Lena felt like laughing. This gross, ridiculous man with his nineties leather jacket and B-grade cop show patter. He’s got nothing I need and if he did I wouldn’t need it anymore, Nic’d say. Never take advice from a man who can’t even dress himself, Mum’d say. I’d fuck her as long as I didn’t have to look at her, the internet’d say and say and say and say.

She told him in as unemotional, clinical terms as she could. He asked for clarification a few times, but never in a way that made her feel he was storing the details away to wank over later. He stabbed at his keyboard with two fingers as she talked, every so often telling her to slow down. Shouldn’t a tech expert be better at typing? she wondered, but told herself someone else probably did the actual work; Nathan was the detail and fee collector.

Yeah, so, the fee. She actually laughed. Nathan stared at her, unmoved, unembarrassed.

‘I can’t,’ she told him. ‘There’s no way.’

‘It’s only half up-front. You can pay the rest—’

‘No, I can’t ever. It’s …’ How to explain to this man that even half of what he was asking was as accessible to her as a million fucking dollars? She couldn’t even top up her Opal card, had spent her last few bus trips in high anxiety on the lookout for fare inspectors.

‘What about the young man? Does he have funds?’

She laughed again, a bark of shock. ‘You mean the person who filmed the fucking thing in the first place?’

‘Yes.’

‘You want me to ask him to give me money?’

‘I don’t want you to do anything in particular. I’m suggesting options to you. Whether you take them is up to you.’

The thing was, she thought, as she clomped down the piss-stinking stairwell to the street, Josh probably could get that much money. She could ask him, but that would mean making contact with him. It would also mean admitting she had thought of it, which would mean admitting she was bothered by it. Which she couldn’t do. Or wouldn’t. Same thing, in effect.

As soon as she turned her phone back on it rang. Three actual live phone calls in one day. Definitely a sign from the universe that she should get rid of the evil thing.

‘Will. What?’

‘I just got a call from the hospital. Aunty Nic has been brought in by ambulance.’

Lena sat down right where she was. A nature strip it was called, though it was mostly dirt. Dirt was natural, she supposed.

‘You there?’

‘Yeah.’

‘She’s going to be okay. Probably. Good of you to ask. Just getting checked over after a bit of a fall on the street.’

Lena waited in silence. Not for long.

‘A fall like I said would happen.’