Read An Extract On The SW19 Club Book Tour

Six Months Later
Chapter One
‘A full fat cappuccino with nutmeg sprinkles and a flapjack, please.’

‘Gracie, did you really say a flapjack? It’s eight o’clock in the morning!’

‘Oh, no -is it really? I didn’t realise cakes cared what time they were eaten.’

Analize -spelled ‘with a z’ -shuffled her weight slightly from one designer trainer to another. Her Pretty in Pink nail varnish matched her expensive Nike sports top, which clung snugly to her over-exercised flat chest.

‘It’s just, you know . . . maybe it’s time you thought of losing your baby weight.’
Gracie shut her eyes to stop the tears and took a deep breath.

‘And maybe it’s time you weren’t so bloody insensitive,’ the petite blonde butted in from behind the coffee shop counter. Gracie noticed her very slight Eastern European accent and a tiny diamond stud in the girl’s nose. She wished that she could be brave enough to wear such a thing.

Shocked into silence by the stranger, Analize downed her two-shot espresso and headed for the door.

Doing some sort of weird arm-stretch, she called back, ‘Gracie, darling. I’m running to the Monument and back, should be at my desk for nine twenty. Cover me if Warhurst is on the Warpath.’

Leaving a trail of strong expensive French perfume behind her, she jogged off.

‘God, that’s pungent.’ Gracie turned her nose up.

‘Wonder what it is?’

‘Eau de Bitch, I expect.’ The blonde barista smiled and passed Gracie her coffee. ‘I’m Maya, by the way.’

‘Gracie. Gracie Davis. I work at Lemon Aid on Frath Street. For charity events that wow and deliver. This is my local. You must be new?’

‘Yes, I am.’ A queue had started to form. ‘I’d better get on.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Gracie said, ‘and thanks again for sticking up for me.’

‘Gracie Davies, it’s 9.04,’ Rob Warhurst’s deep voice boomed as Gracie took her seat. His grey beard made him look older than his forty-one years; his twinkling blue eyes gave away the fact that he wasn’t cross at all.

Gracie glanced at her watch while flicking open her laptop. ‘No, it’s not, you told me yourself that the server flashes up the wrong time on our screens for some reason. It’s 9.01.’

‘So you’re still one minute late. Where’s Pancake Tits anyway?’

‘Last seen in running gear in Marcy’s.’ Gracie laughed. ‘It’s a good job HR isn’t in earshot.’

Gracie’s relationship with her MD, Rob Warhurst, was one of humour and mutual understanding. It was an ongoing joke between them about her arrival time, because Rob knew that an old boss of hers used to monitor her every movement. In the end she had left her job because of her hatred of being micro-managed.

Rob tolerated Analize mainly because she was great at business development and, with Lemon Aid being a small company, he needed her. Her bad timekeeping didn’t really bother him at all, but he wasn’t going to let her know that, as the excuses that Gracie conjured up for her colleague usually made his morning.