Harri is exasperated. I am exasperated with myself. She clasps her hands under her chin and exhales sharply. ‘Look, just write it up as though you’re telling it to, say, Louise. Lou is your reader. A sympathetic listener, nosy, maybe slightly naive.’ For a second, pain flashes across Lou’s face, but she grins it into oblivion. ‘Do not shy away from details, I want personal, but I want emotion, too. Because threesomes are a bit weird! With two men! I mean, if they weren’t weird, we’d all be at it, wouldn’t we, every night?’ Akila nods at me with great enthusiasm. I force a smile in her direction. Clearly, I’m not going to get out of this.

Harri carries on. ‘As you know, we’re still in our launch stage and everyone is pitching in for everything, it’s all hands on deck right now. Tabitha, I want Imogen to get cracking on this. Your diary is quiet at the moment, so I need you to take over some of her jobs. You can start by transcribing that interview with the hemp lingerie founder, or whatever she is. I need it done fast.’ Aha! Ahahahahahahahahahaha! I bite my cheek in order to stop myself from smiling. I will cheerfully pitch a follow-up listicle called ‘The Seventeen Penises I Have Known’ if it means that Tabitha has to do my shitty chores.

After a quick chat at Harri’s desk, I get to work, and attempt a final, thorough edit. Her brief had seemed a difficult one—but reading my work again, I realised I’d already fulfilled it. She wants detail, emotion, feelings. ‘Imogen, it’s got to be real. Make it as sexy as you like, be explicit, but this isn’t the nineties. It’s not Red Shoe Diaries. Capture the ambiguity of it. I love what you said in the meeting, really bring out that conflict. I’d rather we get it right and go long than force it into eight hundred words.’

This was radical, from Harri. I once saw her standing over Louise’s shoulder and bellowing ‘Stop writing! STOP WRITING. If anyone wanted to read that many words, they’d buy a book.’ The Know’s strapline is We Dare You—on the secret Slack channel, there’s a running joke that it should be 800 Words Or Less. Harri is obsessed with brevity, and she’s convinced that our readers are time starved, multitasking girl bosses who do not have time to blow their noses, let alone spend more than three minutes reading.