Chapter One

By the time that Ed found himself licking Amanda’s shiny black boots, he was so far outside his comfort zone that he was no longer quite sure whether or not this was an unusual thing to do.

All that evening he had been quite literally outside his comfort zone. Most days, he rarely ventured outside the little cluster of streets around Hoxton where he both lived and worked. Amanda’s cavernous apartment – at least three times the size of the place he shared with three coworkers from his tech start-up – was in Knightsbridge. Ed always felt more uncomfortable the further west he went. Amanda herself was way outside his comfort zone too. Not that Ed was awkward around women, but he soon realized that Amanda was quite different from the weird but affable geek girls that he usually hung out with. They had dark square fringes and a pallid glow that spoke of all-night pizza-fuelled coding marathons. Amanda’s complexion was warm gold, and it spoke of evenings in the gym and weekends in the country. No square fringe for her, either; her dusty blond hair was artfully scraped into a tight chignon that showed off her long neck and perfect cheekbones. Even the little black dress that she had worn to their dinner was somehow a different shade of black to the geek girls’ post-Goth outfits; and her exquisitely sculpted red-soled boots probably cost more than their entire wardrobes.More than mine too, of course, thought Ed.

That they had gone for dinner at all had been unsettling. Their first few encounters at the offices of the venture capital firm where Amanda worked had been cool and professional, with no hint at all of any personal connection between them. He was seeking first round funds for the start-up, and she was his contact in the VC firm. They had talked about business metrics, and about his company’s speech analysis software. She’d been well informed and interested, but not in any personal way. He’d been quite taken aback when Amanda had suggested that they meet that evening for dinner in a Mayfair restaurant. The fact that she’d changed out of her crisp work suit into the more elegant evening wear had come as a surprise too. He’d sat in a café for a few hours and then gone straight to the restaurant. He wore the same clothes all the time and hadn’t thought to change. The head waiter had found him a tie to wear, and had