‘I’ve got it!’ she whispered to herself, clutching her hand into a fist and discreetly punching the air when she was sure no one was looking.

The interview had been so much easier than she expected it would be. She had made them laugh a couple of times, everyone’s body language seemed to be relaxed and open. Jenny felt she had been on to a winning ticket from the moment she walked into the interview room. It was just one of those things, they all clicked.

The give-away, or so she felt, was towards the end when one of the lads asked her how much notice she would need to serve out with her current employer.

‘I’ve got it,’ she muttered to herself again, as she walked down Deansgate towards a café bar she’d spotted on the way to the interview.

Of course they couldn’t say to her ‘you’ve got it’. There were several more applicants they had to see that afternoon. It would be improper, unprofessional even, to do that. But in every other way - how they had said goodbye, the way they shook hands, nodded and made eye-contact screamed to her we’ll be in touch.

She grinned in a way she hadn’t for a long time. It felt like one giant leap away from the mess in London. There was much to do of course, and the very first thing on the list would be sorting Jake out. Her poor little boy was going to be bewildered by all of this, but once they got settled in Manchester, Jenny was going to spoil him rotten for a bit. Make a real fuss of him. And most importantly, get him into various activity groups and clubs. She knew he liked those little Games Workshop characters. He spent ages painting them and then playing with them. Well, they had one of those shops up here, and they did Saturday and Sunday clubs which she’d take him along to, positive that he’d make a few friends there in no time at all.

Jenny arrived outside the café bar, pulled the door open and stepped inside.

She ordered a hot chocolate with a small mountain of cream - the type Andy referred to as shaving foam - and a Danish pastry and went and picked a seat in the window. The combined plate and mug count was probably close to a thousand calories, but stuff it, she’d played a blinder back there, and put one in the back of the net, so to speak.

She deserved a ‘well done’ present from herself.

She sat down at a window seat, her mind still running through the mental tick-list of things she needed to do. In the background a TV behind the counter babbled away to itself.

‘. . . spreading chaos over there. News has just come in that senior members of the Saudi royal family have been flown out from the King Khalid International airport in Riyadh. Although no official confirmation has been given on this, it’s clear that unrest has spread to the capital and there was a perceived threat to them . . .’

She’d have to give them a month’s notice down in London. But then Jenny knew they owed her a couple of weeks’ leave, so she could work out two of those weeks, and take the last two off. Andy would have to take charge of selling the house though. Mind you, there’s not a lot he’d have to do, just make sure he was around to let in the estate agent.

‘. . . it’s clear now that the rapid escalation of events in Saudi Arabia was triggered this morning by the bombing of the Sunni holy mosques in Mecca and Medina. Although nobody has come forward claiming responsibility for the bomb, Shi’a Muslims and mosques across the country have been targeted by the majority Sunnis and Wahhabis in what appears to be the beginning of a very bloody and dangerous civil war in the country . . .’

And there’s all that furniture, the bric-à-brac of twenty years to get rid of. Jenny really didn’t want to cart all of that stuff up with her. They could probably shift a lot of it on eBay, or maybe try something like a garage sale. She drew the line though at taking herself down to a whole load of car-boot sales as a vendor; their stuff was worth more than the penny prices they could expect to get.

‘. . . on Wall Street this morning, share prices took a major tumble as oil prices rocketed to over $100 a barrel. There are some murmurings that the worsening Saudi situation will trigger what is known in some obscure corners of the oil and gas industry as an artificial Peak Oil scenario . . .’

Jenny turned towards the TV.

The phrase cut through her meandering this-and-that planning, like a hot knife through butter.

‘Peak Oil’.

That was one of Andy’s pet phrases; a pair of words that had become conjoined together like Siamese twins in their household. It was a phrase that she had grown utterly sick of hearing over the last few years. And now on the TV, on daytime news, for the first time, she’d heard someone else use that term. The words sounded odd and a little disconcerting coming from someone other than Andy. But not just some fellow petro-geologist, or some other frothy-mouthed conspiracy-nut that Andy had struck up a relationship with courtesy of his website; no . . . a newsreader, on the BBC, on the lunchtime news had used the phrase.

The barman behind the counter finished serving a customer, picked up the remote control and deftly flicked through a few channels before settling on one showing a football match; Manchester City versus someone or other.

Jenny almost called out for him to turn it back. She looked around, half expecting several other customers to join her in calling out for the news to be put back on, but none of the little packs of students, nor any of the other customers hurrying in for a hasty lunch-break sandwich, had taken any notice of the news. Everyone seemed too busy to care.

Just like her, too busy with the minutiae of life: earning a crust, paying the bills, getting the kids off to school . . . getting a new job.

Her mind went back to the news. Someone else, other than Andy, had just muttered the phrase ‘Peak Oil’.

All of a sudden, the sense of euphoria she’d felt walking out of that interview began to evaporate.