The lift doors open. The office is a wide, open-plan space. It doesn’t look that special, but the figures who move between the desks walk with confidence, and are dressed in a uniform of effortless cool. Most are women, but the few men aren’t like men Rose knows. They look like they’ve been assembled with care, with bright shirts buttoned at the top collar, ironic jackets and glasses with thick square rims.

Rose takes it in with two simultaneous narratives running in her head. Part of her sees something surprisingly ordinary next to the exoticness of the rest of London, while another part sees these people move with a kind of phosphorescence trailing in their wake, an enchantment borne of knowing exactly who and where they are, and having no doubt that they belong there.

Titch stops as she enters the room and Rose bumps into her. She turns, smiles, walks on, up to a girl at a computer at the edge of the room.

‘Rachael.’

The girl is white-skinned, with dark hair, almost black, and it falls in thick silky sheets around her face. She is pretty. She has the things pretty girls have – the eyelashes, the lips. Her skin is smoothed with well-applied foundation. But when she gives them her attention, and when the hair falls differently round her face, Rose sees that Rachael’s jaw is heavy, and her neck thick, and when she turns a certain way her nose looks funny.

But she is pretty. She dresses like she’s pretty, and her eyes sparkle like she’s pretty as Titch makes the introductions.

‘Rose is seventeen,’ Titch is saying, ‘and she’s very talented, and she’s staying with me. So look after her.’

And then Titch is gone. Gone through a door at the far end of the room.

‘Don’t look so scared,’ says Rachael. ‘You’ll be fine!’

Rachael’s voice is strange. Titch sounds like the queen, or at least how Rose thinks the queen would sound. Old and posh. Rachael is posh but different. She speaks quickly, with words that run into each other, then crash dramatically into one syllable, drawn out theatrically at the end. You’ll-be-fiiine.

‘How do you know Titch?’ she asks.

It takes Rose a while to figure out what to say. By the time she’s got her words lined up, Rachael’s speaking again.

‘You’ve totally played a blinder, by the way. She never does favours. Are you related?’

Rose shakes her head.

‘Where do you live normally?’

‘I’m not from London,’ Rose says.

Rachael’s eyes widen. ‘Oh my gosh. Say that again.’

‘I’m not from London,’ says Rose obediently.

Rachael’s face lights up. ‘I love it!’ she says, clapping her hands. ‘Loon dun. I love it!’ She leans forward. ‘I absolutely love it. I love northern accents.’