Considering everything, it wasn’t that much of a surprise when Jens gave Posy the ‘let’s be friends’ speech as he walked her the hundred paces home from the Midnight Bell later that night.

Actually, it was quite a relief that Posy didn’t have to worry about getting naked in front of Jens any time soon. She could cross that item off her to-do list. But she’d have to get naked with someone eventually, once she’d discovered exactly where she was going wrong with her forays into dating.

‘Is it because I introduced you as my boyfriend too soon?’ she asked, and Jens stilled her by putting his hand on her arm.

‘No, of course it isn’t. I don’t care about that stuff,’ he said. He tucked a strand of loose hair behind Posy’s ear, which was pretty boyfriendly behaviour for someone who was letting her down gently. ‘Look, to be honest, I don’t think you’re in the right headspace for a relationship. You’ve got a lot going on right now, you’re very distracted, and our timing is all wrong.’

‘So, maybe once the shop is relaunched, we could try again?’ Posy suggested, even though she knew it wasn’t what she wanted.

Posy really liked Jens, but it wasn’t the sort of liking that turned into fancying the pants off him. In fact, it was hard to imagine that any man could rouse her to the sort of passion that would make her want to tear off his clothes. But she’d have been happy to do the other stuff with Jens: the long walks and the curling up on a sofa with a bottle of wine; the relationship stuff. Without passion though it didn’t qualify as a real relationship. And if Posy couldn’t make it work with Jens, who was lovely and super-super-nice, after three pretty good dates, then she was doomed to spinster-of-this-parish-dom.

She’d have to get a cat – and she didn’t even like cats that much.

There was no time to brood about her relationship failings over what was left of the weekend because Sam decided this was as good a time as any to embark on an existential crisis. Though, more accurately, it was a wardrobe crisis.

‘I haven’t got a thing to wear!’ he lamented when Posy went into his room on Sunday morning to see if he planned on getting out of bed before lunch. ‘What am I meant to wear tomorrow when I start my work experience?’

‘What about the new trousers and jacket you got the other week?’ Posy asked, perching on the edge of Sam’s bed as he pulled clothes out of his drawers and heaped them on the floor.

Posy hoped he wasn’t expecting her to put them away again, because in that case he was going to be sorely disappointed.

Sam turned to her with an incredulous look on his face. ‘I can’t turn up wearing a suit. It’s a tech firm. In Clerkenwell. Nobody will be wearing a suit.’

‘Sebastian will,’ Posy pointed out.

‘That’s different. He’s the boss and he’s Sebastian. Suits are his thing.’ Sam waved a handful of material at her. ‘Look! All my T-shirts have cartoons on them or you’ve stretched them out with your boobs. Don’t even get me started on my jeans.’

Posy had been warned but couldn’t help herself. ‘What’s wrong with your jeans? Didn’t Sebastian buy you a fancy new pair the other week?’

‘I’m saving them for best. All the others are too baggy, and all but one pair have elasticated waists.’ Sam clutched at his hair and Posy thought that he might cry. ‘We have to go out and buy me new clothes. Now. Please. Posy, don’t make that face. Is your thirty per cent off Gap voucher still good?’

It was and she also had a coupon for Pizza Express. After the purchase of a pair of skinny jeans so skinny they made Posy’s eyes water, and several long-sleeved tops in muted shades with absolutely no cartoon characters on them, which she was forbidden from borrowing, they celebrated their first ever argument-free clothes-shopping trip with pizza and Nutella doughballs.

Posy dared to hope that this marked a new chapter in their relationship and that they could enjoy many more future trips to buy clothes for Sam without it descending into sulks and setting off security alarms.

It never occurred to her that Sam, her baby brother, had only been buttering her up. She didn’t suspect a thing, not even when they got home and he settled her on the sofa with a pot of tea and the new Sophie Kinsella.

Then Sam sat down on the edge of the coffee table so he could look Posy in the eye and said, ‘You do realise I’m going to have to tell Sebastian that The Bloody Dagger is actually Happy Ever After?’

Posy slopped tea down her T-shirt in alarm. ‘No, you don’t! Why would you have to do that?’

‘Because it’s going to come out when we start building the website,’ Sam explained. ‘Otherwise you’re going to be stuck with a website for a crime bookshop that doesn’t exist.’

‘But all the techy stuff is still the same, isn’t it? And I wrote some fake copy for The Bloody Dagger …’

‘Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive,’ Sam intoned sorrowfully. ‘That’s Shakespeare, you know.’

‘It’s not Shakespeare. It’s from Sir Walter Scott’s poem Marmion, which you’d know if you ever paid attention in your English lessons,’ Posy said tartly because Sam’s marks for English were abysmal. ‘Now, this isn’t a big deal, Sam. Just let them make the website and then, y’know, we can cut and paste the Happy Ever After stuff on to it after it’s done.’

