She looked down at her lap. Noticed for the first time she was wearing her favourite red pumps. Oh dear, with her purple shift dress. Purple and red were not an authorised colour combination from her personal stylist. Oh well, she thought. Shit happens.

‘We’ve had a number of red flag markers on your trades the last few weeks.’

She stared straight ahead at him. She knew the drill. An official telling-off so he could tick a box and then she could get back to work. But Ralph wasn’t following the usual script.

‘I’m afraid,’ he said, and for the first time she realised how uncomfortable he looked, ‘HR have recommended a period of leave…’

‘HR?’ She baulked. No one ever listened to HR.

He nodded, swallowing, squirming in his seat. ‘Yes, but I explained you’re off this week anyway. The spa trip?’

‘It got cancelled,’ she explained quietly.

‘Well, look, they agreed you could take this week as annual leave and we were going to have this conversation next week when you’re back. Okay?’ He smiled as though he was giving her a two-hundred-grand bonus. She knew, because he’d done that once. She didn’t want to dwell on where that money was now. The large sums at the fund were part of the problem. The movement of huge sums on a computer screen rendered real money meaningless.

‘But I want to work,’ she said, picking at her nails, drawing out small slivers of skin and niggling at them. ‘I’ve come to work.’

‘Take a break!’ he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. ‘Put that bonus to good use! And Jules. Take this opportunity. Recharge. Come back fighting fit. We can’t afford to let you go.’ His tone was anodyne, but there was a threat there. ‘Okay?’

‘Would you be sending me home if I were a man?’ she asked sharply.

Ralph tilted his head then, the forced camaraderie fading away, leaving in its wake a stilted formality.

‘It’s not just the red flags. Questions have been asked about your… internet usage.’

She froze, the colour draining from her face. She’d seen male colleagues bypass the firewall to watch porn in the office, but they’d checked her internet usage.

‘A number of these red flags happened when you were… distracted,’ he said plainly. He moved a sheet of paper across the desk. There were rows and rows of entries with time stamps on them: all gambling websites. ‘We all like a flutter…’ he said, ‘but… if it’s compromising your concentration…’ He hesitated. Drummed his fingers quickly. ‘HR asked me to give you this.’ He passed a leaflet over to her: GamCare. ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of,’ said Ralph, who had been in AA for the last decade himself.

She pushed her chair back abruptly, light-headed as she stood in her heels. She grasped the table. It was too humiliating. The whole thing was too humiliating. She’d never been dismissed from anything, never failed, never not performed, in her life and in the space of a weekend she’d fucked up her marriage, her friendships, her job and any chance of a family.