The Audacity Foundation.

She told me he named it after her, his audacious girlfriend.

I can’t even.

With Athena, you have to be direct. It’s what she values and understands. So I set down my delicious box of sesame salmon and I lean forward so I can look her in the eye.

‘Babes. I appreciate your offer more than you will ever, ever know. But it has to be me. If I have the option to save my own daughter, then I have to do it. Do you understand?’

She nods once, matter-of-factly, displeasure written all over her face.

‘In theory, I could do this. Right? I mean, I have an MBA and I’m hopefully not entirely unfuckable.’ It’s been so long since I’ve put myself out there that I can’t quite be sure on that front, but men are pretty basic creatures, aren’t they? Hopefully one of them will find the clueless born-again virgin vibe hot.

And while Athena’s friend Sophia told me that Seraph usually hires candidates with MBAs from the top schools—the Whartons and INSEADs and Sorbonnes of this world—the Open University one that I completed remotely while working for the Royal Academy gives me the only three letters I need after my name to make me technically eligible.

Technically.

She snorts at that. ‘You’re one of the most exquisite creatures I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, and those dirty bastards would be queuing around the block for you. But that’s not the issue, and you know it.’

I scrunch up my face as I pick up my salmon and wild rice. ‘You could refresh me on how to give a blow job. We could put condoms on courgettes and practise.’ I wasn’t half bad at blow jobs, back in the day. Joe, my professor and Tabby’s biological father, was always beside himself when I used my mouth on him. Surely it’s just like riding a bike?

‘Stop being disingenuous. Of course you could handle a blow job. They’re not exactly rocket science. The issue is that you’ve been celibate for most of your adult life, and you’re making a case for becoming a whore and letting a random guy for whom you have no feelings do whatever the fuck he wants to your body, day after day after day.’

She glares at me, and a wave of nausea swirls through my stomach. I set the salmon down next to me again.