‘We’re meeting today because concerns have been raised about the circumstances in which you were injured,’ the social worker says from behind a desk piled with papers. The walls are plastered with posters about DEPRESSION and ANXIETY and BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER, about SUICIDE and HANDWASHING and NATURAL MOOD BOOSTERS. There’s a calendar displaying all of last year against a backdrop of sunflowers. A newspaper clipping whose headline is too small to read. A child’s drawing of a family with purple faces and hair in front of a house as small as the purple dog.

‘I’d love it if you’d tell me in your own words, Nicole, how you came to hurt yourself?’

On their last Sunday lunch date, Nic and Lena had eaten salads as big as their heads and drunk prosecco and flirted with the hot young waiter who brought them limoncello on the house and asked when they’d return, and Lena had spoken in excited whispers about this boy she was crushing on and Nic had told Lena about Jase from the stockroom and shocked them both by admitting she wouldn’t mind a ride. When they were paying, the flirty waiter had asked if they were sisters and Nic had rolled her eyes, said she could never get on so well with her actual sister.

And now, here is Lena, grey-skinned and baggy-eyed, smile like a slapped-on sticker. A middle-aged, careworn daughter nodding encouragingly at her decrepit parent to go ahead and tell the nice lady what happened.

‘I climbed on the desk so I could hang something on a hook.’ She hears and hates the wobble in her voice. ‘I misjudged the edge and fell. Big whoop. I can’t be the only person to have fallen off some furniture while trying to reach something high.’

‘Of course,’ the social worker coos, making deep sympathetic arches of her brows, ‘accidents like yours happen quite often. What we’re concerned about is the circumstances in which you were found. The space in which you fell is what we could describe as cluttered or congested.’ She inclines her head as though she has asked a question. When no one answers, a look of disappointment crosses her face and she presses her beautiful fingertips together and continues: ‘We’re concerned that the clutter may have exacerbated the damage caused by the fall.’ Another pause, during which she looks down at her desk, nods gently as though all is explained there. ‘It certainly made it very difficult, Nicole, for the emergency services to reach you quickly.’

‘It wasn’t very difficult,’ Lena says. ‘I mean, it took a couple of minutes to clear the hallway for the, um, stretcher and that. No big deal, really.’

The social worker turns her pity-filled gaze away from Nic towards the speaker of these true and necessary words: no big deal. Lena knows! And she’s young and clever and in one piece so will be heard.