One morning while my colleagues were in a meeting, I stared despondently at the staff photo board. We’d been asked to bring in pictures of ourselves as children and Sabine’s was still there. Above her name tag was a child of eight or nine. She was onstage, dressed in a midriff top, hot pants, and boots. Her mouth was stained bright red as if she’d been eating raspberry sherbet. She was the naughty little girl I’d always wanted to know. The girl I’d been discouraged from inviting home. A sexualized child; I could hear the words in my mother’s disapproving tone.

I looked at the photograph above my own name: my dorky orange pigtails, my pinafore dress, my shiny brown buckle shoes. Then I took the thumbtacks out and, not caring that it didn’t make sense, I swapped the photos around.

Of course, it was only after I completely gave up on hearing about nights that a letter came through the internal post. I can’t recall where the interview was held. It may have been the Victorian warehouse near London Bridge where the nightshifters worked; by day it would’ve seemed a different place entirely. All I remember clearly was being sure that I had botched it—but I was wrong. Either that or there weren’t as many people clamoring to invert their body clocks as I’d imagined.

By the time I got home, there was already a message on my phone: I was to be at the London Bridge warehouse at ten P.M. the following Monday to start the job.

Part II

8

As instructed, I entered the warehouse building through the cracked glass door. Going up two dirty flights of stairs, I came into a vast workspace with a concrete floor, exposed brick walls, industrial-size bins, and glue-stained desks. On some of them were bulky out-of-date computers; on all were stacks of white paper, newspapers, glue sticks, and scissors.

I scanned the room for Sabine but there were no familiar faces; the unfamiliar ones looked sallow and waxy in the fluorescent light. I was told to trail someone called Earl, a mini Muscle Mary with breath like a firelighter. His hair was in twists dyed gold and he had one gold-capped tooth. He explained that my job would involve reading the papers to find and summarize articles to do with crime. I’d send them out to government clients by six o’clock each morning. He’d show me the ropes but I’d have to figure out the specifics myself.

“Unfortunately, your predecessor’s not available,” he said.

“OK,” I said.

“He topped himself,” Earl said.

“God.”

“I know. The shift leader still feels bad.”

“The shift leader?”

Earl put a finger to his lips. “He was always calling in sick. One day, she made a voodoo doll from screwed-up newspaper and stuck pins in it. She did it as a joke but then . . .”