Reunion

I lean my head against the cold window of the train carriage and sigh. I am exhausted. It has been two days since I got the call from Charles that interrupted my brunch with Alex and I was forced to cut our day short. Charles had received a call about one of the most challenging books we have been trying to trace. A private collector in France was offering it up for purchase and so, of course, Charles expected me to go at the drop of a hat, even though I was supposedly 'sick'.

So here I am, after an excruciating forty-eight hours, returning empty-handed to a furious Charles. It's not my fault that the manuscript was a fake, a very good one at that, which is why it took me ages to verify, but that doesn't stop Charles from behaving like a brat when things don't go his way. It didn't help either that the owner of the document was indignant when I told him that it was a forgery and threw me out of his house, calling me a liar and a charlatan. At least that's what I understood from my sch