‘She did. You know how she hates BigSky.’

‘This is why I never come to your house.’

‘I tried the blockers but they just make the narcolepsy worse.’

‘But everybody uses blockware! I work for BigSky and I use blockware to block our own stuff. Otherwise you just get overstimulated and start to hallucinate. Couple of days ago I thought I was talking to a 3D ad, but it turns out I just had feedback on one of my design apps and I told a perfectly innocent crash-test dummy to fuck off.’

‘You have crash-test dummies in virtual-furniture design?’

‘I got assigned to an AR human-flight project. People go up in the Cairngorms and fly in those suit thingies, but with AR they can be on other planets. Did you at least take the earring out?’

‘After being waylaid a few times by AR, I took the earring out. Then I just ran through the rain, which I thought was making me wet until a Green Bus drove through a puddle and I got fully soaked. I’m so tempted to blow off this appointment and come to yours.’

Shandy and friends have a new room-mate-under-the-stairs, a New Zealander. Shandy’s been trying and failing to get into his pants for a while, so he must be terribly hot and standoffish. It would be so entertaining to be there and not here.

‘Don’t even think of changing your mind, Horse. You need the funds. And Antonio called you. Hold your head up high, go in there and show them both what you’re made of.’

‘But I’m made of wet spaghetti.’

‘Cut the shit and get in there. I expect a full report.’

She snaps her fingers and disappears.

* * *

Melodie lets me in so quickly that she must have been standing right inside the door waiting for me. That’s her name. Melodie Tan. The harpist.

‘I know, it makes me sound like such a joke!’ She’s Canadian, with a strong accent. ‘My friends call me Mel. You should, too.’

Here’s the problematic thing about Mel. She’s really sweet. I mean that. She’s got lovely warm skin, she’s got hair like those shampoo adverts where the model’s tresses fall like a satin sheet and absolutely no flyaways. And instead of resenting her for what looks to me like an unfair excess of overall gorgeousness, I find myself liking her and wanting her to like me. Oh, and get this: she plays the harp. It couldn’t be the bassoon, could it?

She offers me a seat on the couch of her suite. She pours me a glass of wine, but I notice she’s drinking sparkling water herself. On the other side of the floor-to-ceiling window, Central London spreads out looking dignified and romantic – Nice trick, London, I think to myself. I can still smell bus fumes on my clothes.

Melodie confides that the room is paid for by a Russian patron who insists on putting her up in the best suite in the hotel; she looks embarrassed. I of all people don’t judge. I get out my AR stylus to take notes in an effort to appear professional. It is held together with sticky tape like Harry Potter’s glasses, but never mind.