Louise has taken to starting every pitch suggestion by whispering ‘You’re going to hate this, but…’ I think she’d annoy Harri less if she was writing directly onto a blackboard with her nails. Tabitha is building herself a protective exoskeleton out of a series of increasingly elaborate capes. She had a screaming stand-up fight with Harri yesterday, I wasn’t entirely paying attention but it seemed to end with Tabitha flouncing out at 11 a.m. to go to the British Museum to look at bugs ‘for research’. Any questions that any of us might have had were halted by Harri, who looked at us with an expression that could have curdled gin. I am still the golden girl, and my pieces about waterproof vibrators, sexy bits in books and vulval ejaculation have all ‘done numbers’—but Harri will not give me permission to write any piece that does not require an anecdote about something that happened in, on or around my vagina. I am also drinking a small bottle of Pepto-Bismol every day, but that may be unrelated.

I need to ask Louise for an email for the Disney+ publicist, but the thought of putting it in the loathed Slack channel makes my intercostal muscles twang with anxiety, so I decide to do something radical. I stand up, shaking out my poor, crumpled heap of bones and stretching myself into the approximate shape of a human being, and move my body by a bare 12 inches in order to position myself behind Louise’s desk. ‘Oi oi! I have a question for you.’

Louise looks flustered. ‘Immo! Hello! Hi! What’s up?’ She has spun around quickly—very, very dangerous in these chairs—in order to face me in a casual, friendly, natural way, with her back to her monitor. There is nothing casual or natural about this, I know. There is a protocol if someone approaches you directly while you’re at your desk. You grunt ‘WHAT?’ without letting your eyes leave your screen. There is also nothing casual or natural about the way that Lou is moving her mouse behind her. She’s trying and failing to shut down her browser.

‘Everything OK?’ I say, eyeing her screen.

‘Yeah, yeah, good, so good. I’ve been looking for case studies for that new party drugs piece we’re doing, and I’m interviewing this dominatrix about her Only Fans…what? What are you looking at? What have you seen?’

Nearly every browser tab on Louise’s screen is open on the Good Food website. I can see a recipe for Chicken With Borlotti Beans and Cavolo Nero. I think I can make out a Google search for Homemade Cardamon Marmalade. ‘Is that what you’re having for tea?’ I ask, gesturing behind her.