Harri knows she is a hypocrite. The other day, she delivered what she hoped was a rousing, inspiring speech about fearlessness. But she has never been more frightened in her life. The team has been gathered around her monitor to watch Imogen. It seems to be going well, but Harri can’t hear anything that is actually being said, just the sound of her heart roaring in her ears. She’s watched friends weep through their children’s nativity plays, and she finally understands how they might have been feeling. She does not trust herself to speak.

‘Shhh! Chuck just said something nice about Imogen, and we missed it. Oh, she was fantastic! I’m so proud.’ Akila bounces on her toes, and fails to suppress a small squeal.

‘Were you nervous for her? You cutie!’ Kim elbows her in the ribs, and then his face darkens. ‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean—that was a little much, I was nervous for her too.’

‘That was so cool!’ flutes Louise. ‘Go Imogen!’

Akila sighs. ‘She did brilliantly. I feel quite emotional.’

Harri places her right hand on the centre of her chest. Her heart is really pulsing. She could swear that it’s beating out of her, convex against her ribs, but surely that’s biologically impossible.

When Dora started speaking over Imogen, everyone breathed out, an audible expression of collected disappointment. Ohhhhh. It felt like Wimbledon, watching the British hopeful stumble and unravel.

But when Imogen started to sit up a little straighter, and Harri saw the spark in her eye, there was a bang and a blast and a boom, and even before Harri had quite processed what she was saying, she knew, from Dora’s face, from the presenters’ faces, that her girl—The Girl—was home and dry. She’d won.

Kim is blowing smoke from a finger gun, and saying something about ‘Wonder Woman realness’, and Louise is squealing, and jumping up and hugging him, and looking like she might be on the brink of a dangerous all office hugging spree, and even Tabitha is saying something nice about trousers, and Akila meets her eyes and nods and Harri feels like running out for a bottle of champagne, but she knows that they need to wait until Imogen is back.

Then, a long shadow is cast from the doorway, the bubbles seep from Harri’s soul, bitter bile rises at the back of her throat and coats her tongue. Like the bad fairy at the christening, Mackenzie has arrived, unheralded, in the office.

Harri blinks. Is it her imagination, or is Mackenzie wearing a long, black coat? Is that a scythe? It is her imagination, Mackenzie is in a dull brown skirt suit—a shade known to the designer as ‘bracken’, and to Harri as ‘dead hedge’. She does not harbour a weapon. She’s carrying an iPad. Harri does not trust Mackenzie not to use it to harvest any souls, all the same.