Wildflower Park – Part One: Build Me Up Buttercup

The person sitting with their back to the door stood up and turned around. Anna noticed he was rather tall and slim in his trendy suit, good-looking in an obvious way, and unnervingly familiar. When she saw one of his eyes was swollen it all clicked into place.

‘Hudson, this is Anna Strickland, our lead PM.’

‘You?’ said Hudson, blinking with his good eye, which she noticed was a beautiful shade of blue.

She gave a nervous laugh and extended her hand. ‘Yes, it’s me. Lovely to meet you. Again.’ She gave a little nod with the last word but had no idea why.

‘Oh, you already know each other. That should speed things up. Hudson has some excellent suggestions for project team structure, operational integration and …’ Roberta was checking her notes.

‘Project approach,’ said Hudson, sounding confident.

‘That’s terrific,’ said Anna, thinking the opposite. ‘I’ll walk you through what I already have in place.’ Hudson didn’t look pleased. They had both quickly picked up on the other’s frostiness.

‘Anna will bring you up to speed. I have a very important meeting to go to,’ said Roberta, squeezing her ample form from behind the largest desk the company could provide.

‘I think we’re all in that meeting,’ said Anna, giving her printed calendar a quick check.

‘Then I’ll follow you,’ said Hudson. ‘From a safe distance,’ he added for Anna’s benefit.

Chapter Three (#ulink_a4ce05a0-ac8f-5b41-ab01-3806f1bb9ec4)

It was a day of back-to-back meetings, never her favourite thing and even less so as she’d found herself going head-to-head with Hudson in the last two sessions. He was overconfident – or cocksure, as her grandad would have called it – and so far he had challenged everything Anna had raised. He had a bunch of ideas he seemed to think he could apply without knowing the first thing about their company processes and it was already starting to infuriate her.

She had a long list of things she would need to explain to him when she got the chance. The next meeting was with Karl, so Anna hoped that would offer a little light relief. She headed off to the room she’d booked, which she knew was barely more than a cupboard. When she got there the blind was down and the ‘In Use’ sign was on, so she waited. She was mulling over what to have for tea when she recognised the voices giggling inside as Karl and Sophie. She opened the door expecting to be greeted by friendly faces rather than a shifty duo caught in the act of something they shouldn’t have been doing.