Brodie weighed up the chances of someone coming by in the next hour to offer her a valuable commission, and deciding they were slim she shut up shop. She thought she’d take Daniel out to lunch and quiz him discreetly about all the mistakes he was making with her business. She didn’t know she was as discreet as a drill sergeant faced with a platoon of raw recruits. Daniel had company. Brodie heard a woman’s voice as she climbed the steps to his front door. (Extending the little house had done nothing to regularise its odd layout. Though there was now a second bedroom on the ground floor, the living room was still on the first floor so you had to climb in order to knock at the door.) In ruthlessly honest moments, Brodie acknowledged that she had ambivalent feelings about Daniel. He was her best friend, her twin soul; he was not and could never be her lover, she simply couldn’t see him in that light; at the same time, her heart refused to set him free to find someone who might feel about him the way he felt about Brodie.