‘Cut and paste? You don’t know anything about web design, do you? You’re going to waste the web team’s time and I don’t want to double-cross Sebastian when he’s been so cool. Anyway, you always say that it’s wrong to lie.’

Posy really didn’t know anything about web design so she decided to gloss over that detail and get to the point. ‘It’s not lying, Sam. It’s being economical with the truth. You’re going behind enemy lines, subverting from the inside …’

Sam stood up so he could stare down at his sister with a disapproving look. ‘It’s lying, Posy, and I won’t do it.’

He managed to make it as far as the door before Posy launched herself at his retreating back. She wrapped her arms tight around him, pressed her face to his and opted for the deadliest weapon in her arsenal. Not that she was proud of what she was about to do, but desperate times and all that.

‘Sam, the sweetest boy that I know,’ she sang softly in his ear to the tune of Michael Jackson’s Ben, as she had done ever since he was a baby. ‘How I love to sit and watch you grow.’

‘You are evil,’ Sam pronounced as he wriggled to get free. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself, Posy. And I’ve told you countless times that your rubbish version doesn’t even scan.’

‘When I am here you’ll never be alone and you my baby bro will see you’ve got a big sis in me …’ Posy hugged Sam even tighter. No matter how annoying he was or how much he currently hero-worshipped Sebastian, she thought her heart might cave in with the weight of her love for him. That didn’t mean she was about to let him grass her up, though. ‘Do you want me to go on? Chorus, verse, refrain? You can join in if you like.’

‘No!’ With superhuman effort, Sam managed to escape her clutches. ‘Fine! I won’t say a word, but you’re setting a very bad example as my legal guardian.’

‘I know,’ Posy agreed, as she flopped back on the sofa. ‘Now, if you’re going to the kitchen, can you bring in the HobNobs?’

Sam could never stay mad at Posy for too long, and he was so excited about his work experience that he all but skipped out of the shop the next morning with a cheery wave and a ‘Yes, I’ve got my Oyster card, stop fussing.’

Posy spent the morning scrubbing down the walls and shelves in three of the anterooms, now clear of books, in preparation for painting them.

Then one of their lunchtime browsers turned out to be a reporter from The Bookseller who was very interested in Posy’s plans for the shop and promised she’d ask her editor if she could write a piece about the relaunch.

That afternoon Posy had a meeting with the publisher of a huge romantic fiction list. They were surprisingly amenable to Happy Ever After hosting author events and wanted to bring in their marketing team to see how they might develop this new relationship. They also promised Posy some promotional items to support their latest releases, including yet more tote bags. The whole world loved a tote bag, although Verity had cut their own tote bag order by fifty per cent after a very passive-aggressive letter from the bank asking them to come in and meet with a business advisor to discuss their cash-flow issues. They’d never had letters from the bank before, only statements and invitations to take out credit cards.

As Posy walked back to the shop after her meeting, she was sure that she could feel something unfurling in her. It wasn’t the usual fluttery panic at how much she had to do in a few short weeks; it was hope.

She was making plans – that wasn’t anything new, her notebooks were full of plans, dreams and schemes – but these were plans that she was seeing through. For once, she was working towards a sharply defined future rather than simply getting to the end of each day.

Sam was similarly afflicted. He arrived home just after six with a dreamy look on his face. Posy had come back down to earth by then: scrubbing walls with sugar soap would do that to a girl.

‘Did you have a good day?’ she asked anxiously when he tracked her down to the furthest room on the left. ‘If you hated it, you don’t have to go back tomorr—’

‘Oh, Posy, it was amazing.’ Sam twirled around the bucket of sugar soap. ‘Everyone has two monitors and they’ve got all the latest software. Software I didn’t even know existed and in the break room there’s a ping-pong table and a pinball machine and loads of food and you can have anything you want and you don’t have to pay for it. They had these KitKats you can only get in Japan. I got you a salted caramel one.’

‘Thank you. I’ll have that for pudding tonight,’ Posy said. She’d been squatting down to do the skirting boards and now she slowly stretched as she hoisted herself upright. ‘Was everyone nice to you?’

‘They were great. Everyone was great.’ Sam’s joy was almost trance-like, as if he’d spent the last six months with a religious cult who’d fed him huge amounts of psychotropic drugs, instead of one day with a boring tech company doing boring techy things. ‘If you promise not to embarrass me, you could come with me tomorrow if you wanted.’

‘That’s sweet of you,’ Posy said because she was touched that he’d want his nagging big sister hanging around. ‘But I’m so busy here and I don’t really get all that computer stuff.’

‘They run computer literacy courses and coding workshops specifically designed for women,’ Sam said. ‘You should sign up, then you wouldn’t have to ask me for help every five minutes.’

‘I wouldn’t have to ask you for help if you didn’t keep changing the Wi-Fi password without telling me,’ Posy said without rancour, because this was a discussion they’d had many times before.

