© 2008

PERDITA drummed her fingers on the sleeves of her jacket and tried not to look as if she were sulking. What a waste of time this so-called leadership development course was turning out to be! So far all she had done was spend hours filling out a questionnaire in the expectation that she would turn out to be a dolphin-warm, friendly, expressive-only to be informed that in spite of answering every question in a carefully dolphinesque way, she was in fact an attention-seeking peacock.

A peacock!

And, just to add to her humiliation, it appeared that she was the only peacock. Everybody else got to be a jolly, sociable dolphin or a nit-picking owl-not that Perdita would have wanted to be one of them-while she was left in the corner on her own.

She had known this course was a mistake. Not wanting to look as if she were envying the dolphins, who were all bonding madly and agreeing with each other in the corner, Perdita inspected her nail polish for chips instead, and was momentarily distracted in admiration of the colour.

Vixen, it was called. Now that was what she called a colour to be reckoned with. But the deep red might have been a give-away, she realised belatedly. The female dolphins probably stuck to a non-threatening pale pink and, as for the owls, they would be too busy checking their spreadsheets to even think about painting their nails.

Perdita sighed, tucked her hands away and started tapping a foot instead.

‘It looks like we’re the only two on our own. Do you think that means we belong together?’

Turning sharply, Perdita found herself looking into a pair of amused grey eyes, and she was conscious of a tiny jolt of recognition. It was the man who had arrived late the night before.