Serial part 1
It was Violet’s ideal job, but was someone determined to ruin everything?
Penny for them?’
Startled, Violet looked up from her table in the pub snug, knocking her notebook off the corner.
‘Please, allow me…’ The man who had addressed her retrieved her splayed notebook from the floor, keeping it face down out of discretion.
Violet’s face burned. She recognised this guy. He had waved her ahead of him at the bar the other week, saying, ‘After you. I’m only here to ask Vic to top up Hector’s water bowl.’
Exhausted after her first day in her new job, she had ordered a mineral water, and had a brief chat with the man.
Now she realised she was staring at him. He was around her own age and disarmingly attractive – something she noticed even in her currently fatigued state.
Luckily, he hadn’t detected her unsubtle scrutiny. In fact, he had cast an uneasy glance away from her and seemed slightly embarrassed.
‘Sorry,’ he said, palms raised and brown eyes returning to face her. ‘I’d no right to… What I mean is, I’m not one of those blokes who sees a woman on her own in a pub and thinks it’s OK to intrude.’
She had to smile at his anguished expression. ‘Actually, I’d welcome a brief interruption,’ she admitted. ‘No dog today?’
He grinned. ‘Don’t recall you seeing him the last time we bumped into each other! Hector may be a figment of my fevered imagination, for all you know.’
‘What, so you’re the one who wanted a water-filled dog bowl?’ she laughed.
‘If you were that thirsty, you could have just asked for it in a pint glass!’
It felt good to banter like this – harmlessly. The man’s grin told her he felt the same.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he said, plunging his hands into the pockets of a battered parka. ‘Nice bumping into you again.’ ‘Likewise.’
Then he was gone, swinging out through the pub door, raising his hand to greet a few regulars in passing.
Violet let her gaze linger on his departure, then gave herself a shake and returned to her notebook, tapping a pen on its creamy pages.
It was a baptism of fire
She was into the second week of her new job at Meldrake House, a stately home on the edge of Barton village.
Two weeks that had been a baptism of fire, if she was really honest.
Had she done the right thing, applying for what had seemed, on the surface, a dream role?
Violet had lived in Barton for a couple of years as a teenager, often cycling through the grounds of Meldrake House as well visiting the house itself, a treasure trove of local history open to the public.
But when she was 14, her dad had moved the family to the other end of the country for his next rung up the career ladder.
So when Violet had seen the job of marketing
