Casual as anything, I opened my bag and took out my pad and my aluminium bottle. There was no further risk of an explosion, but the bottle still made an unwaterly Psst when I opened it. No one reacted. Mohit was back from the toilet and had resumed the interminable succession of phone calls that comprised his job. I took a gulp, but my movements were so self-conscious and awkward that I fluffed it and dribbled down my chin. At that moment, tilting my head to wipe my chin with the back of my still-not-washed hand, I became aware that I was being watched. In the conference room, Eddie and Polly had stopped conferring and were looking out through the glass wall towards me. When they saw me see them, Polly rose and came out of the aquarium in that slightly bowed, scuttling pose that comes instinctively when leaving an ongoing meeting, as if one is exiting a helicopter.

‘Polly, hi.’

‘Jack, hi. Can you join us a minute? It would be great to hear where you’re at.’ I watched her eyes flicker as she registered the state of my face.

‘Sure.’ I stood and grabbed my notepad, trying to look normal, and followed her back to the aquarium, both hands and chin smeared with part-dried beer. Eddie did not take his eyes off me, his gaze level, neither pleased nor displeased, but fierce, attentive. This might be how regular bosses look, and I didn’t like it. I wanted the old Eddie, our friend, back.

I circuited the conference table, sitting on the side Polly had been sitting, but further from Eddie. I wanted to be able to see out into the office. Polly did not resume her former seat, but sat across from me, nearer Eddie. Me and Them. Confrontational.

‘How did it go on Tuesday?’ Eddie asked, without particular emphasis or inflection. But there was no hello, how are you, what happened to your face, and that spoke for itself.

The success of my lie would depend on what Eddie knew, and I started to do the maths. If he had called De Chauncey, or De Chauncey’s irate PR had made a call, then Eddie would already know that there had been no interview, but he was keeping that information to himself. Or he was working under the assumption that the meeting had gone ahead, which meant that I was in a different kind of trouble, not quite so bad, but with further to fall. To put it another way, it was possible that my employment was already as good as terminated because Eddie knew that I had ditched De Chauncey and then lied about it, in which case lying again wouldn’t make things all that much worse. But if Eddie believed that the meeting had happened, then telling the truth would make a salvageable situation far worse, perhaps fatally worse. So there was only one answer worth giving.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Great.’