Ruth put the kettle on.

‘How much have you had to drink?’

Clio flapped away an imaginary fly.

‘It doesn’t matter. Tell you why it doesn’t matter? Because nothing matters. Nothing I do or you do will ever make the slightest bit of fucking difference. So why not have a drink.’

With some difficulty, she fumbled in the pocket of her coat for her phone.

‘Lookit. Lookit. Started already. The tweeting. The relentless little nip-nip-nip away from men men men. I’ve taken it hard from them for a year. I’ve let that bloated sack of tatties at the Scotland on Sunday and the weirdo at the Daily Mail and all their crowing cronies in their mums’ fucking sheds on Twitter rip me to shreds and I’ve taken it, babe. I have not flinched. I have turned the other cheek.’

Ruth kept her own counsel here.

‘I just let them get on with it. It was water off a duck’s back, jus rolled right off and ignored it. And why? Because I was so sure that what we were doing was going to work, and they’d all come round eventually, when their kids or whatever were getting amazing Scandinavian education and we had an oil fund underpinning a citizen’s income and we were tackling poverty properly and putting money into green energy programmes and all those beautiful things we were going to do. That they’d see then.’

She’d slumped forward on to the table, was talking from between her arms. Ruth set the mug of tea down beside her face.

‘But they won’t. They were never going to. Because they knew this country. They knew that most of the country was just fearty little boys like them, making snidey jokes because they’re afraid to believe in anything. That’s what it is. It’s why anyone from here goes away and does well, we start laughing at them when they come back again. It’s why we’ll never actually manage to do anything positive that could actually make a meaningful difference in people’s lives, is it? There’s always some wee Scottish gremlin sitting there on yer shoulder, whispering its mantra. Naw. Naw. Naw.’

She slid slowly down to the floor, looked up at Ruth with huge eyes, terrified.

‘I mean, what is this world, pal? Why do these fuckers keep on winning? I need – I need – I need to keep believing that at some point it will stop, and they’ll listen, and we’ll make everything all right. But every time – every time—’

Ruth had tucked her up in her own bed, the bedside cabinet turned rescue stop, its surface covered with a pint glass of water, a couple of paracetamol, a packet of crisps and a plastic bag for vomit.