It hits the pavement and someone passing by in new white trainers leaps away from the splat, squeaking dramatically at his friend, before they both laugh. ‘Drunk or pregnant or both?’ says one to the other, loudly, as they walk on.

It had looked like pleasure and pain, on Amber’s face. How could she know which was which? Held or pinned down? Rough sex or rape?

She uses the aeroplane napkin from her bag to wipe glossy spittle from around her mouth. Pours water from the aeroplane bottle onto her hair where vomit has caught it, until it runs clean. Her legs are rippling. Don’t cry again, she tells herself. Now is not the time.

Siobhan is waiting for her at the front door of their building.

‘There you are, thank bloody hell for that. Have you seen?’

‘About Amber Heath? Yes, I’ve just watched it. What’s going on?’

‘I don’t know. He’s holed himself away until you get here.’ So in they go.

Matthew opens his office door and leans out, hand still attached to the doorknob like he’s in a strong wind and needs something to anchor himself to. Becky’s heart hammers against her chest wall, piston-quick. Matthew is pale and drawn, his layer of tan wiped away in a matter of hours. And she feels sorry for him.

She and Siobhan step forward.

‘Just you,’ Matthew says to Becky. ‘Siobhan, mind the phones, please. Take messages, say I’m in meetings all day,’ he says. ‘Becky, in here, please.’

Becky steps into his office. He closes the door behind her. Becky just has time to glimpse Siobhan’s expression before it shuts. Envious and wondering.

‘Take a pew.’

Becky takes her seat on the sofa. Matthew takes the low Modernist leather armchair he favours in this set-up. He sits back, swings one leg over the other, grasping the wireless landline phone in one hand and his mobile in the other. Is this what a man accused of rape looks like?

She silently presses her fingers against each other like she is rubbing butter through flour, waiting for his cue.

‘There’s a story,’ he says. ‘An actress has made some false accusations about me.’

She realizes she had been expecting him to confess to some kind of crime. When he doesn’t, she is more relieved than she thought possible. Yes, she thinks. Of course it isn’t true.

‘Have you seen the clip?’

‘I had a look for company news once Siobhan called me. There’s lots of good stuff about Medea out there as well.’ She means for it to sound balanced, like the media situation might somehow tot up to being a neither-good neither-bad kind of day. She realizes immediately how ridiculous that sounds.