‘Bloody ring, will you?’ she hisses at the phone. It’s taking the brunt of her rage. Her hair’s wet, and she’s sweaty beneath her damp clothes. The doctor recently hinted she may be having problems with menopause. She’d stopped him after the first syllable. As far as she’s concerned, the irritability, hot flushes and occasional emotional breakdowns are all the result of people not doing things properly. She takes great umbrage at words like ‘hormonal’ and ‘imbalance’ and likes them even less when they are used in the same sentence. She’s been told there are herbal remedies that might help, but unless she can sprinkle them into a fat cigarette and inhale, she’d rather keep the rage.

Opening her eyes again, she gives her barista a once-over. ‘And do they pay you to look like that? Do you apply, and they give you a how-to manual, or is it that you dress a certain way and then look for an employer who doesn’t mind?’

He switches off the coffee machine. Looks at her over his round glasses. ‘Sorry, I didn’t catch that.’

‘I’m sure you didn’t,’ grumbles Pharaoh, shaking her head at him. She doesn’t have particularly strong opinions on music, but there’s something about acoustic ballads delivered in syrupy whispers that sets her teeth on edge – especially turned up to eleven and competing with the sound of the big brass coffee machine.

‘That’ll be four twenty, please,’ says the man behind the counter. His name tag declares that his name is ‘Boz’, and Pharaoh will admit he rather suits it. He’s short and stocky, with brawny, tattooed forearms and some impressive neo-traditional inkwork climbing up his neck and into the rhododendron of his beard. His moustache is waxed into tips and his skull is shaved so close that if he were to buy a sharper blade, he’d hit bone. With braces, badges and two big tunnels in his earlobes, he’s quite the visual spectacle. She can’t help thinking that as and when he commits a crime, he’s going to be shitting himself come the identity parade. They won’t need an artist so much as a cartoonist.

‘Fuck off, Boz,’ says Pharaoh, laughing. ‘How much really?’

He looks briefly pained. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘It’s Colombian.’

‘What is?’ asks Pharaoh.

‘The coffee.’

‘Am I paying for its flight?’ asks Pharaoh, incredulous. She looks behind her, optimistic that somebody else in the queue will share her in an eye-roll and a generalized whinge. Growls, under her breath, as she considers the only other customer. She’s got pink hair and is wearing a multicoloured chunky-knit cardigan over a T-shirt that declares: VGN PWR. Pharaoh, once she’s confirmed that there isn’t an A missing from the end of the first word, fancies that she’ll be on Boz’s side.