The Little Board Game Cafe

But first, the books.

You’re firing me? Seriously?’
Emily slumped back in the chair and folded her arms.
‘I wouldn’t say firing, exactly.’ He pressed his hands together in a prayer-like pose under his chin and fixed her with a steely gaze. ‘With regret, I am making you redundant.’
‘With regret? That’s what Lord Sugar always says in The Apprentice, when he fires people.’
‘It isn’t personal. We’re having to let a few people go.’
She stood up. ‘How? How can this not be personal?’
‘Do you think you could keep your voice down a little, please? We don’t want everyone to hear now, do we?’ He stood up too and walked past her to the windows that separated his private office from the rest of the open-plan area. She turned to watch as he closed the venetian blinds, obliterating the view of Annie from Accounts who was staring, open-mouthed. Annie would probably put a glass to the wall if she thought she could get away with it. Not that you needed a glass with these walls; they were paper-thin.
He turned back to Emily, put a hand on

she walked on, still not sure where she was heading.

Sometimes her feet seemed to have a mind of their own. She stood up and walked, without thinking about where she was going.

An afternoon off should feel like a treat, only it didn’t. The time stretched ahead of her, empty, purposeless.

Emily wondered if she and Peter would walk hand in hand through the park one day when they were that age. She couldn’t picture it somehow.

She paused to rub a stem of rosemary between her fingers, allowing the heady scent to transport her back to childhood for a moment, and the smell of her mother’s roast lamb

First published in the UK in 2023 by Head of Zeus, part of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

In her imagination, she’d wandered the streets of Montmartre, sipped coffee in a tiny café beside the Seine and sniffed the lightly scented roses in the Jardin des Tuileries.

her imagination, she’d wandered the streets of Montmartre, sipped coffee in a tiny café beside the Seine and sniffed the lightly scented roses in the Jardin des Tuileries.