‘He’s over there’ – Izz was tall enough to see above people’s heads – ‘with Patrick and Jake. I can see some of the girls, too, over in the corner. Nobody else seems to have brought guests,’ she added uneasily, doing the looking-without-looking thing that was more obvious than staring.

Ava gave her arm a reassuring pat. ‘But you were told you could. And I can always disappear off home if you think I’m in the way.’ She paused to check the angle of her black-feathered pillbox hat fixed to the coil of blonde plaits at one side of her head and made sure that the rest of her hair streamed smoothly over her shoulder. No point turning herself into a walking display of her work if she wasn’t meticulous with the effect.

‘No!’ said Izz in alarm, fluffing up her short hair, a pretty brown that, in Ava’s opinion, could do with a more exciting cut. ‘If you go home early I’ll have no one to talk to.’

‘What about Tod?’

‘He’ll talk to the others.’ Izz glanced back at the door, as if contemplating baling out before the evening began.

It wouldn’t help Izz if Ava were to demand to know how she could be shy with people she’d worked with for weeks, so Ava simply said, ‘OK, let’s pile in.’

Without the benefit of the height enjoyed by Izz and Tod, Ava was corralled by backs and shoulders as they battled through the melee, and could only gauge that their goal had been reached by a sudden chorus of, ‘Hey, Tod! Hello, Izz.’

Izz hung back, allowing Tod to tug Ava forward. ‘Ava, meet Patrick and Jake.’

Patrick had dark eyes, crisp curls and the kind of smile that was probably supposed to be a smoulder. Jake was more of a vague beamer.

Ava smiled politely. ‘Hello, I’m Ava—’

‘And,’ Tod barrelled on as if he couldn’t wait to get to the important stuff, ‘this is Sam, our creative director.’

Ava hadn’t intended to be impressed by Sam Jermyn, the golden boy who’d handled PR for a high-profile football player and, at thirty-five, made enough money to invest in his own communications agency. But as Sam turned his gaze on her she couldn’t help but be aware of him. He was tall, even taller than Tod or Izz. His tawny hair fell across one eye and was just long enough to tuck behind his ears. In his dark suit and white shirt he looked as well put-together as an expensive car.

With a slow smile, Sam took her hand in his. ‘Ava. I’ve heard a lot about you.’

‘Likewise.’ She smiled sweetly. She wouldn’t embarrass her friends by telling Sam that Tod and Izz sometimes seemed to have no other topic of conversation.

‘What are you drinking?’

‘Thank you, but I’m not feeling flush enough to get involved in rounds. I might only stay for a couple, anyway.’

‘You’ve been invited for Christmas drinks. No need to reciprocate.’ Sam consulted Tod over Ava’s head. ‘What does Ava drink?’

‘Zinfandel rosé.’ Tod cheerfully ignored Ava’s exasperated stare.

‘It’s not PC to dismiss a woman’s perfectly valid wishes,’ Ava half-joked at Sam’s departing back as, having swiftly taken orders from Tod and Izz, he made towards the bar.

Sam flashed her a glance over his shoulder. ‘Except for wine, surely?’

She had to concede the point. Zinfandel made everything better, even ‘I can’t earn enough’ woes, and ‘Christmas is coming’ woes, and ‘with people I don’t know just to please my friends’ woes. Or, at least, it made them no worse.

Upon his return, Sam passed her a large glass of rosé. ‘So, you’re friends with Tod and Izz?’

Ava only got as far as, ‘They’re my best friends. I share Izz’s house and Tod lives not far away, in Kentish Town,’ when more agency people arrived in a flurry of greetings and cold air and, enlisting the help of Patrick and Jake, Sam once again turned himself into a drinks waiter, before the new group drifted further into the bar.

Oh well. That was probably her ration of small talk with the head honcho. Ava gladly turned to her friends. ‘Thanks for helping me pack up that horrible stall today, Izz. I never dreamed I’d still have almost all my stock. I thought the only good thing about Christmas would be that I could sell a shedload of stuff on the market. I think my mistake was taking proper couture samples. I should have bought shapes and decorated them with readymade flowers and feathers. That way I could sell at what people want to pay.’

