Lucy had missed her usual tube, had had to wait twenty minutes before she could get on the next one, and when she had managed to squeeze into a compartment had had to spend the entire thirty-minute journey hanging onto the pole by the door so that she was constantly buffeted by people getting in and getting off at every stop. And on top of that she had the first stirrings of a sore throat, which probably meant that she was coming down with a cold. So she was not in the best of moods when she finally made it to her office to find Nick waiting for her. ‘You’re late.’ Lucy calmly hung her lightweight jacket on the coat stand by the door and turned around to look at him. The connecting door between their offices was flung open and he was sitting behind his desk with his chair pushed well back so that he could stretch out his long legs at an angle. He looked as though he had been there for hours already, even though it was only a little after nine. His white shirt was rolled to the elbows and his tie had been loosened so that he could undo the first two buttons of his shirt.
