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  He smiled in a way that did horrible things to her heartbeat. ‘You never know when that will come in handy! You weren’t that impressed by the course when you were there, as I remember, but I’m glad you got something out of it.’

  He paused and his expression became more serious. ‘I do have some feedback from the facilitators for you but, before we discuss that, I’d like to know how you envisage your role at Bell Browning developing.’

  ‘In what respect?’ asked Perdita cautiously. She didn’t like the sound of feedback.

  ‘Are you happy as Operations Manager?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, suspicious about where all this was going. ‘Is there a problem with my performance?’

  ‘On the contrary,’ said Ed, picking up a file from the seat next to him and scanning it. ‘Operations have an excellent reputation for delivering on time and under cost. Congratulations. The Board are very pleased with what you’ve done since you took over.’

  ‘It’s not just me,’ said Perdita quickly. ‘Everyone on the team has worked really hard-and that’s in spite of me being a peacock,’ she couldn’t resist adding.

  The grey eyes glinted distractingly. ‘Clearly your leadership style works. What was it again? “I tell my staff what to do and they do it”?’ Ed’s voice was threaded with amusement.

  Perdita had the grace to blush. ‘I do try and be a little more tactful than that most of the time.’

  ‘And your staff speak very highly of you too.’ Ed closed the file and dropped it on to the table between them. ‘The question is whether you want to stay as Operations Manager or if you’d like to develop your role further.’

  ‘In what way?’ Perdita’s gaze sharpened with interest and she sat up straighter.

  ‘I’ve been in discussion with the Board and we see the potential to expand internationally,’ he said. ‘We’d need someone with a specific responsibility for liaising with prospective clients overseas, and your languages and experience of working overseas make you the ideal candidate. This is still at the discussion stage, of course, but it would be useful to know if you would be interested in principle.’

  Ed was somewhat taken aback to see Perdita light up like a candle with excitement. For a moment she seemed to shimmer with such energy that he actually blinked, but the next moment the expressive eyes were clouding over. ‘In principle, yes, of course I would be interested,’ she said slowly, ‘but it depends how much travelling would be involved.’

  ‘I imagine you would need to make some visits overseas,’ Ed said carefully, and saw her face fall. ‘Why, would that be a problem?’

  ‘It probably would be.’ Perdita struggled to swallow her disappointment. It wasn’t fair! Her dream job, dangled in front of her and then whisked away before she even had a chance to fantasise about it! But there was no point in not being realistic. ‘I may not be a parent,’ she said, ‘but that doesn’t mean I don’t have other responsibilities. I have to consider my mother. I don’t think I could go away and leave her on her own now.’

  ‘Even if you had care arrangements in place?’

  Perdita shook her head despondently. ‘She won’t accept anything like that, certainly not at the moment.’ From somewhere she mustered a smile-cool, professional, not at all the smile of someone who felt like bursting into tears and wailing, It’s not fair! At least she hoped it wasn’t, but she had never been renowned for hiding her feelings.

  ‘Thank you for thinking of me,’ she said, just like a real grown-up, ‘but I have to be honest with you. Obviously, I would love the challenge of a job like that, but I don’t think I would be able to take it on right now.’

  ‘That’s a pity,’ said Ed, meaning it. ‘Still, we’re only at the planning stage and it may be that things will change. We don’t need to make any immediate decisions in any case.’

  There was a tiny pause. Perdita was having a job to keep the smile on her face. Disappointment gnawed at her. She had been feeling restless recently, and the prospect of a new and interesting job would have been just what she needed to banish the increasingly suffocating feeling of being trapped in Ellsborough. It wouldn’t be fair to blame her mother. She was the one who had chosen to come back home and she had tried to make the best of it, making a place for herself at Bell Browning. Without Nick, her career was really all she had, Perdita realised, and now it looked as if even that would have to take second place to her other responsibilities.

  Suppressing a sigh, she began to get to her feet. ‘Well, if that’s everything…?’ she said, smoothing down her skirt, but Ed held up a hand.

