The in-tray, too, looks all wrong, although it is a thing she loves dearly. A serendipitous find. On the way home from the hairdresser on a Saturday morning three years ago the sky had opened up and she’d ducked into the nearest open door to avoid getting her freshly blow-dried hair drenched. Found herself in the midst of an office supplies warehouse’s annual sale. Oh, the things she wanted to buy! But she was on foot and in dodgy weather so had to restrain herself to what would fit in her spare plastic carry bags. Pretty pastel-coloured pens she could use to spark up her evening Sudoku; dry-erase markers that would be useful when she unpacked the whiteboard she’d bought months ago to use as a wall planner; three keep cups so she would have one for home, one for work and one spare. And this beautiful, beautiful in-tray. Extra length and with high sides and made of an opaque red plastic with a slight opalescence.

When the rain stopped she rushed home, filled with purpose. Better organisation was the secret to an easier life, and who wouldn’t want to stay organised if it meant interacting with this gorgeous, glowing tray? She remembers the feeling: like after her first solo day on the register at work, knowing she’d nailed it, that her dreams of a different, better life were not only possible but actually not even that hard to reach.

But now, in the middle of the stripped-bare giant table all alone, the tray looks small and cheap and incapable of doing much good at all. She is looking at a wooden thing holding a plastic thing holding a paper thing. She is looking at utility and practicality and administration. She is looking at emptiness cradling a reminder of pain. She is looking at her future.

No! She must not think that way or it will be that way. The past cannot be undone, but she is back in control now and can change the course of things. For example, look! The letter is in the red plastic tray but its envelope, still in Nic’s hand, is not empty, not if you know what to look for. There, there: the lining which government departments put inside the envelopes to prevent the postie or snooping neighbours from holding it up to the light and reading the contents. Or no, it’s probably not the government departments who put the lining in, but the envelope company, knowing that government departments can and will pay more for envelopes containing the extra security of a rectangle of thick, printed layers inside.