‘See us all there, the entire company is coming,’ he confirmed as a dozen pairs of eyes furtively peered up at me from behind their computer screens. It was like being watched by a whole family of meerkats. He lowered his voice and covered his hand with his mouth. ‘Except Kelvin. We didn’t invite Kelvin.’

I followed his eyes over to a young man across the room. He was wearing prosthetic elf ears and a deerstalker and was peering at his iPhone, laughing loudly to himself. I looked back at the appalled expression on Ted’s face. I’d have invited Kelvin before any of the rest of them. At least Kelvin looked like he knew how to have a laugh.

‘Right, see you in a bit,’ I said, squatting down to pick up the heavy box, unassisted. But Ted had already replaced his noise-cancelling headphones and gone back to ignoring me, as had everyone else.

‘As god intended,’ I muttered, waddling out of the office and into the street.

Patrick’s flat was only twenty minutes from the PodPad offices but twenty minutes was a long way to walk in twenty-nine degrees while carrying a giant cardboard box. Aside from a touch of tepid drizzle, the rain still hadn’t come and the streets of London were full of people wearing next to nothing. I felt wildly overdressed in my jeans and T-shirt but it felt indecent to see the city down to strappy vests and little shorts when we were definitely more of a black-opaque-tights kind of a town.

I’d said I would pick Patrick up en route to the recording but I was nervous about seeing him. Not because I was worried I’d say something stupid or cock up in some way but because I had been sure that he was the answer to all my problems for so long and, suddenly, I wasn’t quite so certain any more.

Pretending I wasn’t sweating through my T-shirt, I stood in front of his door and juggled the box in my arms to reach for the doorbell.

Right before I pressed, I looked at the giant box and smiled. The tiger mask. It would be funny, wouldn’t it? I thought it would be funny. Sumi would think it was funny. I was prepared to bet John would get a laugh out of it. But would Patrick? Without overthinking it, I whipped the mask out the box and, with one deep breath, I jammed it onto my head. Not ideal for my claustrophobia but it would be worth it, I thought, jabbing the doorbell, for the look on his face.