  ‘Not quite,’ he said, and Perdita subsided back into her seat at the note in his voice. ‘We still need to discuss the feedback from the leadership development course.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ She had a feeling she wasn’t going to enjoy this.

  ‘Yes, that,’ Ed agreed, a suspicious glint in his eyes. He pulled a sheet of paper from the file on the table and skimmed through it. ‘It makes for interesting reading! There’s no doubt about your abilities, Perdita, but your approach to both clients and colleagues can be-how shall I put it?-let’s say a little forthright. Not to put too fine a point on it,’ he said, ‘the feeling is that some of your sharp edges need to be knocked off.’

  ‘What sharp edges?’ demanded Perdita. Sharply, in fact.

  ‘Perhaps you need to be a little bit more aware of how other people are reacting in certain situations,’ he said carefully. ‘You’ve got a great ability to enthuse people and sweep them along with you, but sometimes-especially when you’re communicating with senior executives-situations require a certain sensitivity. Those are the times when telling people what to do and then expecting them to do it just won’t work!’

  Perdita opened her mouth to snap at him, and then closed it again just in time. ‘What exactly are you proposing?’ she asked coldly instead.

  Ed leaned back in his chair and scrutinised her indignant face. ‘Bell Browning is an important employer in Ellsborough,’ he said, ‘but as far as I’m aware the firm hasn’t shown much awareness of corporate social responsibility. I want to get everyone more involved in the community, and there are a number of projects that I think we can be usefully associated with.’

  ‘Right,’ said Perdita, who was beginning to get impatient. She hated long discussions and liked to get immediately to the point, but Ed clearly wasn’t going to be hurried.

  ‘One of those is an urban regeneration scheme that’s just starting on wasteland in Booker Street, just down the road from here.’

  Perdita only just forbore from glancing at her watch. What did all this have to do with feedback? ‘Is that building affordable housing?’ she asked, belatedly realising that Ed was waiting for her to pretend an interest.

  ‘Partly, yes, but an important part of the project is creating an environment that is part park, part community garden, where people can grow vegetables and fruit, or just enjoy their own green space with trees and flowers. The idea is that it will be a place where the whole community can come together eventually, and it’s hoped that as many as possible will be involved in transforming the wasteland into something beautiful. In particular, it will be an opportunity for teenagers who have been in trouble with the police for one reason or another-petty crimes or antisocial behaviour-to put something back into the community.’

  ‘You mean it’s a kind of community service?’

  ‘In some ways. Most of them will probably be sentenced to work a certain number of hours in the garden, but by doing that they’ll have the opportunity to learn about teamwork and the satisfaction of creating something out of nothing.’

  Perdita couldn’t imagine any of the teenagers she knew finding much satisfaction in gardening, but she wisely kept her thoughts to herself. She had been rather too free with her opinions with Ed in the past, and look where it had got her-a reputation for ‘sharp edges’!

  ‘I haven’t heard of this project,’ she said to show that she was still listening.

  ‘
You will,’ said Ed. ‘It’s the brainchild of an Ellsborough garden designer. I met her a couple of days ago. Grace is an inspiring woman,’ he told Perdita thoughtfully. ‘She can’t be much more than thirty, but her husband died tragically last year and she’s decided to set up a trust in his memory to develop the garden project. She’s passionate about plants and what working on the land can teach all of us, and about the need to give some of these troubled kids a sense of being rooted in the community.’

  Poor Grace, being a widow so young, Perdita thought, although she wasn’t convinced about her gardening obsession. Surely there were easier ways to remember her husband? Perdita herself had never had any interest in gardening and didn’t propose to start now. Plus, she couldn’t help feeling a bit miffed that Ed had taken the time to meet ‘passionate’ Grace rather than his sharp-edged Operations Manager. He certainly seemed very taken with her.

  Perdita’s lips tightened. What or who was Ed passionate about? Nothing, probably, she thought huffily, still sulking about being passed over in favour of the oh-so-inspiring Grace.

  Then her eyes dropped to his mouth and she changed her mind. She didn’t know what would stir him to passion, but there was something about that cool, quiet mouth that made her wish that she did. Just looking at it set a dangerous warmth spilling through her, and she wrenched her eyes away with an effort.

