There’s really no point carrying on. Harri remembers having that thought twenty-four hours after the conversation with the coroner, when the ambulance had come and gone. Briefly, it had calmed and comforted her. But she had carried on, and maybe the worst of the pain was in the plodding. She’d wept, she’d screamed, she had felt so wretched and wrong in her own body that she had prayed for the skin to fall from her skeleton, she’d begged the universe to vaporise her, to turn her to dust. Since then, she’d measured out her life in a thousand cups of undrunk coffee, she had made toothmarks in her toast, she had bathed, and slept, and woken up and come in and turned her computer on and made scores of tiny scratches that amounted to an existence. Harri is Lazarus, she is the walking dead. She’s been keeping a foot in the surface world while secretly, silently, loving a ghost. What the fuck can this white collar criminal robot do to her, really?

‘OK. I will be launching an investigation of my own, but my immediate concern is for my staff.’ Harri must go out fighting. She’s got to say something. She might want to run out into the streets and never look back, but she has hungry mouths to feed. What about Imogen? What about Kim, and Louise? Even Tabitha, who clearly does not want to be there, should be allowed to leave on her own terms. Harri needs to come up with something, for their sakes. ‘Presumably, it will be possible to find jobs for The Know team in other areas of the organisation? I understand that is a legal obligation for Hudson.’

Mackenzie actually laughs at this. A real mean girl titter.

‘We’ll see, shall we?’

Before she turns to leave, Mackenzie has one last gift to give. ‘We know you’re up to something. Management have been monitoring you closely. You will be punished for it.’

If I had forty-eight million dollars, I’d be at home, drinking champagne in my swimming pool, thinks Harri. Not hanging out in a crappy office, taking jobs away from people who have next to nothing in the first place.

The summons comes much later, at the very end of the day. Harri’s presence is requested by the board at 10 o’clock in the morning. She scans the email for suspicious phrases. No ‘disciplinary hearing’. No ‘redundancy negotiation’. No clues. She thinks about calling Giles. She thinks about calling Akila. She thinks about calling a lawyer. She goes home, gets her Erdem dress out of the wardrobe, and waits.

Chapter Fifty-Three

DRAMA

Imogen