‘I’ll rinse you,’ said Karl. ‘Not being funny but I used to do courier stuff, I know all the little shortcuts. Also you two will keep stopping to have sex.’ James coughed several times and Michaela stretched a muscular leg to stamp on Karl’s toes. ‘Ow, fuck off. Yeah, you watch. I’ll have finished it before you guys have even got to the Old Kent Road or whatever.’

‘You have to finish at Park Lane,’ said Michaela, ‘and afterwards we get drunk in the Park Lane Hilton.’

‘I’ll be there,’ said Karl, ‘I’ll be there with the little dog and the hat and the iron, fam. I’ll be round London faster than that – who was the fella, first one to circumnavigate … you know. Discovered America. Marco Polo? Anyway, they chopped his head off in the end. Yeah, Marco Polo.’

‘Not Marco Polo,’ said James, ‘and I think you’re talking about three separate people, actually …’

‘Whatever, mate. Prepare for defeat.’

They picked up their cars at an agreed identical moment – 1 p.m., from two different Cruiz sites – after separate battles to persuade the shift supervisors that they weren’t planning to take cash bookings on the sly. (‘Why would you be driving if you weren’t getting paid?’ asked the man at James’s depot. Because I’m having fun, thought James proudly.) By two, James and Michaela were twisting and stop-starting through East London, where they hoped to cross off several of the low-value properties in quick succession. Michaela had downloaded a route which some previous challenger had put online: it wasn’t cheating, she said, just tactics.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ Michaela said, ‘just talking of phones. You know that video I put up about running whatever size you are and blah blah? It had so many views, I mean … I’ve had so many people asking about nutrition and how long to work out and all of it. And people keep sharing it. I wonder if I should try and make it a thing. Do it every couple of days. Build it up.’

‘That would be great,’ said James at once. ‘Sorry, left here, or …?’

‘Yes.’ Michaela was imagining the future, a future she couldn’t see in detail but which would indeed come to pass for a while, and she was nowhere near on top of the complexities of the Old Street roundabout. ‘No, wait! Shit! It was meant to be … sorry.’

‘Not to worry,’ said James. ‘I think … er. Well, everyone is online now, obviously. People share things on those platforms so much faster than even a few years ago. And you’re wonderful at it because inspiring people is – it’s the sort of personality you have.’