‘Fine. Look, I’ve got to go. Am I still allowed to have Fitz or is he too much responsibility for me to take on?’

‘Don’t be like that, please.’ Dan holds out his hand for their shake. For a moment Dan thinks Luke isn’t going to do the finger-wiggle, but then he does. Dan lets out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

Walking back to his flat, he tries to work out what just happened. Luke has never been like that with him before. He worries about it until his phone flashes with Atticus’s name, and then Luke and real life are forgotten.

Lizzie

(You’ve done this before, haven’t you?)

LIZZIE HAD ONCE READ a memoir by a survivor of Jonestown. A story about a woman getting out of a bad marriage, joining the cult in blind faith, and fleeing shortly before nine hundred people were forced to drink poison at gunpoint. She had done a lot of research after that memoir. It seemed too unbelievable but, then, Margaret Atwood hadn’t included any scenario in The Handmaid’s Tale that hadn’t already occurred in some time or place.

Lizzie thinks of these things as she gets up and makes the bed, as she trots down the stairs and joins the other women. It’s her turn to do breakfast duty. She gets out the spoons and lines them up neatly beside the bowls. The women say good morning to her now, but she’s still not in the gang. She feels alone, as she always has, and sad, which is new, as she washes the dishes. She feels like the handmaid Offred. Maud seems to sense her mood and lies on her feet. Lizzie is grateful for the warmth.

Today she is meeting the careers-advice lady, Jackie. Jackie is pretty, in an overly made-up way. Long hair curls down her back. Her feet look swollen in her high heels. ‘Hello, Lizzie, lovely to meet you,’ she says, in a quiet voice, as they go into Tess’s office. ‘Sorry it has to be under these circumstances.’

‘Me, too.’ Lizzie means it. She can tell this lady feels awkward and almost guilty for not being one of them.

‘Where would you like to sit?’ Jackie asks. Lizzie chooses a chair by the window. ‘Can I get you anything before we start?’

‘No, thanks. I’m fine,’ Lizzie says, shifting in her seat. She doesn’t deserve this niceness, this compassion. What would Greg think if he could see her now?

Jackie pulls out paperwork from her bag and orders it in neat piles on the table. She pushes her hair back from her face, and a long nail gets caught in a honeyed strand. ‘I love them,’ she says, looking at her perfect manicure. ‘I can’t fit in half the clothes I want to wear, but I can have nice nails. Daft, I know.’