Thea rubbed at her eyes. It would have been a relief every so often if she could have just taken out her eyeballs and dunked them in cold water. The gunk and grit of sleeplessness would float off down the plughole and she could then pop the eyeballs back in, totally refreshed.

‘Critical point?’ Thea went over and hung up Harriet’s coat. ‘Yeah, I think it’s been reached.’

People as twisted and shattered as that lump of metal and glass.

Harriet paused in her writing, ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ she said as she considered her over the top of her glasses. It sounded genuine. All of a sudden, Thea’s eyes began to sting. Harriet pushed her glasses up a little and considered the papers in front of her. Instinctively, she reached out once more for the coffee mug, looked in it, paused, and set it back down again.

Harriet picked up a framed photo. ‘But your mother, Vivian Mackenzie. You spend a lot of time with her?’

Did Harriet mean “too much time”? Thea couldn’t tell.

‘Some. Not much. I have friends.’

She was getting good at lying.

‘And your mother’s … activism? She founded … let me see, The Menopausal Army, no?’ Harriet couldn’t stop the flicker of a smile at the name. ‘At Ing Enterprises we are not so sure this would be such a good fit for us.’

Thea’s coffee sloshed over the side of the mug as she put it down too heavily. Not a good fit. What did that mean? Would she be blacklisted from the trial because her mother had morals and an insane need to march every single weekend, no matter what the weather was like?

‘Oh – that? She’s retired now. Completely.’

The lie came out so easily. But it wasn’t completely untrue – her mother had stopped doing the on-camera stuff and organizing campaigns. She’d definitely taken a step back … just not quite as far back as Thea would have Harriet believe.

Harriet jotted down notes. Thea fiddled with a loose thread on her jumper, wanting the woman gone, and the skin of her safe little house to close back over after the splinter had been tweezered out.

Safe little house.

Thea realized with a cold, sick feeling in her stomach that, in about four months’ time, if she gave up her job and her savings ran out, she would no longer be able to afford this safe little house. That flapping, unhinged part of her mind creaked.

‘Anyhow. We are getting a little ahead of ourselves.’ Harriet smiled. ‘It’s not yet guaranteed that you are the type of candidate we are looking for. May we now move on to the second part of this little chat?’