‘I don’t have that in the schedule?’

I mean for the love of God, thought Sal.

‘I was joking.’

‘Aw. Right.’

Sal looked at Meghan, peering out through her glasses, spreadsheet of Sal’s activities in front of her, and felt the usual admixture of fondness and frustration. Two-thirds frustration. Actually, four-fifths right now. Nine-tenths. Meghan was a nonsense figure, she really was. In Britain you’d never get a job in an office environment if your grasp of sarcasm was as bad as hers.

‘I’ll be back for the pick-up later.’

Meghan stared down at the desk, those big round lenses looking as if they could bore a hole in the workspace. Sal knew she wanted to ask if everything was all right with James, if she could do anything. When Meghan almost said things and bottled it, it was worse than when she did say them. One day Sal was going to take her out for margaritas, do some mentoring. Work on this side of Meghan’s game. Communication. Empathy. But not right now. There was more than enough going on today, it turned out.

She went down Bourke a couple of blocks in the weekend sunshine, waited for the green man and the clock-clock-clock of the ‘walk’ signal, thinking as usual of that sloppy cow getting nailed by the tram. Just being out of the office was helping, already. There was no need to panic. She was exactly on schedule, still, because her schedule had built-in contingency time. She wouldn’t be late for the pick-up or the interviews or anything. She looked at the wide Myer shopfront, one of the first things she’d seen when she came to Melbourne. This is like your John Lewis, Dec had said, but just sort of less depressing. Saturday shoppers with big white bags. A row of red flags announcing the arrival of West Side Story. A Japanese man was playing a sort of electronic harp, a little crowd of children watching him. The sky was still promo-photo blue, just a couple of high, skimpy clouds: cirrus. She thought of the word and thought of Dad who’d point up in the sky, on the Downs, and test them: ‘What do we call this one? And what about that nasty grey blighter over there? Excellent work.’

The confident black letters – M Y E R – seemed to swirl in front of Sal for a second, and she felt the grip of something nameless and frightening, something strong enough to pull her right through the pavement, into nothingness. She put out a hand and grabbed a railing, earning a look from a skinny guy, absurdly sporting a bobble hat on this thirty-degree day, whose coffee she nearly knocked over.