of Gucci trainers.

Instead, she did it for the company and the ‘extra pocket money’, as she called it. She had also told Gemma that throwing it back in her husband’s face was useful when he said she didn’t know how to work. After all, she reasoned, a full day in the middle of the summer in a café was a darn sight harder than sitting at a desk all day. Obviously, Gemma had agreed because she’d known that was what Dawn had expected, yet she knew ifit was a toss-up between being run off her feet at the cafe, and endless weeks in a cramped office, there would be no contest.

Still, when she woke on Monday morning, for the first time ever, she was actually dreading going in.

Nerves held her captive. On the one hand, she kept thinking about what Sophie had said and how lovely Kent was to work with, but the truth was, she didn’t know how she was meant to work with him. Or anyone who called themselves the executive manager. She had been used to calling the shots. Taking control and doing things however she thought would work best. So how would it work now? Did it mean she would have to second-guess any decisions she made? Or would she have to run everything by him? In the end, she realised that the only way of finding out how the day would go was to start it, so forty minutes earlier than usual, Gemma left her home and headed to the Waterfront Café.