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‘Sorry’ Megan dropped the polite s someone else’

‘I’ve been asked to collect you and a jacket, I believe, miss?’

‘Here’s the jacket’

‘My instructions were to bring you as well’

‘Sorry No can do’

‘Can’t return without you,yourI would really appreciate it if you cah forDay trying to pull fares’

Megan clicked her tongue in disgust Alessandro was either too busy or too lazy to run this boring errand himself, and too suspicious to entrust his measly jacket to a taxi driver, even a black cab driver, a notoriously honest species No, he would see nothing wrong in dragging her out of her house on Boxing Day, just so that she could chaperon a jacket to his fiancée’s house and save him the effort

‘Givevoice

She was still seething fifteen minutes later as she sat in the back of the cab with the precious jacket on her lap, bitterly regretting her decision to phone him when she should have just stuffed it back in its cubbyhole and waited for Charlotte to make the discovery Which she would have In due course Possibly after a month or two

London was a different place when the roads were clear and the pavements relatively free of pedestrians In an hour or so when so stores opened, people would once ains, but at the raceful sys as the taxi took her away from Shepherd’s Bush and towards Chelsea

She had no idea where Victoria and Dominic lived, but she wasn’t surprised when the cab pulled up outside a tall, redbrick house with neat black railings outside The value of the property could be guessed by the quality of the cars parked on the street outside, and the peaceful, oasis-like feel of the area This ht not be a rural idyll, but it was London life at its ant