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‘You and Poppy seem to be spending a lot of time together,’ her mother tried again, her tone sly.

Norah forced a laugh. ‘We’re friends, Mum.’

Her mother’s eyes narrowed. ‘Of course you are,’ she said.

Norah sat on the pull-out sofa, now in day mode, and logged in. ‘I’ve got some work to do, so I need to focus.’

‘What is it you do, again?’ her mother asked, following her to the sofa and plonking down next to her.

Norah groaned inwardly. ‘I work for an online flower retailer, Mum. Ihavesaid.’

‘Of course, of course. But you can talk to me while you work, right?’ her mother pressed, budging closer on the sofa.

Norah’s screen lit up with a barrage of customer inquiries. ‘Mum, I need to concentrate.’

Her mother peered at the screen. ‘Who are all these names?’

‘Customers,’ Norah replied, trying to maintain her patience. ‘People with flower-related questions and complaints.’

‘Like what?’ her mother asked, not getting the hint.

Norah sighed. ‘Like delivery issues, wrong orders, stuff like that.’ She cued up the next customer and pasted in her form opener.

Her mother nodded thoughtfully. ‘Interesting. So, what’s this one about?’

Norah glanced at the complaint coming up on the screen. ‘It’s about a missing bouquet. I need to check the tracking and get back to them.’

As she started typing a response, her mother was practically sitting on her shoulder. ‘Why would a bouquet go missing?’

‘Mum, please,’ Norah said, her tone edging towards desperation. ‘I need to do this without distractions.’

Her mother huffed but stayed put. Norah tried to focus on the task at hand, but her mother’s presence was like a persistent itch she couldn’t scratch.

She clicked through the order details, trying to make sense of the tracking information. She cued up another complaint, identical in nature, moving between them for speed. She could feel the pressure to get the cue down mounting.

‘Looks like it was delivered to the wrong address,’ she muttered, more to herself than to her mother.

‘Maybe you should have used a different courier,’ her mother suggested.

Norah gritted her teeth. ‘Mum, I really—'

Her mother’s landline rang. ‘Hold on, dear, I need to take this,’ she said, stepping away to answer the call.

Norah let out a sigh of relief and quickly typed up her response to the customer. In her haste to finish, she accidentallysent them the tracking information for the other customer. She realised her mistake a second too late.

Thirty-Three

Poppy was trying to wind down from a long day by watching some reality dating thing. Well, her face was pointed at it. She wasn’t taking a thing in. Her brain was whirring around the night before and the conversation that followed.

No matter what she tried, she couldn’t seem to switch it off. Her brain was behaving like a computer, analysing every moment for any kind of positive insight. So far, it hadn’t produced anything but sadness.

There was a knock at the front door. Poppy checked the time. It was nine. Too late for an Amazon delivery, and she wasn’t expecting anyone.Yeah, not really up for a home invasion; please and thank you,Poppy thought and stayed sitting where she was.

The door went again. Poppy turned the volume up on the TV. There was a guy with a shirt that showed his nipples, telling a girl whose top showedhernipples that he just wasn’t ready to go forward with her.

‘Why?’ the girl asked. ‘I thought we connected.’

‘I did too, but then Brandy came in, and we just connected a bit more,’ the guy said.