‘First,’ Howard says wearily, ‘there are plenty of male dolls down there too. Second, this isn’t objectifying women. It’s womanifying objects. This is the least harmful part of the adult entertainment industry. You know how much physical damage is done to a porn actress over the course of her career? You know how many have been drugged or threatened just before the cameras start rolling? You know how many cam girls are prisoners in those little rooms?’

‘There are laws …’

‘In the USA, sure. Laws that are impossible to enforce in the age of the internet.’ She picks up a breast from her tub and starts absent-mindedly squeezing it like a stress ball. ‘Plenty of my customers are lonely men with social anxiety who form a genuine romantic bond with the doll. Sometimes they don’t even fuck. They watch TV together. She reads him the news. She—’

‘She what?’ Thistle interrupts.

‘Oh yeah. The new ones have a computer in their heads, so they can talk. Like a Google Home or an Amazon Alexa, but nicer to look at.’

‘I’m sure some of your customers have wholesome, chaste relationships with the dummies,’ Thistle says, one eyebrow raised. ‘But aren’t most just looking for a woman who won’t say no?’

Howard nods. ‘Yep. Most customers buy them for rough sex. Some actually beat the shit out of the dolls. I’ve even heard they turn up at the dump with stab wounds. But, ultimately, wouldn’t you rather that happened to a doll than a real woman? Not that it’s easy to tell the difference.’ She tosses the breast to me. ‘Tell me that doesn’t feel like a genuine boob.’

‘He wouldn’t know,’ Thistle mutters.

Howard is looking out the window. ‘In Japan,’ she says, ‘some men form romantic attachments to apps instead of women. They take their phones out on dates to restaurants and parks. You know what women call those men? Soshoku. It means herbivore.’ She looks back at us. ‘Because normal men are predators.’

The opposite of herbivore isn’t predator; it’s carnivore. But I don’t point this out.

‘Do you take requests?’ I ask, keen to get to the point.

‘Our whole business is requests,’ Howard says. ‘Customers choose the face, the wig, the colour of the nails, the type of nipples. Sometimes customers get bored, and they buy new faces for old dolls. You can peel off the face and swap it out.’

Thistle shudders.

‘We don’t make anything criminal-adjacent, though,’ Howard adds.

‘Criminal-adjacent?’ I repeat.

‘Customers sometimes ask me to make children. Animals, too. I used to pass those requests on to the police. But it turns out it’s not illegal to request a sex toy shaped like a child or a dog. Doesn’t mean I’m gonna make one, though.’