Page 21 of The Life-Changing Magic of Falling in Love

Worked hard. And loved every minute of it, so if it’s not about this I’m going to feel like a right idiot, not to mention rubbish at my job.

I smile – my most charming and self-deprecating smile, Anya calls it. ‘I hope so, Mr. Richards.’

‘Please, we’re on a first-name basis, surely?’

This is a test, so I smile again and take the seat proffered, smoothing out the tie that Anya picked out for this very meeting. ‘How’s Mrs. Richards,’ I ask. ‘I hear she hasn’t been very well?’

‘Elizabeth?’ Harrison frowns. ‘Not well?’

I’m sure Anya told me her mother had flu and so she was going to visit her last week, which was why she couldn’t make our date night.

‘A cold, I think,’ I offer.

‘Oh.’ Harrison looks non-plussed. ‘Well, if she had one, she brushed it right off. Elizabeth has the constitution of an ox, that’s what you Brits say, isn’t it?’

Yes. We say it especially when wandering the corridors of our Downton Abbey-esque houses, insisting we don’t need to get one of the maids up to light another fire!

I think about the small three-bed semi-detached house I grew up in on an estate of three hundred identical three-bedroomed semi-detached houses and tell myself that ours might not have been the only one that was clinically spotless inside and increase the wattage of my smile, very much hoping I don’t end up in grinning-like-a-buffoon territory. To be fair I’ve met Elizabeth Richards precisely once when Anya introduced us at the annual summer charity gala the agency puts on in London.

I’m sure I am not the only one who struggles to feel any real joy in attending charity galas so make it a point not to judge anyone I meet there. Particularly not on their constitution. I remember Elizabeth Richards being every bit as beautiful as her daughter and that she was stellar at knowing exactly what to say to encourage those huge donations.

Anya gets her determination from both of her parents, I think. It is one of the things I love about her – her ability to work three to four times as hard as anyone else. She’s had to. Harrison made it very clear she’d get no special treatment working for him and she’s always made it equally clear she places the utmost value in that challenge.

Sometimes I do wonder that every minute is about work, but then, if you have to work that hard just to level the field, well, it isn’t as if I don’t know what that feels like from when I was younger, in and out of hospital and having to work harder just to catch up.

‘I’ve always been impressed with your work, George,’ Harrison now says to me. ‘From the moment I interviewed you in London, I knew you’d be a good fit. Hardworking. Ambitious. Creative. And when you accompanied Anya back here last year, I had no doubt you were going to hit the ground running and not on her coattails. Your work on the Yeong campaign is outstanding.’

I blink.

I’ve never had this much praise heaped upon me.

Harrison isn’t the type.

Or maybe when you hit that inner circle, he is?

I smooth out a non-existent wrinkle in my tie in the aim of getting it, and myself, to sit more comfortably.

‘So, I don’t expect this will come as any great surprise to you, the position of Senior Account Manager is yours.’

Brilliant.

Guess I finally caught up and got ahead.

I wait for the rush of pride, confidence, happiness, to wash over me.

When they don’t, my heart starts racing.

Um … not brilliant?

I think I blink again.

I mean, surely, I do something?

React in some way?

And, dear God, not in this awful, horribly familiar, pressurised feeling in my chest way again.

I can’t have another panic attack again.

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