“I’d never have taken you for someone who took being prepared so seriously.” Respect battled doubt in Daisy’s voice.

“My moods are finely adapted to the hormone levels in my body. Do you want to mess with those? DO YOU, DAISY?”

Daisy shuffled so that she was pressed against Susan’s shins. Her voice trembled a little as she said, “No?”

“Yet for all your fine-tuning, you’ve only just noticed that you’ve run out of contraception,” Susan said levelly.

“WHY IS THE UNIVERSE CONSPIRING TO MAKE MY LIFE SO DIFFICULT?”

“You say ‘the universe,’ but I think we can all agree this is mostly down to you. And it’s definitely not down to me or Daisy.” Susan patted Daisy’s shoulder much the way she might a nervous dog. “Personal responsibility.”

“Is a ruse invented by those seeking to argue their way out of the problem of evil in the face of an omnipotent, omniscient, benign god.” After filling out her home address, Esther looked up to see her friends staring in shock. “What? So I retained some information from one of the seminars I went to last week.”

“Did you attend it because it was about the problem of evil?” Daisy asked.

Esther’s gaze darkened gleefully. “They say problem, I say solution.”

“But not to the problem of managing your hormones through birth control.” Susan’s tone was scathing, but the look she gave Esther was one of grudging capitulation. “I don’t think the world needs to see how far your mood can swing without the restraining influence of added estrogen. Tell me what brand you need, and come meet me after lectures tomorrow. Daisy, you want in?”

Daisy worried her lip a moment. “When Granny warned me about drug deals, I don’t think this was what she meant.”

“Not unless she’s Catholic,” Esther reasoned.

“She isn’t.”

Esther studied the calendar on her phone, trying to work out what—if any—lectures she had on. “I’ve a lecture that finishes at eleven.”

Susan glanced at Daisy. “Twelve noon up at the hospital? We can all go for lunch in the medical school canteen afterward. They do excellent potato wedges.”

A large amount of Esther’s time in her Prose lecture was spent on planning her exit. Not in the way Daisy might mentally prepare for a fire drill, or the way Susan fantasized about biting someone’s arm with a blood capsule in her mouth to see what 250 medical students would do in the event of a zombie apocalypse. Esther’s plans had a very specific aim: to orchestrate leaving the lecture theater at the same time as Vectra and to sustain some kind of conversation.