Delia handed her a coffee, knowing that, without it, Vivian would not be able to even consider the rest of the morning. Not for the first time, Vivian thanked the (obviously female) gods for Delia: their friendship was her longest standing relationship. Men came and went but Dels remained.

‘You know, Dels, I’m finding myself feeling … like a bit of a dinosaur with all of this. It’s not the technology so much. I just can’t shake the idea that I’m going about this all wrong, that I’m not understanding something. Am I being rose-tinted, or did it all seem … well, just easier in the old days?’

‘Nostalgia, Viv? Didn’t think that was your thing.’

‘It’s not.’ Vivian smiled wryly. ‘The old days were god-awful half the time; that’s why we wanted to change so much.’

Delia sipped her coffee. It took her a while to answer and, when she did, she chose her words carefully.

‘Everything’s so much more … knotty these days. But we still need to scream about things, if that’s what you mean. It’s the only way to get heard. Problem is, everyone’s doing so much screaming, it’s hard to listen to it all.’

Vivian nodded. She was just one more scream.

‘I looked at a few of those sleep apps, like the one Thea’s trialling.’ Delia produced a pack of biscuits from her pocket and offered one to Vivian. She hesitated because it was still early but then she sighed, thinking that sometimes in life you had to just take the biscuit.

‘And?’

‘It’s nothing so new. Mood music and whale song, mostly. Some of them track how well you sleep but it’s not that accurate. Why would Ing Enterprises be so secretive about that?’

Vivian gazed up at the glass roof of the train station. It was a jaunty Victorian-built affair, constructed at a time when public buildings had been special occasion cakes that needed as many flourishes as possible. Pigeons waddled around like serious, but very small, commuters.

‘I tried to learn Italian once,’ Vivian said thoughtfully. ‘I got one of those CDs and put it on at night, fell asleep to it because I’d read somewhere that your brain would pick it up while it slept.’

‘I didn’t know you’d learnt Italian.’

‘I didn’t. It didn’t work.’ Vivian turned to Delia excitedly. ‘But think if it had! Think if someone had actually figured out how to make something like that work …’

She trailed off. Delia frowned and paused in the middle of sipping her coffee. They both let that last sentence sink in.