  Enough. Whatever made Ed passionate, it certainly wasn’t her.

  ‘What’s all this got to do with me?’ she asked, more brusquely than she had intended.

  ‘I want you to spend a couple of hours every week working with these kids on the garden project.’

  Perdita stared at him, aghast. ‘Me? But I don’t know anything about gardening! Or teenagers, come to that!’

  ‘You won’t be there to teach them. It’ll be a learning experience for you too.’

  ‘But-’

  ‘I know it’ll be a challenge, but you’re someone who responds to challenges. I saw the way you pulled everyone together on those team tasks in the rain that day. This will be harder, but I think you’ll get a lot out of it.’

  ‘Oh, do you?’ Perdita’s eyes narrowed dangerously. ‘And if I tell you that I haven’t got time to mess around in a garden with a lot of antisocial kids?’

  Ed’s cool grey gaze met her angry brown one quite steadily. ‘I need you to make time,’ he said quite quietly, but there was a note of finality in his voice and an uncompromising set to his mouth that gave her pause.

  She scowled, sensing that she was beaten but unwilling to admit it. ‘I hate getting my hands dirty,’ she grumbled. ‘And I just don’t see that this project of yours will make any difference at all to how I work. Either you think I can do the job or you don’t! Ken Fowler would never have bullied staff into doing something that they didn’t want to do,’ she added unwisely.

  ‘Ken isn’t Chief Executive any more,’ Ed pointed out, an edge of steel in his voice. ‘I am. And I want a team that is open to new challenges and new experiences, and who won’t whine when they’re asked to do something new!’

  ‘Will all the dolphins and owls in the company be sent to work in the garden as well?’ Perdita asked tightly.

  ‘No, that wouldn’t be a challenge for them. But they’ll be asked to contribute to the community in some other way. The point of that course was that we learnt something about ourselves and how we can develop as individuals, and we can only do that by stretching ourselves, and challenging ourselves to deal with situations that are naturally uncomfortable for us.’

  ‘Do panthers have to stretch themselves too, or are they above that kind of thing?’

  For a moment Perdita wondered if she might have gone too far. Ed was her boss, after all, and he was unlikely to take kindly to sarcasm, but then he smiled.

  ‘No, I get to be challenged too. I have to learn to be more intuitive and more open emotionally, apparently. Believe me,’ he said as he got to his feet, signalling that the meeting was at an end, ‘that will be as hard for me as working with teenagers will be for you!’

  ‘I can’t believe I’m going to have to go and work in some grotty garden,’ Perdita grumbled to her friend that night. Millie’s teenagers were both out and she had seized on the chance to meet Perdita for a drink.

  ‘It might not be that bad,’ said Millie, who had an infuriating tendency to look on the bright side of everything. ‘Some people find gardening very therapeutic.’

  ‘This gardening won’t be! Ed wouldn’t be sending me if there was any chance I would have a good time.’ Perdita took a defiant gulp of her wine. ‘No, he wants it to be as tough as possible for me. He wants to crush my spirit, in fact,’ she finished dramatically.

  Millie remained annoyingly unmoved at the dreadful prospect of seeing her friend crushed and beaten. ‘I doubt that,’ she said placidly. ‘It sounded to me as if he wanted you to get a bit more experience of dealing with people who aren’t used to doing what you tell them, and I’ve got to say that putting you in with a bunch of teenagers with antisocial behaviour orders is the best experience you could have! If you can deal with them, you can deal with anyone!’

  ‘Well, I think it’s a waste of time, just like that stupid course,’ said Perdita crossly. ‘Who does Edward Merrick think he is?’

  ‘He thinks he’s your chief executive,’ Millie said. ‘Oh, and actually, he is! That makes him your boss.’ She pointed a warning finger at her friend. ‘If you had any sense, you’d be sucking up to him, not telling him he’s stupid and refusing to do things his way.’

