‘He was from the study. The drug I took for BigSky, for the trial. Damn. He came in once during a consultation with a string of medical students following him like baby ducks. If it hadn’t been for that trial, I’d still have my nasty little job like a normal person and not be cluttering up your life with my problems.’

There’s a long silence except for the sound of Edgar’s powerboat-volume purring as he chews his treats. Then O’s voice comes in via my earring, even though she’s only in the next room. She can’t stand shouting, says it’s uncouth.

‘It seems that the trial you were involved in was no great success. Zborowski has left BigSky, and no papers have been published, not even in preprint,’ she says. ‘I have an alert on my system. The project appears to have been binned.’

‘But he’s moving up in the world if this Meera Bhango is as hotshit as you say she is.’

‘Leaving BigSky to go to a start-up is risky. He’ll only move up in the world if Little Bird can produce something of real value. It’s possible he’s jumped ship because his work was stonewalled at Excelsior-Barking, but BigSky are unlikely to let go of the intellectual property so easily.’

I bring the teapot out into the sitting room, which is now bathed in amber sunlight from the west.

‘Do you really think this Meera could help me? She’s probably super busy.’

O sighs. ‘I don’t know, darling. She certainly can’t help you if you don’t approach her.’

We sip our tea, O using her good hand. She’s thinking hard. I know because she frowns more than usual when she’s concentrating. The frown isn’t as deep as her debugging-code frown but it’s deeper than her reading-novels-in-their-original-Russian scowl.

Finally, she says, ‘Well, this is crazy, but.’

I put my hands over my face. Whenever O says, ‘This is crazy, but—’ it means either she wants to do something slightly illegal (usually involving motorbike stunts), or she’s going to send me to the British Library to do research on a crazy theory. Like her hypothesis that the Incas invented quantum chromodynamics diagrams before Richard Feynman. Or that bear meat cures lung cancer. Don’t get me wrong – O’s brilliant at IT, but she’s got a flamboyant streak and an ego roughly the size of Greenland (as it appears on a map). Whenever she says, This is crazy, but, or, I’m sure I’m wrong about this, I just know it’s kicking off.

I watch her cup shake in her hand. I wish she didn’t have to be so old, and I wish she weren’t ill. I feel a mad affection for her, even if I’m not certain it’s mutual.

‘I’m sure I’m wrong about this.’