I’ve had desperate moments when I’ve combed some of the darkest corners of the internet to find ways of making money. I don’t think Louise has ever gone on Craigslist and come close to selling sex to keep a roof over her head—but her accommodation is still paid for subject to the whims of a manipulative man. She’s just as frightened and unhappy as I have been, when I didn’t know how I would pay for food. Her problems might not seem real, but she can’t see a way out of them, either. And this is Louise, lovely kind Louise. Her head is in her hands. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says, quietly. ‘I don’t know why I’m like this. I’ve always been like this. I’m just not…good enough.’

It occurs to me that anyone walking past our table might assume that Louise has just been dumped or been cheated on. Tears, chocolate, a crumpled pile of paper napkins, all universal symbols of hurt and heartbreak. I think of being a woman weeping, and of hearing women weeping, sometimes over a sandwich, sometimes in the street, and usually outside offices, behind cubicle doors. As secretly and silently as we are able. Because we’re just not good enough. Because we’re only ever one mistake away from catastrophe and collapse. Because we have too many feelings, and too many ways to fail.

‘Imogen? What am I going to do?’

‘I don’t know, love. I suppose—well, what do you want to do? If Harri was a little nicer, and let you write about food, would you stay?’

‘I guess, for now. I need to get promoted before the end of the year, according to my Five Year Plan.’

‘You have a five year plan? Like Stalin? What else is on there?’

‘What you’d expect, really. Either become editor-in-chief somewhere or turn my blog into a destination website, grow my social following, get a book deal…don’t you have a plan?’

What do you mean, get a book deal? Where’s the part where you write the book? ‘Not really, I’d like to live in a less awful flat, pay off my credit card debt, stay employed. But I’ve never been a big planner. I mean, I’ve worked on two magazines that shut down overnight—one where senior management did a midnight flit with everyone’s money. I’ve done shifts in a brewery where I’ve picked up trench foot. It really keeps your ambitions in check, getting trench foot in the twenty-first century.’

‘But you’re ambitious, obviously. Have you tried bullet journalling?’