  ‘I’ve got no intention of sucking up to Edward Merrick,’ said Perdita, outraged at the very idea. ‘I’ve already given him a bottle of Dad’s best wine, and what does he do? Send me to wallow around in mud once a week!’

  Millie eyed her friend thoughtfully. ‘He sounded nice from what you told me about him turning out to be your mother’s neighbour. I got the feeling you were quite taken with him, in fact.’

  ‘Well, I’m not!’ snapped Perdita, pushing those odd tingles of attraction and her stupid nervousness earlier that day firmly out of her mind.

  How could she be taken with a man who’d dangled her perfect job in front of her nose and had then proceeded to send her out to grub around some wasteland and no doubt get absolutely filthy just so he could salve his social conscience? If Ed was so keen to save the world, let him go and dig.

  She drained her glass with an air of defiance. ‘He’s my boss, that’s all,’ she said. ‘I don’t even like him.’

  Perdita turned up her collar and regarded the wasteland with a mixture of disbelief and distaste. A garden? Here? Surely there must be some mistake, she decided. Or was it possible that the whole thing was an elaborate hoax contrived by Ed and Grace Dunn just to get her out the office on a cold, damp Thursday afternoon and fill her with dismay at the thought of working in this horrible pile of rubbish, mud and old bricks?

  Grace had emailed her earlier in the week to suggest that she came along today at half past three for an introductory session, and to wear her oldest clothes as she was likely to get very dirty. Having already sacrificed her favourite boots to Ed Merrick’s notion of leadership training, Perdita had no intention of ruining anything else. Grudgingly, she had invested in a fleece and a pair of rubber boots, and she had changed into her oldest pair of jeans at the office, stalking out to the car park with her fiercest glare in place in case anyone had the nerve to mock her for her change of style. She had managed to get through forty years perfectly well without owning a fleece, and would happily have managed another forty if it hadn’t been for Edward Merrick!

  She was so over her attraction for him! He and Grace were probably lurking in that hut right now, sniggering behind their hands at her expression, Perdita thought vengefully as she picked her way towards it through the mud.

  She didn’t know whether she would rather it was a big joke or for real. Either way, she was far too busy to be wasting time out in this dump. She liked projects with achievable goals
, but the idea of creating a garden here was clearly unfeasible. She couldn’t imagine what Grace Dunn was thinking about. She must be a fool or a fantasist, Perdita decided roundly.

  But Grace didn’t look like a fool when she welcomed Perdita into the hut, which was larger and brighter and a lot cleaner inside than it had looked from outside. She was a slight, very pretty woman with luminous grey eyes and a cloud of dishevelled hair, but her handshake was firm and it soon became clear that she had both intelligence and authority in spite of her youth. Eyeing her critically, Perdita thought that Ed had been right. She could only be in her early thirties-very young to be a widow, certainly.

  There was no sign of Ed in the hut, which was partly a relief, although that was swiftly replaced by panic as Perdita found herself being introduced to a group of morose youths. What on earth was she doing here? She knew nothing about teenagers, other than what she had learnt from friends like Millie, and that was enough to convince her that the chances of her having anything in common with them were close to nil.

  More intimidated than she wanted to admit, Perdita sat on the edge of the semicircle of chairs. She didn’t feel much of a peacock in this company, she thought, eyeing the others from under her lashes. They looked uniformly sullen and truculent, and about as pleased to be there as she felt.

  Grace took charge. ‘You’re probably all wondering what you’re doing here,’ she said, ‘so I’m going to show you.’ She unveiled an artist’s impression of a cross between a park and a garden, with separate areas for growing fruit and vegetables, and for adventure playgrounds. ‘You’re here to make this,’ she said.

  Perdita could only gape at the picture. ‘No way!’ said a boy next to her, surprised out of his sulky silence, and she couldn’t help nodding in agreement. Maybe she had more in common with teenagers than she thought. At least this boy could see that what Grace proposed was impossible.

  But Grace was having none of it. ‘You’ll see,’ she said. ‘Our first job is to clear the ground and prepare it in time for planting. It may not seem very exciting, but this stage is one of the most important in the whole project.’