She gives me a faintly pitying look and I recoil a little, flustered. People think sleeping together means sleeping together. When actually it only means sleeping together. Mind you, after Elstree’s hedge-trimmer dream, I’m no longer sure what it is I do.

I leave his office with my tail between my legs. So much for Martin Elstree being my ticket to a better class of customer. O has refused to refund his deposit, but that doesn’t take the sting out.

I know I’m upset because after I drop off the keys, I don’t go home but instead to the knitting café in Camden, where I eat four cupcakes and drink a tall skinny latte. I don’t know why I order a skinny latte when the four cupcakes would totally overpower any dietary benefits of low-fat milk. All around me, people are knitting decorously, reading books, taking occasional sips of health-promoting green tea. I’m scoffing and slurping and scowling.

After the second cupcake, I realise I am angry. I’m good at what I do. Yet here I am, my oldest client sacking me and my newest expecting me to entertain his most disgusting, violent fantasies for money. If I say no, the fact that he’s a powerful and influential person means I’ll also lose the possibility of any referrals, which I now realise I was counting on.

Picking up the third cupcake, I decide it’s unprofessional of me to take all this so personally. But by the end of that cupcake I’ve fallen into despair because apparently I can’t even make a go of the flakiest career in the Alternative Therapies Handbook, and how sad is that?

Halfway through the fourth cupcake, I open Antonio’s message and read the rest of it.

She is seeing a psychiatrist but he just gives her drugs and they interfere with her work. My girlfriend is a professional musician. She’s in town as a guest artist with the Philharmonic and she is having a breakdown.

Now I’m stuck between being jealous of a professional musician and greedy for the sliding-scale fee I can charge her.

She’s a sweet person. Very focused. Maybe a little high strung. But now she thinks someone wants to kill her. She’s dreaming about a stalker and she’s afraid to go to sleep. It’s starting to affect her work.

I belch and get a dirty look from one of the hardcore knitters.

‘Sorry, love,’ I say.

I’m feeling a little sick now. I frown, reading the last few lines.

I know we didn’t end in the best way. I hope we are still friends. I need your help.

Yeah, right.

Also in my messages: a notification that my overdraft is nine pounds away from its limit. I hear an odd snorting noise, something between a whine and a sob and the sound of a pig at the trough. The hardcore knitter picks up and changes tables to get away from me.

I wish I could get away from myself.

* * *