Thirty years later

Genevieve groaned. This was madness. She should be spending her Friday evening wrapped up in her favourite blanket on the sofa at home, catching up with the latest episode of Pointless and waiting for a takeaway to arrive. Instead, she was driving along this ridiculously narrow lane in the dark while the windscreen wipers fought a losing battle against the rain. Her stomach rumbled. God, what she’d give for a vegetable biryani right now..

There was a strange sinking feeling in her chest. The start of a heart attack, or a side effect of feeling incredibly stupid for taking this job purely for the money? But Gen wasn’t offered six-figure sums every day. Not ever, to be honest.

‘£200k to ghostwrite a memoir? Is that before or after you’ve taken your cut?’ she’d asked her agent.

Lizzie was grinning like she’d won the lottery two weeks in a row. ‘After. And you get free board and lodging thrown in.’

‘That’s insane!’

‘I knew you’d take some persuading after that last job, so I asked for crazy money, and she didn’t flinch.’

‘She?’

‘The client’s PA.’

‘Who is the client?’

‘I’m under strict instructions not to tell you. But I’ve checked him out. I couldn’t find any weird stories or rumours about him, and he’s got the money. He’s a tech billionaire.’

‘Anyone I’d have heard of?’

‘Well, I hadn’t. Apparently, he’s the brains behind some of the biggest innovations in internet security over the last 20 years. But he prefers to keep a very low profile.’

‘If he’s that shy, why’s he paying way over the odds for me to write an autobiography that presumably he doesn’t want anyone to read?’

Lizzie shrugged. ‘What he does with his money is his business. His PA asked for you specifically. She said he thought you’d done an excellent job on Billy Sykes’ book.’

Billy bloody Sykes, waste management entrepreneur. The former fly-tipper was arrogance personified. Gen had had six months of hell trying to turn his boring monologues into something vaguely readable. Please let this guy be more entertaining. But tech bros weren’t famed for their sunny personalities.

Beggars can’t be choosers. Gen felt guilty that her daughter was working three jobs to pay for her education. Deliver this book, help Soph fund her master’s, then you can afford the luxury of taking a year or two off to write your literary masterpiece.

She pictured herself collecting the Booker Prize for Shrinking, an insightful novel about the erasure of menopausal women who work hard to make everyone else’s lives easier but end up being taken for granted. She wouldn’t need to do any research for that one.

As the audience’s applause faded away, Gen realised she’d driven straight past her turning. Idiot!

The satnav recalculated the route: two miles until there was somewhere to turn around - five minutes late was about to become fifteen. Sod that. She slammed the car into reverse and hoped the screaming noise coming from the engine didn’t mean it was about to conk out.

An imposing pair of wrought-iron gates appeared in the rearview mirror. She manoeuvred her car in front of them.

There was an intercom mounted on the stone gatepost, annoyingly just out of reach for Fiat 500 drivers, but exactly the right height for anyone in a Range Rover. Marvellous! She got out into the rain and pressed the button. The speaker crackled and then went silent. Thankfully, the gates began creaking slowly open. She leapt back inside the car and cranked up the heater to avoid looking like a drowned rat when she arrived.

As she drove up the long gravel drive, Gen glimpsed a mansion lit up between the trees. Ashby Castle, rebuilt in 1810 according to the information she’d found online yesterday - the sort of house where Mr Darcy would’ve felt at home, though on this wild and windy night it wouldn’t have surprised her if Heathcliff had suddenly emerged from the shadows.

Gen parked in front of the entrance doors.

A tall woman stepped outside, holding a large golf umbrella. She was wearing tailored navy trousers and a cashmere jumper that probably cost more than Gen’s monthly mortgage payment. She managed to look effortlessly elegant. ‘Welcome to Ashby,’ she said as she ushered Gen up several stone steps and into an enormous white entrance hall.

‘Is my car ok there?’

For the time being. He wants to see you immediately. This way.’

‘Could I have a few minutes to freshen up?’

The woman raised one perfectly groomed eyebrow and pursed her lips. ‘You’ll have plenty of time to do that afterwards.’

So that would be after she’d made a terrible first impression with her scruffy jeans and oversized jumper with a hole in the elbow. Could today get any better?

They headed towards the back of the hallway, Gen conscious that her trainers were squeaking on the highly polished marble floor.

The woman knocked on a dark wood door and opened it without waiting for a response. She led Gen into a dimly lit room.

‘Ms Fletcher,’ the woman said before walking out. The heavy door closed behind her with a solid click. Gen was instantly back to being twelve again, about to be unjustly told off by the headmistress for that unfortunate incident with the class guinea pig.

She caught the scent of wood smoke in the air, presumably from the open fire that was flickering in the ornately carved stone fireplace. The room felt smaller than it really was; the deep red wallpaper and the bookshelves filled with old, leather-bound books closing in on her. How many dead animals had contributed to this decor?

She could have easily believed that she’d been transported back to the 19th century if it weren’t for the alien blue glow from the laptop on the desk in the corner. A man was sitting in front of it, concentrating on a spreadsheet.

Clean-shaven, slim, and wearing thin-rimmed glasses, he had a full head of short, neatly trimmed light brown hair. As he leaned back in his captain’s chair, his long legs stretched out under the desk, leading her eyes to his polished black brogues. She guessed he was about her age, which might make it easier to form a bond with him. He seemed oddly familiar, though, but her brain was refusing to give her any clues as to why.

‘What took you so long?’ he asked without turning around.

Cheek. Making her come all this way to Yorkshire, then complaining because she hadn’t arrived at 7 pm on the dot.

She resisted the urge to apologise - she didn’t want him thinking he could boss her about and it was bloody annoying that he couldn’t be bothered to look at her. ‘The traffic was horrendous. Most of London seemed to be heading north tonight. I’m amazed I’m only a few minutes late.’

He tapped his fingers on his desk. Three taps, then two. Then again - the same rhythm. S and I in Morse code. Gen froze. She’d only ever met one person who did that.

‘Or a few decades,’ he added, ‘depending on your viewpoint.’

His voice was more gravelly than the last time she’d heard it, but the viewpoint comment was exactly what he would have said when they were both 22.

He swung around in the chair and gave her a wry smile. ‘Hello, Genie.’

She gulped. No one had called her that for years - not since he’d left. He had a few more wrinkles around his eyes, and his hair was grey at his temples, but he was still recognisably the man she'd had to put in some serious effort to forget. ‘Sam!’

He took off his glasses. There was a hint of amusement in those distinctive blue eyes. For a moment, she was back in the quadrangle, lying next to him on the grass in the sun, supposedly revising for her finals, but actually silently willing him to lean over and kiss her again. Nobody else had ever kissed her the way Sam did.

‘You remember me, then,’ he said.

‘Of course.’

How could he think she’d forgotten? Her heart was pounding so hard she was sure he must be able to hear it. Get a grip, woman. You’re fifty-bloody-two, for Christ’s sake.

‘If I’d let your agent pass on my name, would you have agreed to take the job?’ Sam asked.

‘No. I wouldn’t.’ Was that true? Possibly not. There were so many questions that she’d wanted to ask him after he walked out. Could she have turned down the opportunity to find out the answers? Not that it mattered now that they were in the same room for the first time in thirty years.

He slowly nodded, looking disappointed with her answer. But surely he was expecting her to say that. Why all the secrecy otherwise?

‘So, what do we do now?’ he asked.