The woman slowly slipped off her green wool coat.

Lucy took it and started to run.

‘Where are you going?’ the woman shouted.

When she got to the computer house it was as if she had been running for miles.

She sent an email to the professor.

‘Put a large sum of money in my account,’ she instructed him, ‘and I will make it worth your while when I get back.’

She watched the screen flicker and change in front of her, vaguely registering that it too was a brand. She felt no compulsion to steal it. Outside the computer house she heard a noise, a gentle tap-tap. When she looked around, she saw a girl throwing pebbles at the glass. At first, Lucy thought the girl was trying to get someone’s attention inside but then she realised she was directing all her anger at the computer house. The girl stood still, glaring at the computer house for a few more seconds before she disappeared into the night.

‘Who was that person?’ Lucy asked the boy on the monitor next to her.

‘Oh,’ he answered, rolling his eyes. ‘That’s Natasha. I’m not even sure she knows that she comes here. She’s a sort of a strange, angry person.’

‘So am I.’ Lucy stared at the blank screen. ‘Well, I’m going now.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m going on holidays.’

*

She got a taxi to the airport. At the desk she asked for a ticket to any cheap, sunny place.

‘Miss, your card has been declined.’

She offered them another card.

‘This has also been declined.’

She offered them her final card.

‘That worked.’

Her ticket said ‘Spain.’ In the duty-free she shoplifted a pair of sunglasses. She made a note of the brand in her notebook, and then threw her notebook in the bin. She shoplifted a leopard-print bikini, slipped off her silk dress and piss-soaked knickers and flushed them down the toilet. She climbed into the bikini, closed the respectable wool coat over it and laced up her boots over her bare legs. She reapplied her eye make-up so no one would know that she had been crying. She took a picture, a final picture, in the fluorescent bathroom light. Leaning against the cubicle doors, she rang her boyfriend. He answered after three rings. She could hear his hesitation.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I’m so sorry. I wanted to tell your story because I love you.’

‘You think that’s love? That’s not love.’

She hung up and turned her phone off. She took a plastic knife from a coffee shop and jammed it in the back of her phone. She sat in the departure lounge and dismantled her phone piece by piece. She dropped the pieces in the bin. This pleased her greatly. She placed her sunglasses over her eyes and the lounge looked unnatural. Around her everyone sat, waiting for life to begin again. Under her sunglasses, the seats turned orange.

‘I’m going on holidays,’ she informed the businesslike woman sitting opposite her, engrossed in her screen.