I’m not asking, if that’s what you mean. I don’t think the time is right. Not yet. But I want to know what you would say. If I did ask.

I pared flesh off the bones of my fish.

Well? Would you accept?

I looked up.

Yes, I said. I think I would.

It’s Isolde, on the phone.

Luce, I need a favour. It’s for a shoot.

I’m on my lunchbreak, eating a salad. Andrew says I need to reduce the amount of refined carbohydrates in my diet. He says they cause inflammation.

Okay. I say. What is it?

Nanna’s dress. Her wedding dress. We’ll look after it, I swear. It’s for a nouveau-Edwardian thing we’re doing. It’ll be perfect, gorgeous. I’ll even get it dry-cleaned afterwards.

I can’t say anything. A piece of lettuce, on my fork, is suspended in the air. It is good to know that some feelings are still strong enough to reach the surface, to break through the synapse-waltz of the SNRIs.

I don’t have it, I say finally.

What do you mean?

I gave it away. When I moved. I didn’t think I’d ever use it, so…

There is a pause.

So you just decided. Just like that?

It’s just a dress.

Where did you take it, Lucetta? Where exactly did it go?

I tell her. She hangs up.

Strange: once, after an exchange like this, I would have felt anxious. I would have played the scene over and over in my head, imagining what I could have said differently, done differently; I would have wondered whether to call back. This time, I finish my salad, wash my hands, and go back to work.

The new perfume we’re promoting is called Dream Haze. It’s aimed at females aged fourteen to twenty-two. The bottles are lurid pink, studded with false diamonds. I inhale my wrist and list the ingredients, trying to distinguish individual notes in the vaguely familiar fruity cloud: lychee, pink pepper, apple. It feels like a sugar high. My head spins. We sell Dream Haze consistently all day, to teenagers with their mothers, teenagers alone paying with their fast-food wages, and occasionally to older women in suits with nails long enough to tap against the counter.

Down through the afternoon the smell of Dream Haze morphs, from the initial burst of sweetness, like a piñata exploding, to a languorous, hot-afternoon, tropical-fruit heart. Then, as it enters the drydown, base notes that are all synthetic: peach, watermelon, vanilla. Residual sugar. Sticky fingers.

Andrew picks me up when I finish work. A shock from the car door, then the smell of leather.

He says, after a minute, What is that? You smell wonderful.

At a red light, he leans over and breathes in.

It’s gorgeous. Really.

Not too sweet?

No, he said. It’s perfect. What’s it called?