‘You’re meant to change it every week, Morland,’ said a voice from the doorway. ‘So people can’t hack into your router and steal all your data.’

He kept popping up like an evil genie. Posy resolved that this time she would remain calm and serene, no matter the provocation. ‘I really don’t think my data is worth stealing,’ she said mildly.

‘You see what I have to put up with?’ Sam asked Sebastian with a grin. He turned back to Posy. ‘Sebastian gave me a lift home because – don’t be mad – I’ve lost my Oyster card.’

Posy wasn’t mad, or even that surprised, just resigned. ‘Again? Really?’

Sam shrugged. ‘It’s probably at work somewhere.’ He frowned. ‘Unless I dropped it in the street.’

‘I’m going to report you to the Mayor’s Office,’ Posy told him. ‘That’s the third one you’ve lost in the last year.’

‘Naughty boy,’ Sebastian said. ‘Nothing but bread and water for you until you’ve paid your sister back.’

‘He actually gets free bus travel but it’s the principle of the thing,’ Posy said, and Sam hung his head.

‘Sorry,’ he said in a small voice. ‘I promise it won’t happen again. What’s for dinner?’

Posy gestured at her bucket and sponge. ‘I haven’t had time to think about dinner. Can you make do with toast and spaghetti hoops?’

Sam looked aghast at the prospect. Sometimes, not often, but occasionally, Posy envied Verity and Nina who had both told her that on nights when they didn’t feel like cooking they could make do with anything from peanut butter and breadsticks to olives and fancy crackers left over from Christmas. But when you lived with a fifteen-year-old boy who was growing at a rate of knots, that wasn’t ever an option.

Posy gave Sam a ten-pound note so he could get some fish and chips from No Plaice Like Home around the corner. ‘And get some mushy peas too. You have to eat some green stuff,’ she reminded him. She thought that Sebastian might leave too, but he was poking around in the bags of decorating supplies that had been delivered that morning.

‘Thanks for bringing him home.’ Posy owed him that. She actually owed him a lot more than that. ‘And for giving him the chance to do work experience. And for, well, looking out for him.’

Sebastian smiled. ‘But …’ he prompted. ‘I know there’s a but coming.’

‘Actually there isn’t.’ Posy was as surprised as he was. ‘It’s a genuine, heartfelt thank you. While I’m on a roll, I should thank you for letting us have Pippa too.’

‘You’re not going to finish off with a few tart remarks about my sex life or my failings as a human being?’

Posy thought about it, then shook her head. ‘No, not tonight. Don’t get used to it though. I’m sure you’ll do something quite soon that will make me rain vengeance down on you.’

‘I’m counting on it.’ Sebastian gingerly prodded her bucket with the tip of one highly polished brogue. ‘Why are you washing the shelves? What’s the point when they’re going to be painted anyway?’

‘I have to wash them first. Get rid of decades’ worth of dust and grime.’

‘I hate to do anything to jeopardise our entente cordiale, but I didn’t think cleaning was your area, Morland,’ Sebastian said carefully, which was a first. Posy didn’t think he’d ever said anything carefully in his life.

She pulled a face. ‘It’s not. That is, I clean myself. Regularly. Daily. Sometimes twice daily, but I think you already know my position on housework.’

‘Can’t you get the decorators to do the scrubbing for you?’ Sebastian asked.

‘There’s no money in the budget for decorators,’ Posy said. Despite Sebastian’s many faults, he was unstintingly generous and she could see his eyebrows shooting up, his mouth opening, hand reaching into the inner pocket of his suit jacket for his wallet. She headed him off: ‘I don’t mind doing it myself. It will be so satisfying when it’s done, to know that I put all this hard work in. That I got my hands dirty and I sweated and broke nails and did irreparable damage to my lower back to make my dreams a reality.’ She pulled a face. ‘I’m beginning to understand what people mean when they say hard work is its own reward.’

Sebastian looked even more perplexed. ‘Why isn’t your boyfriend helping you?’ He sniffed. ‘Not very gentlemanly to expect you to do all the heavy lifting.’

‘Do you do all Yasmin’s heavy lifting then?’ Posy asked, though from what she’d seen of Yasmin, lifting a teaspoon would unduly exert her.

‘You seem very interested in my girlfriend,’ Sebastian said.

‘You were the one who mentioned my boyfriend first,’ Posy countered, and they were back to glaring at each other again, which felt more natural than being calm and serene.

It was a relief when Sam came hurtling through the door with his fish and chips and expressed his amazement that Sebastian was still cluttering up the place.

‘I was just going,’ Sebastian insisted. ‘I hope you and your bucket have a thrilling evening, Morland. And I’ll see you tomorrow, Morland Junior.’

Then he stood there for ten very awkward seconds before he finally left.