A Very Accidental Love Story. Claudia Carroll

       Prologue

      They say no man is an island, but Eloise Elliot was.

      Not that this particularly bothered her most of the time, but tonight was different.

      It was her thirtieth birthday, and, bar a few stragglers from the accounts department who’d famously go to the opening of a fridge door if they thought they might scab a free drink out of it, no one had turned up.

      No one.

      Not a single one of the Board of Directors she worked so slavishly for; nor any of her senior editorial team, colleagues she’d known and worked shoulder-to-shoulder with for the past seven gruelling years. Not even the few – the very few – co-workers who, if she didn’t exactly think of them as friends, at least didn’t physically hurl furniture at her as she passed them by.

      And so this was it. This was how Eloise Elliot came to mark her thirtieth year: upstairs in The Daily Post’s conference room, surrounded by a few mangy-looking helium balloons and trays of dismal egg and watercress sandwiches that were already curling up at the edges, making faux-polite small talk with a bunch of semi-strangers. All of whom, for the record, then cried off early, pleading early starts the next day and in all likelihood only dying to get out of there the minute the free gargle ran out.

      ‘Sure you wouldn’t like a vol-au-vent?’ Eloise asked a smiley-faced blonde girl, whose name she hadn’t quite caught. ‘Go on, look, there’s loads left. You can’t leave now, look at all this grub! You’ve got to help me get rid of at least some of it.’

      ‘Emm,’ Blonde Girl said uncertainly, glancing at the others for support, ‘well … I’d love to stay, but … I’ve got this really early meeting in the morning.’

      ‘Mini vegetarian frittata then?’ said Eloise, wafting an untouched tray under her nose. Like this might make a difference.

      ‘I’m so sorry, I really have to go …’

      ‘Yeah … me too, it’s so late,’ said her pal, a tall modelly-looking one who Eloise vaguely recognised from seeing in the staff canteen a few times.

      ‘Go on, just have a slice of birthday cake before you go. You know you want to!’ Eloise offered, trying her best to keep the slightly hysterical note out of her voice. And not succeeding very well.

      ‘Can’t, I’m afraid. I live miles away and if I miss my bus …’

      ‘How about yourself?’ Eloise said to a new intern, whose name she thought might be Susan, as she thrust a plateful of vanilla sponge gateaux at her.

      ‘Oh … ehh … thanks so much,’ Susan answered politely, the only one to look even slightly sympathetic, ‘but you see, I really do need to make tracks as well, been a really long day …’

      Lost cause, Eloise thought. Waste of her time even asking them to stay. Instead