By ten o’clock, I was safely tucked up in bed with Starting Over, slightly buzzed, learning how to tap into my limitless ass-kicking optimism and waiting for my phone to stop vibrating. The shed was feeling more and more like a Twilight Zone version of home – from the Forever Friends jewellery box to the Groovy Chick pillowcase – but it was all just a little bit off. To make matters even more confusing, just as I got into bed, Mum popped in to put all my dryer-shrunk clothes away in my drawers and, at some point in the day, Dad had been by to hook up an ancient VHS to the useless television. I now had the thrilling choice of watching any number of mid-nineties Disney films, six episodes from season two of Sex in the City, or a live rendition of Les Misérables Mum had taped off BBC about twenty years ago and, for some reason, protected with her life. I’d never had it so good.

As the words in my book began to blur together, I gave up on reading, sliding the book down the slender gap between the bed and the wall and checking my morning alarm for at least the fifteenth time.

‘See?’ I told the ceiling of the shed as I wedged my phone underneath my pillow. ‘I am not a failed loser who is going to die alone, I am loved by my friends and family and an in-demand professional who is open to love and new experiences and also drinking wine on Mondays.’

I hiccupped and smiled happily, hugging my pillow tightly as I closed my eyes and went straight to sleep.

CHAPTER FOUR

Ten o’clock the following morning, I sat, patiently waiting in the waiting room, wearing a pair of trousers left over from the turn of the millennium that the internet assured me were due to come back into fashion any second now and my mother’s second-best shirt. There had been no time to shop for a better interview outfit and since Dad had destroyed all my nicest things, I was forced to be a trendsetter.

PodPad, according to the research I’d done on my way into town, was no longer the tiny startup I’d rejected three years ago but a terribly cool company that made terribly cool podcasts about terribly cool things, like paleo diets and radical politics and serial killers. People loved podcasts about serial killers. Probably a societal red flag, I thought, reading through the list on their website: Murderville, The Killer Nextdoor. Murdered to Death. Probably something we ought to be more worried about, as if we didn’t have enough to be worried about already.

A tall, gangly, red-haired man, who looked like he’d shaved for the very first time that morning, stuck his head out the door. He glanced at me once, frowned and desperately searched the otherwise empty room for someone who was not me.