‘No, it’s not!’ I say, grinning widely and flinging my arms around her. Looking over her shoulder, I see that Louise and Akila are frozen in horror. This is too much. I’ve just hugged my boss! I’ve overstepped. Harri feels stiff, but her shoulders drop, and she squeezes me back. ‘Damn, I guess we have a hugging office. This is where I draw the line, though. No team building exercises.’ She looks at me sternly, but her mouth is twitching. ‘Imogen, I want you to know that if you fall, I will not catch you. I shall leave you on the carpet with your concussion. And I don’t know that we have any trained first aiders here.’

Automatically, Akila and I look at Louise. But it’s Tabitha who pipes up ‘I’ve got a certificate.’ Wait, what? ‘It was when I was at art college, I was helping my friend with her degree show and I needed access to a lot of bandages.’ I’m overwhelmed with an urge to hug Tabitha too. Fortunately, some instinct for self-preservation stops me. I don’t think I understood how lonely I had been before tonight. I only had Jen, really. Being surrounded by so much warmth makes me realise she had been cold for a long time.

Jen might not have a place for me in her life any more. But there could be a place for me, with these people. For over half a decade, I’ve been writing, commuting, hoping, saying yes, worrying endlessly about money, doing my hobby as an unpaid job, doing a night job as my day job, and trying to make an impression in spaces that seem as scary as school, where people still care about which phone you have, and which bag you have. Until now, I’ve been very careful about when and where I reveal my secret self.

But I think Louise might be a kindred spirit. I doubt that she’s ever pretended to be ill on the day of a school trip, rather than admitting that she can’t afford to go. Yet I can sense that she might know the frightened feeling too. I’d been so sure that she was just another posh girl. Well, she is, very much, another posh girl. But maybe a lonely one too? Definitely, in her way, a freak like me. I hug her again, properly, not wanting to be first to break the contact between our bodies, not wanting to do what I instinctively do and pull away as soon as I start to wonder and worry that she might be repelled by me. I have been lonely. For a while, I’ve had to offer sex every time I’ve just wanted to be held. Oh, to touch and be touched, to be able to breathe out, in another person’s arms, without condition.

‘I LOVE YOU,’ I mumble into her shoulder.

‘What?’ Understandably, Louise looks confused.