(A mixture. She is excited for the future; she has dreams, ambitions; she has chosen the house she’s going to buy when she’s got the money; she has chosen, if not the man she’ll marry, then certainly the car he’ll drive, and the white cashmere jumper he’ll wear on casual Sundays at garden parties. She also has upgraded her sexual protection, her resistance to fatigue – Do not use this program in conjunction with caffeine. If you experience heart palpitations please contact your healthcare provider urgently – and yes, her smile. She doesn’t have to brush her teeth now, and even if No More Dentists doesn’t seem to do much more than keep her teeth white and her breath minty-fresh, the idea that it’s there makes her much more relaxed when expressing herself. She accepts that this may be a slightly costly placebo. She accepts that it’s worth it.)

Harmony Meads went looking for a job.

Getting a job was harder than anyone had told her it would be. The year Harmony graduated with her hard-won 2:1, the housing bubble went, which also blew some other bubble which did something to inflation or something, which basically meant . . .

“When we hire someone as young as you, it’s an investment. We are investing in the whole person.”

“Of course it’s minimum youth wage until you’re twenty-five, and then it’s up to £8.50 an hour . . . ”

“How do you feel about meat-derivative products?”

“What you need is to do internships! I know they’re unpaid, but they’re such a good opportunity for . . . ”

She wore a shiny cream blouse and pencil skirt to interviews when she got them, which wasn’t often. She applied to temp agencies – just to fill the gap – but everyone else had applied too and she could only get shifts doing 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. sitting alone in the front of office buildings in Reading. No one came, no one called, the front door was locked and she had no idea why she was there in her vanilla pumps and brown eyeliner, pretending to herself that she’d study and mostly just doing Sudoku, too tired for anything else.

Even that work dried up after a while, and no one told her why, or if it was something she did.

In the end, she got a job in a stationery shop back in Bracknell. It paid by the hour, and didn’t cover health insurance. She moved back in with her mum, and when her student card expired and healthcare costs doubled, Mum came to her and said:

“So . . . I know I’ve always paid for this, very happily of course, always want the best for you, but I was wondering if . . . well, how you’re doing financially? I’m very happy to cover it, don’t you worry, I can cope – but what do you want?”

Karen Meads, sixty-four years old, widow at forty-seven, had worked down the local supermarket for seventeen years until her back started to give out. Then she had lived off savings, and a bit of income from the government and her dead husband’s insurance policy, and in term-time had rented out Harmony’s room to actors doing panto down the local theatre, and coped. She always coped. It was what she did.