Sometimes they wondered if one of them should always stick to the call centre and the other should always work at home, but it was probably good for them both to get out and be with people, so one of them didn’t start acting shut in, and it really did take both of them to do the job properly. Besides, Duncan had hired both of them and it seemed like the honest thing to do was to give the call centre both of them.

One Sunday they looked at each other and realised things were pretty great. Within a couple of months, it had all turned around. They were doing okay at the call centre and were paid an amount that would easily support one of them. The comment moderation was going well and paid almost enough to cover the shortfall from the call centre job. The script was coming along, and they decided that as soon as it was working, they’d take on some more moderation work. There was more and more of it around. They had nights free to go to meetings and help out a bit, and on the nights they didn’t go to meetings they had a growing network of people to talk to and play games with online and every now and then Duncan would organise things for the call centre staff – bowling, movies. There was a social club.

Being apart during the day was okay, because they each had a phone now and they could be in touch, but in a lot of ways that was for the benefit of others. The two of them knew what the other was up to because they both did both jobs and they were both the same.

At the call centre, Duncan wanted them to wear name tags or let him put just one of their names on the whiteboard, so people knew who was working. ‘It’s not fair on the others,’ he’d said.

‘You could,’ the one of them working said. ‘But how will you know you’ve got it right?’

‘Because you’d tell me,’ Duncan said. They were in his office.

‘Truth is’ – and she sat closer to him, like it was a secret – ‘sometimes even we can’t tell.’ And then the one of them who was in the office with him sat back and let the silence get awkward, so even though he’d think it and sometimes mutter things about it under his breath, he never mentioned it again out loud.

Niall worked at the desk next to them and was often there before they were.

‘Greta?’ Niall asked, hesitantly.

‘Sure.’

‘Cool,’ Niall said. ‘Cool, cool. Can we talk about a customer I think we both talked to yesterday?’