CHAPTER SEVEN
In the site office, Amanda looked up in surprise from her desk when I entered.
‘Katja! How are you? You’ve just missed Caleb, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh, that’s fine. Don’t worry. I’ll catch him later.
So how are you?’ I’d met Amanda just once before, on the day she’d started working for Caleb three weeks ago, and I’d thought she was lovely.
On the other Wednesdays I’d popped in to see Caleb, she’d been out of the office, showing prospective house buyers around the site.
‘I’m fine, thank you.’ Amanda, who was in her late twenties, gave me a warm smile and pushed herself away from the desk to give me her full attention.
‘Just learning the ropes, really,’ she said cheerily, pushing back her glossy shoulder-length dark hair.
‘It’s quite a change for me, working in customer service on a building site, but I’m thoroughly enjoying it.
Less stress than my last job. Can I get you a coffee? ’
‘Oh, no. Thanks. I just popped in on my way to my next stop with the mobile cake van?’
‘Yes!’ Her blue eyes sparkled. ‘Caleb told me all about that. It sounds like such a great way to spend the day, driving through the countryside and chatting to customers. Especially on a sunny day like this.’
I nodded. ‘I do love it. You meet so many nice people. Doughnuts for you and Caleb.’ I handed over the bag.
‘Delicious!’
‘I . . . hope the boss is treating you well?’
‘Oh, absolutely. No complaints there.’
‘And even if there were, you wouldn’t be telling me.’
She chuckled. ‘I absolutely wouldn’t.’
‘I don’t know how you keep track of him, to be honest. He’s always whizzing off to meetings at all hours.’
She gave me a quizzical smile.
‘Like last night. Goodness knows how long that meeting in Guildford went on for.’
‘Guildford?’
‘Oh, didn’t he go, after all?’ My heart gave a lurch. It would have been in the diary, surely? Caleb had said so. And an efficient assistant like Amanda would surely have known about it?
‘He didn’t mention a meeting in Guildford,’ she said slowly, looking at me with a puzzled expression.
Then she suddenly backtracked and her frown disappeared.
‘Oh, wait a minute.’ She gave her head a little shake.
‘Silly me. He did mention something . . . I think maybe it came up at the last minute.’ She opened her desk diary and glanced at the previous day’s date.
‘Nothing in here.’ She nodded. ‘It must have been last-minute,’ she confirmed.
I swallowed hard. Was it my imagination or was she avoiding my eye now?
Caleb said his meeting had been in the diary for weeks . . .
‘Right. Actually, I thought I saw him last night, parked on Sunnybrook High Street.’ I shrugged. ‘But he zoomed off before I could go over.’
I caught the flash of uncertainty in Amanda’s eyes.
It was unmistakable, that look of unease that came over her face for just a second, before the professional smile clicked back into place and she said, ‘You’re right.
He is always zooming off somewhere! Like now, for instance.
I’d bought some good coffee and some chocolate biscuits, knowing this meeting of his was important.
’ She got up and went over to the little coffee station in the corner.
Opening the packet of biscuits, she emptied them into a biscuit tin.
‘But then he decided to take Mr Chandler over the road to the café.’
‘That was my suggestion, I’m afraid,’ I confessed, my eye wandering over Amanda’s desk and landing on the opened desk diary.
She was right. Last night’s meeting hadn’t been entered there.
But something else had been.
It was something so surprising, I almost chuckled.
‘Can I tempt you?’ Amanda held out the tin of chocolate biscuits.
‘Okay. Thank you. I’ll scoff it on the drive over to Primrose Wood.’
‘Good idea.’ She offered me a paper napkin from the coffee station to wrap it in.
‘Thanks. Right, I’d better be going or my customers in Primrose Wood will be wondering where on earth I am.’
I left the site office feeling so much better.
The entry I’d spotted in the diary had read, Katja’s birthday.
It was quite funny, really, because that’s what Maddy had said – that maybe Caleb was planning a surprise for my special day and his assistant was in on it.
Maybe clichés happened more often than people thought. In fact, thinking about it, a cliché was a cliché exactly because it had happened often . . .
I felt the tiniest little tingle of excitement as I set off for Primrose Wood.
My enthusiasm for birthdays had waned over the years. Who on earth wanted to celebrate getting older? But maybe this year would be special . . .