Yet, she’s warm. It might be her accent—I think Yorkshire, maybe Sheffield? Harri expects excellence from everyone, but she’s fair. She sees people. She says hello, she asks how I am, she has never once addressed me as ‘oat latte’ unlike most of the fashion team. I suppose she had to put out plenty of fires started by Rosa, but Harri is decent. It’s not a quality I encounter very often in this industry. She’s always in immaculate black, never greying, never bobbly. Although—not today. She’s in a fitted flowery dress, splodged with pink and green. It looks odd on her. She doesn’t look like a media star, she looks as though she’s going to the wedding of someone she doesn’t like very much. Still, she’s probably ahead of a curve, and the rest of us will all be in the Zara version in a month.

‘Thanks Harri, see you tomorrow! I hope it…’ Can I say I hope it goes well, when I’m not sure I’m allowed to know what ‘it’ is? The funny thing about being the most junior, least important person in any office is that you’re not supposed to let on that you know about anything. Even though your invisibility invites indiscretion—people will say anything in front of you. I am omniscient, and sad proof that knowledge is not always power. ‘I hope it’s a lovely evening! For you! Um…’ Urghhh.

Harri chooses not to respond to the fact that I sound as though I started learning English after lunch. ‘Thanks for today, you’ve been ace, as always. See you tomorrow.’

Ace. Harri Kemp, industry legend, thinks I’m ‘always ace’. That will keep me warm at midnight, when my numb, inky fingers are wrapped around a polystyrene cup of Nescafé. That will soothe me when I’ve been on my feet for eight solid hours, and every tiny bone in my body is aching so acutely that I feel like a skeleton in a wig. That’s enough to make me smile when my alarm goes off after three hours’ sleep and I haul myself out of bed to the bus to the train to the tube and do it all over again.

If I was even 10 per cent less broke, I’d call in sick, skip my shift at the factory and hang around the office for a little longer to see what happens. Perhaps that would be tempting fate. I’ve been letting myself nurse a secret hope. It’s the hope that kills you, I know. But I’m crossing my fingers and holding my thumbs, all the same.