‘What is it?’ Josh rushed over to Emily, a little breathless. ‘Mr Kellington’s on his way down. What’s the crisis?’

‘It appears that someone has vandalised the Lalique vase,’ Emily said with a pained look.

Josh walked over to the pedestal and bent closer to it, narrowing his eyes.

‘Bloody hell, the flowers have been damaged. How has this happened?’

‘Exactly the question I’ve just been asking myself,’ Emily said, the tip of her pink tongue shooting out and licking her lips. ‘The Fenwicks came in to view it and I’m afraid this is what they were confronted with.’ Her nostrils flared. ‘Needless to say, they couldn’t get out of the shop quickly enough.’

‘This vase is now unsaleable,’ Josh announced, his face grim. ‘It’s unlikely that a customer has damaged it walking past, because it’s behind the security rope and…’ he inspected the base of the marble pillar, ‘there are no pieces scattered on the floor as you’d expect with accidental breakage.’

‘What’s happening here?’

Everyone jumped a little at the sound of Mr Kellington’s voice booming from behind them.

‘I’m afraid the Lalique vase has been badly damaged,’ Josh said gravely. ‘Some of the flowers have been clean chipped off. It’s unsaleable and unreturnable.’

‘Was it a customer accident?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Josh shrugged. ‘It might’ve been done a while ago, because the broken bits are nowhere to be seen.’

Holly watched in trepidation as Mr Kellington’s usually pleasant expression grew thunderous. ‘What? And it’s only just been noticed? How can this have happened?’

Everyone shuffled, speechless, until Emily’s clear voice broke the silence.

‘I hate to say it,’ she sniffed, looking nervously at her hands as if it were torturous for her to issue a slight. ‘But as far as I’m aware, the only person who has touched the vase is Holly.’

All eyes turned immediately to Holly, and she felt her face ignite with a blaze of colour.

‘It was intact when I unpacked and dusted it two days ago,’ she said steadily. But the more she tried to focus on keeping calm and rational, the more she felt concerned it might look as if she was trying to cover something up.

Was it more natural to get annoyed? she wondered, and then berated herself. Such thoughts were ridiculous.

‘And when you unpacked it, you noticed nothing wrong at all… all the floral decoration on there appeared to be intact?’ Emily demanded, as if she were the showroom manager.

‘Of course I didn’t notice anything amiss. Don’t you think I might have mentioned it?’ Holly allowed a little more outrage to creep into her voice. Emily was a first-rate actress and she didn’t stand a chance unless she matched her skills.

‘You mightn’t have mentioned it if you were the one who knocked the flowers off it,’ Emily muttered, turning away.

‘Now, now, let’s just calm down a little,’ Mr Kellington urged. ‘There’s no joy to be had in pointing the finger and directing blame. It is, however, important that we at least try and establish how the damage occurred so we can avoid a similar situation in the future.’

‘It’s never happened before,’ Emily huffed, the implication being before Holly joined the company.

‘Perhaps we should have a search around and try to find the flowers,’ Holly suggested. ‘That might give us a clue as to what happened.’

‘I’ve already looked and there’s nothing on the floor or surrounding area at all,’ Emily said dismissively.

‘The cleaner has been in twice since the vase went on display,’ Josh pointed out. ‘It’s possible they’ve already been vacuumed up.’

‘I’ll have my secretary call her and ask if she found anything during her clean,’ Mr Kellington muttered, scratching his head.

‘I… I just wondered… what if it happened this morning?’ Holly ventured. ‘I mean… surely one of us would’ve noticed before now if it had been damaged for some time.’

‘It seemed to me the vase had been turned to purposely conceal the damage.’ Emily narrowed her eyes. ‘The chipped flowers were at the back where it wouldn’t seem so obvious.’

Holly said nothing and let her colleague’s peevish comments hang in the air. It would be clear to everyone, as it was to her, that Emily was persisting in her ploy to point the finger very firmly in Holly’s direction, despite having zero evidence.

‘Very well, let’s leave it there,’ Mr Kellington intervened. ‘We’re getting nowhere fast, and frankly, it’s rather unpleasant and not at all conducive to a happy workplace.’

The afternoon dragged on, as if something unspoken hung in the air. Holly even caught a subdued Ben and Martyn glancing at her a couple of times, as though they were trying to weigh up whether she was guilty of the damage or not.

Emily was the only one who seemed to get a second wind. She laughed more loudly with her customers, swept past Holly without acknowledging her in an overbearing cloud of Gucci Rush and stalked around the shop floor even more aggressively than usual.

Josh smiled at Holly when he passed, but he didn’t say anything, didn’t tell her not to worry, or reassure her that everything would be OK.

After yesterday’s high of being the sales golden girl, she felt quite the outcast.