The men look at her: the two actors, the casting director, the cameraman, the men on the sofa. One of the sofa-men marks something on a piece of paper. The other reads it, nods, looks back down at his phone.

The casting director sighs. “Did you read the brief, Lissa?”

“Obviously not quite closely enough.”

“No.” He flicks the sofa-men an apologetic look. “Shall we go again? And Lissa, could you flirt a little more with the cookies this time?”

OXFORD STREET IS crowded with lunchtime shoppers. The entrance to the tube gapes open, but she walks past it. She doesn’t want to go down, not home, not yet.

Fuck the cookies.

Fuck the fat casting director with his three holidays a year. Fuck those two directors sitting behind their monitors like bored teenagers. Fuck the camera that pans up and down your body more slowly than it does the men’s. Fuck the scriptwriters for these fucking commercials. You just can’t help yourself. Fuck the men that run this fucking show.

Without thinking she heads north and east, picking up Goodge Street, emerging onto Tottenham Court Road, and then Chenies Street, past the red door of her old drama school. Now Bloomsbury, past the gates of the British Museum, the lung of Russell Square; the relief of it, the green. She walks on, further north, through Gordon Square to the clamor of Euston Road, where she ducks into the courtyard of the British Library, opens her bag for the man on duty, stands in the hustle and bustle.

How long since she has been in a library? She takes the escalator up to the first floor, where banks of people sit at chairs with small armrests as though they themselves are some sort of exhibition, some sort of display. But here—ah—here are the Reading Rooms. Rare Books. Humanities One. She pushes the heavy door of Rare Books; perhaps she can sit here for a while, in Rare Books, and let the rare books calm her, bring her back to herself.

“May I see your card, ma’am?” A pleasant-faced guard has his hand out to stop her walking further. “Your library card?”

“I don’t . . . I’m sorry.”

There is someone behind her tut-tutting, his belongings in a see-through plastic bag, card held out already in one aggressive fist.

“You need a card, ma’am, to enter the Reading Rooms,” says the guard, waving the man along.

“Oh, I see.” The world is full of spikes today. She turns, pushes back out towards the main concourse, where she sinks onto a nearby bench.

“Lissa? Liss?”

At first she doesn’t recognize him, here, out of context, but then—of course—“Nath!” She stands and they hug hello.

“What are you doing here?”

“I . . .” What is she doing here? “I thought I’d do some reading for something,” she says.

“Oh?”

“Yeah—a . . . course I’m thinking of taking. But they won’t let me in.”