Tamsin had to resist snorting with derision – it didn’t entirely fit with the image of herself she was currently trying to impress upon Barney, though in truth he probably wouldn’t notice. She barely had colleagues at the paper, let alone friends, and she had never really had many of them at school either.

Everyone just seemed to hate her without her doing anything at all wrong!

“No. The other girls were always so terribly jealous, and it wouldn’t be seemly to be friends with young men,” though she had always found them far more amenable to her charms. “Perhaps if I had a chaperone, I could do the season?”