‘It’s not the only good thing about Christmas!’ objected Izz, her tongue loosening now there was just the three of them in the conversation. ‘What about new films and Christmas DVDs?’

‘And the food.’ Tod pushed back his floppy fair hair, which, maybe because of his Harry Potter glasses, always seemed to end up looking schoolboyish, no matter which trendy salon created the cut.

‘Drink.’ Izz brandished her beer approvingly.

‘Video games launching in time for Christmas shoppers,’ Tod contributed.

Izz grinned at him. ‘For Christmas geeks and spoilt kids.’

Tod’s eyebrows shot up in mock affront. ‘OK, I’ll be the Christmas geek if you’ll be the spoilt kid – still funded by your parents at twenty-nine.’

‘Oi, I work! It’s just that Mum likes to give an allowance to my sister, Danielle, and me. It would be rude to refuse.’

Ava smiled at Tod’s snort of laughter but her mind was drawn irresistibly back to her problems. She’d been hopelessly optimistic in thinking market punters would leap at samples made for summer weddings or Ascot, the Ava Bliss Millinery labels removed. Christmas shoppers wanted fun cocktail hats, sexily veiled pillboxes and feathery fascinators. At workaday prices. Hand-embellished ready-mades – ‘dressmakers’ hats’ – might fall short of her couture ideals but, if it meant she could pay a few bills, she’d resort to them. Black for the goths and brown for the steampunk crowd. In fact, she wished she’d thought to search out a Christmas steampunk convention. She might have made a fortune from mini top hats with corset lacing.

‘Anyway, Ava’s parents paid her rent for years,’ Izz pointed out, breaking into Ava’s thoughts.

Ava replied lightly, ‘Then they had to fund their retirement to Alsace.’ Worry dug its claws into her abdomen. Finances right now were more difficult than when she’d been a student, or even during the period before uni when she, Izz and Tod had had such a fantastic time working around Europe in cafés and bier kellers that one gap year had stretched into two.

Izz stooped to peep into Ava’s face, eyes soft with concern. ‘They must get an income from their bookshop café?’

‘I don’t think it can compare with their old salaries. Le Café Littéraire Anglais is in a market town, Muntsheim, not a swanky part of Strasbourg. It’s mainly somewhere for Mum and Dad to hang out with ex-pats over pork pies and loose-leaf tea.’ Ava manufactured a laugh to counteract a threatening prickle of tears.

‘But they must have their pensions—’

‘Which are allowing them to enjoy dabbling in the bookshop.’ Ava shook her head. ‘I’m thirty! They’re entitled to have me off their hands by now. I’m not going to run to them with my problems when I’ve already told them that I’ll be OK.’ Scraping by would have been more accurate. ‘Hopefully I’ll be sorted soon. I would be, if bloody Ceri Mallory had made good on her promises.’

Tod placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. ‘It should have been a fantastic opportunity, working in an upmarket milliners. The prices at Ceri’s are staggering.’

Ava took a sip of her wine to ease a lump in her throat. ‘Because she’s spent decades building up a client base and her reputation in the Old Brompton Road. I thought her vague “stick with me, kid, and I’ll take you places” would get me more than experience and her name on my CV. But look what happened when I reminded her how many years she’d been dangling the carrot of a junior partnership while I rode the donkey of low salary: a full-on row and the carrot vanishing completely. I should have struck out on my own after six months, then maybe I’d have had time to establish myself before Mum and Dad took off.’

‘Well, it’s not as if you have a horrible landlady,’ Izz reminded her, gently. ‘I’ve already told you that you can take a rent break—’

‘My landlady is absolutely the loveliest, but I won’t sponge!’ Ava gave Izz a grateful hug, though the offer prodded awake one of the monster worries that a good day at the market today might have caged for a while – what if the time was near when she couldn’t afford Camden? The few years she’d had here weren’t nearly enough. She still felt new in this mad, colourful, happy, bohemian place, so much cooler than the Frimley Green side of Farnborough where she, Izz and Tod had grown up. How would she survive being separated from the others? All that was left for her in Farnborough was an aunt and whichever school friends had stayed put. She chugged down the rest of her wine. ‘Either of you guys up for a refill? No?’ Ava set out alone on the trek to the bar through the claustrophobic press of warm bodies.

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