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become self-sufficient. I’ve sent them your name and address, I’m sure you’ll receive a lovely letter from them soon. Well, got to go—it’s eight in the evening and we want to get to the hotel in time for a late supper. I’ll call you next week to let you know how it went—bye, darling.”
    In the meantime, Adam has just about made it out of the door and looks positively disappointed when I put down the receiver. Tough. He has some talking to do.
    “You know how much I hate these things.” He tries to cajole me. “But work is work. Oh, review the Burgoyne file over the weekend, will you? See if you can come up with some ideas for the new advertising campaign—their CEO isn’t keen on the stuff we’ve already suggested. And I’ve left you a list of e-mails to be deleted from my computer.”
    My mind clicks and whirrs with disbelief.
    “I have to go, Emma, or I’ll miss my flight.” He smiles, his teeth positively glittering, and before I can draw breath, he disappears out of the door. See? See? Again Emma instead of Emmeline.
    And then he reappears again, two seconds later.
    “Oh, and do remind your mother that personal calls during working hours are frowned upon.”
    Trust Adam to turn the situation around and find fault with me.
    “Yes, I know,” I tell him, finding my tongue. “But I think they’d make an exception for a girl getting an international call from her mother, on her thirtieth birthday. Don’t you?”
    And his smile falters ever so slightly, and then he gives me the full beam of his perfect teeth.
    “Well, I know that, silly.”
    See? See? He’s just called me silly. He’s forgetting about work/personal life boundaries again. This is not good.
    “I didn’t want to mention it because I thought you were a bit oversensitive about not being in your twenties anymore.”
    Nice recovery, but I’m not buying it.
    “Adam, I’ve talked about nothing else for weeks. Haven’t you been listening? What about our plans for dinner? What about my birthday party? Everyone’s expecting you to be there.”
    Particularly me, I think. And then another thought occurs to me. What about that entry on his Visa statement?
    “Keep your voice down,” he says, glancing furtively around the main office to check for eavesdroppers.
    No one at work knows that we are an item. According to Adam, William Cougan disapproves of personal relationships in his workforce, although Jacintha Bridges from Human Resources and Guy Pirelli from Marketing have just got engaged, and William doesn’t seem to mind their personal relationship. In fact, I did hear on the grapevine that he’s offered them the use of his luxury home in the Bahamas for the honeymoon. But they don’t work together like Adam and me. I suppose that does make a difference, Adam being my boss and everything.
    “Emmeline, your friends don’t like me,” Adam tells me in a reasonable tone, as if I am a fractious child making unreasonable demands, and this annoys me intensely because there is nothing unreasonable about me wanting him there for my birthday celebrations.
    “Tom and Katy are touchy-feely hippies who think that anyone who votes Republican must be from Pluto. Rachel makes snide remarks, Tish barely even speaks to me, and David flirts with me, which pisses off Sylvester, who just scowls at me. Which makes me very uncomfortable.”
    Is this true? I just thought it was because they didn’t know him very well. Although I do know that David thinks Adam’s a bit of a hunk, because he mentions this quite a lot.
    “Anyway.” Adam glows brightly at me. “I’ll bring you back a beautiful little something from my trip.”
    But I thought he’d already bought me a beautiful little something. From Tiffany’s.
    “We’ll have a fabulous celebration at La Trattoria next week, to make up for me missing the fun. Because I’m not going to have fun, you know, it’s all business this weekend. Boring and humdrum. Well then, have a good time