I look up. Mia is standing over me. She’s wearing a blindingly white dress with a giant turtleneck obscuring the bottom half of her face. She looks like a Victorian who just got back from space. Mia’s Boston terrier, Simone, is by her feet. Simone once shat my initials perfectly on the office floor. You can call me paranoid, but there was no denying it was a definite ‘J’ and an ‘M’. Another victory for meaning. My point is: you know someone judges you when their dog judges you. No language skills, but what a critic! Etc.

‘How’s my fave ginger whinger?’ says Mia, in a voice that cuts right through my face and straight into my being. She is holding a turmeric-coloured drink and a twisted copy of Vogue.

‘I really hate it when you call me that.’

‘Don’t be a hater, bébé. Buzz on the chans is there’s a new personal drone that doubles as a clutch bag. When you’re out you just fling it in the air and it captures your night from above from all angles.’

I really think I could shoot Mia, possibly in the face, if her opinion of me wasn’t so important to me.

‘I don’t need an aerial reminder of how appalling my night was,’ says Vivienne, the features editor. Vivienne is six foot and wiry, with thick veins ribbing her arm muscles. She looks like the kind of woman who’s spent a lot of time smoking on Spanish beaches. I am certain she has killed. I don’t think I’ve once seen her smile and she isn’t on any social media – which only adds to her menace, and her valour. Vivienne and Mia are friends from fashion college. Anyone can see Mia’s always been the one with money and ambition and Vivienne is the cerebral sponger. Vivienne doesn’t give zero fucks; she gives minus fucks. Every time I am near her I want to whisper: Teach me how to eat an artichoke, Vivienne.

‘Are you completely sectionable, Viv?’ says Mia. ‘That’s the teenage-girl angle. Pictures from above make everyone look like a teenage girl. If you partook in popular culture I wouldn’t have to tell you this.’

‘I do not partake,’ says Vivienne. ‘I am a puppetmaster.’

‘Well, I’ve ordered a sample clutch drone,’ says Mia, ‘which I shall be trying out, in the name of investigative journalism.’

Vivienne says: ‘Speaking of which, I’m going to patronise that new Israeli near Kings Cross at lunch. I may not be back for a few days.’

‘Jenny!’ says Mia, as though she has just remembered my name. ‘How was your weekend?’

‘Busy! A few drinks, a private view, you know.’

‘Yes, I saw your picture.’

‘Oh, did you? Great, thanks,’ I gush.

‘Are you not going to ask me what I got up to?’

‘What did you get up to?’