‘Yes, fine, put it over there,’ she replied, leaving the door open and rushing back to her desk. The entire office was in a state of disarray, pizza boxes and takeaway salad containers stacked up in one corner, a bin overflowing with giant cardboard coffee cups and piles of unopened post covering the floor. I wasn’t sure where ‘over there’ was but I did know I wasn’t about to leave a phone, a laptop and all my beautiful clothes in the middle of this disaster area.

‘I can take them upstairs, it’s no problem,’ I said as she slid back behind her desk and began punching at the keyboard. ‘Or drop the clothes off at the cleaners?’

‘The clothes?’ Sarah looked up at me, blinking behind her dirty glasses. ‘Oh, the clothes. You don’t have to return the clothes. Keep them. Call it a bonus.’

That should have been my cue to turn tail and leave, but underneath the stale smell of leftovers and too much coffee was the distinct aroma of panic and my former, super-assistant self just could not leave her alone in this state.

‘Are you OK?’ I asked, already knowing what her answer would be.

‘Yes,’ she replied instantaneously. ‘Of course I am.’

‘Of course you are,’ I agreed. I rested my bag on top of my suitcase by the door and took off my coat as I surveyed the disaster zone. Sarah pushed her glasses on top of her head as I picked up a box of bin bags that had somehow made it into the office but not yet been used, and began loading in all the empty food boxes and coffee cups.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked as I tried not to retch at the rancid remains of what had once been an egg salad sandwich.

‘Tidying,’ I replied, tying the bag shut and starting another. ‘Helping.’

She looked puzzled.

‘Why?’

‘Because it looks like you could use a hand.’

‘But I sacked you?’

‘You did,’ I agreed with a grimace as I dumped the bin bag outside the front door. Even London’s bravest and most foolhardy rats would give that one a wide berth. ‘Should I stop?’

She watched me warily, as though I might flip at any second, pull a baseball bat out of my pocket and go the full Harley Quinn on her office, but then all three phones began to ring again at exactly the same moment and her attention went elsewhere.

‘No,’ Sarah said, reaching for a gold iPhone first. ‘Thank you. Carry on.’