I glance at my watch yet again. Nearly time. The last thing I want to do is arrive early. The less time I spend in there, the better.
As I drain my latte, my phone bleeps, but I ignore it. It’ll be yet another message from Tanya. She was livid when I told her I had to go away for a couple of days; in fact, she tried to stop me. So I told her I had a foot complaint that needed urgent attention from my specialist in London.
In hindsight this was a huge mistake, as she wanted to know every single gory detail. She even demanded I take off my shoe and show her. I had to spend ten minutes improvising about “bone misalignment” while she peered at my foot and said, “It looks perfectly normal to me,” in tones of great suspicion.
She looked at me with mistrust for the rest of the day. Then she le
