Chapter 1

"The problem is, Dave," Debbie was saying, "these numbers just don't add up." I was only half listening.

We were, finally, in our new 'home'. It was getting on for full winter, already, and it hadn't been the easiest of moves. Well, any move is supposed to be the third most traumatic event in anyone's life, but this was especially difficult. After all, we were moving four separate 'households' – and an office – simultaneously from London to deepest Cumbria, had no real communications at the delivery end – well, we'd sorted out a landline but the various drivers wouldn't be able to use their mobiles – and, worse of all, we'd left Naz in charge of the southern end of the operation. OK, so Seff was down there, too, but in theory she was mainly keeping up some sort of skeleton service from our rapidly emptying offices. So it had been a long and tiring day. And what I really did not need was a business meeting ... which was just what Debbie appeared to be planning to give me.

Yeah, right.

Bronstein Associates (Europe) had survived its various birthing crises and was now a fully fledged legal entity with – more or less – guaranteed funding streams. We had, finally, moved to our newly refurbished temporary accommodation and could even see – when the torrential rain let up, a bit – a large blue plastic tent under which, allegedly, a variety of local artisans were labouring to convert a 19th Century slate works into an ultra-hi-tech eco-office and accommodation complex. Personally, I felt that all this merited some sort of celebration – yeah, OK, I did mean a drink – but instead I was sitting on a packing case while Debbie metaphorically waved a fucking spreadsheet at me. Honestly, I wasn't in the mood.

Which made it something of a welcome relief that the vague gurgling which interrupted the proto-confrontation turned out to be what passed for a doorbell. And even more so when Debbie stomped off to answer it and found that our first visitors were Rosie – technically a colleague, given that we were paying her for local liaison work – and a very young looking red-haired woman who introduced herself as Linda. Which made her, I realised, our de facto landlord, given that she worked as PA to the owner of the timeshare complex we were lodging in. Not that that mattered a whit, given that I rather rapidly spotted the key fact that they were holding a bottle of champagne and some glasses...

Debbie, as it happens, was polite enough to forget her financial preoccupations for a moment and, after a brief three way discussion – no-one seemed to think it worth including me – it was agreed that our chaotic arrangements were not conducive to the quaffing of bubbly ... and we all headed down the pub.

The Albion was pretty much as I remembered – hardly surprising, given that it was only a couple of months since I'd been there – and Rosie just as I'd remembered her. Except, that is, for what might be termed the Debbie effect: Even as we were waiting for Linda to get back from the bar with the drinks, she launched into a detailed account of the work she'd commissioned on our behalf and the progress to date thereof. None of which was – or should have been – news to me, given that I'd signed it all off, but seemed to be a bit of a red rag as far as Debbie was concerned. Things did not seem to be brightening up as rapidly as I'd hoped.

And maybe that was hardly a surprise, I thought, glumly, as the conversation stuttered and faltered around me. After all, I had been in Germany for most of the time since we'd managed to secure the operation's future – working to deliver our first big contract, doing so on site just because it was the first one – and yes, probably hadn't been working as inclusively as I'd have liked. Then again, Debbie herself had taken to running her bit of the project – arranging the move, sorting out a portfolio of future contracts – pretty much as a personal fiefdom, using Gareth and Seffi as assistants when the latter wasn't over with me, while Naz seemed to have retreated into himself a bit ... working to get his wind turbine ideas into actual production, continuing to improve the software that the whole edifice depended on, generally being available to help where needed but, somehow ... peripheral.

And maybe I should have noticed – or we should have noticed – but, hell, yeah, we were all really busy, we weren't facing an imminent crisis, for a change, and ... I guess we must have taken our previous unity of purpose for granted, a bit. Which was all well and good, but, I felt, with Debbie and me already here, Gareth due up tomorrow and Seff and Naz a couple of days after that ... it was a hell of a time for the thing to implode. So maybe I should stop such ponderous prognostication and do something about it.

I did. I went and bought another round.

++ +++ ++++ +++++ ++++ +++ ++

When I got back from the bar I found Debbie had been summonsed to take a phone call – she gave me a vague wave from the lobby as I passed – and Rosie and Linda looking a bit shell shocked at our table. Rosie broke the silence.

"Good to see you and all that, Dave, but what the hell have you done with the Debbie we used to know? You know, the real one, the one with a sense of humour? The one it was actually fun to spend time with?"

Yes, well, I thought, shrugging ... and there's a question. I said something non-committal about it having been a long, hard day but that was never going to satisfy Rosie – a woman never knowingly under-informed.