FORTY

“Pepper.” Jane propped her elbows against Pepper’s stack of files and the PA almost fell from her seat.

“Mrs Winters!” Pepper exclaimed, her voice creaking like hinges of a rusty iron gate. She pushed the cat framed glasses up the bridge of her nose and patted herself repeatedly on the chest to calm her nerves. Pepper fretted over the tiniest things, but it was what made her excel in her job, save for the fact that she somehow unintentionally kept annoying Daniel to no end. “You frightened me!”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to,” Jane apologized and glanced in the direction at which Daniel had just exited. She had waited patiently for him to leave his office the whole morning and now that he was gone, Jane became exasperated. A part of her desperately needed to talk to Pepper and yet, deep down, all she wanted to do was hide in a corner and pretend she had never laid eyes on the photo in the first place. She was scared, angry and confused; but in a sense, the feeling was