Maggie hesitated, then sighed – All right, against my better judgement. She reached for her coat. ‘I’m going to run down and get a sandwich. What can I get you?’

‘Nothing. I’m okay for now.’

‘Robin.’

‘Something simple then – cheese and tomato. Thanks.’

Maggie shrugged the coat on. ‘Will you be all right here?’

‘For ten minutes, while you buy a couple of sandwiches?’

The door closed and Maggie’s boots clomped down the steep wooden staircase towards the street door. The office took up two rooms on the third floor of a red-brick building at the nether end of Cannon Street, above a hairdresser, opposite a bridal shop and the entrance to the parking garage where they’d left the car. Coming in, Robin had seen the city centre shops she remembered of old, Poundland and Coral bookies, multiple outlets selling cheap sportswear, but just down the street, apparently, there was now a large branch of Jigsaw.

‘Oh yes,’ Maggie had said, ‘we’re getting proper posh. We’ve got a Jack Wills and a Muji within a two-minute walk now, get us. I’m very partial to the Japanese stationery, I’ve got to admit; I’ve bought all sorts of bits and bobs – little staplers and notebooks and what have you. Can’t resist it.’

Downstairs, the door slammed shut. Robin stood up. Her eyes were dry from lack of sleep and the hour and a half she’d just spent staring at Becca Woodson’s life online. She stretched her neck and did a circuit of the dining table that dominated the main room. This was where Maggie took meetings, she said, and also where she did her desk work. The office had two laptops, one exclusively Maggie’s and an ageing Dell, which Robin would share with Lorraine, the woman who came in two days a week to do the billing and other paperwork. She was currently halfway through a fortnight in Lanzarote, Maggie said; she took a break in February every year, to help with her SAD.

A desk and a bank of filing cabinets were housed in a second, smaller room that led off this one and got its only natural light from the glass panels along the top of the dividing wall. A handful of large leather-leaved plants dotted here and there and that was it, her new place of work.

She took the kettle from its tray on top of the filing cabinets and carried it out to the miniature kitchen shared with the temp agency in the rooms across the landing. With some difficulty, she got it into position under the tap in the tiny sink and filled it.