These words, intended to comfort, fell numb on Harmony’s soul.

For a little while.

Getting her first credit card was astonishingly easy.

A couple of pay slips, and that was it.

Her overdraft was £2000.

She only got it because the first three months of Powerful Poise had to be paid upfront, and she didn’t have the cash to hand. She knew that, with a bit of careful judgement, she could easily keep up on minimum card payments, even with the APR being so high. The trick was not to let it get out of control.

She chose her first sports enhancement package from the thousands of contenders, very carefully and after a great deal of research.

Combining flexibility with strength, grace with control, Powerful Poise is the package for any aspiring dancer or yogi. Muscular definition combined with feminine sensuality, show the world your inner strength! Powerful Poise cannot alter muscle development beyond the constraints of current skeletal structure. If you experience jaundice or liver failure, please contact your healthcare provider.

The decision was not unlike buying new, expensive clothes. She read articles, checked comparative websites, went on forums to ask other women how they felt about their packages. Yes, Goddess of War might give you fantastic muscles, but did it not perhaps make you seem a little masculine? How about Spin Cycle – the perfect complementary nano upgrade for the dedicated gym-goer? Yes, it gave you a far more robust cardiac boost than Powerful Poise for roughly the same price, but for all it might be more therapeutic long-term, it also led to extremely muscular thighs and calves, which Harmony didn’t feel sent the right signals.

And she knew what the signals were. She waited four weeks as the nanos worked, and this time, knowing they were doing their thing, she also exercised, adding her own efforts to the money – the sizable money – she had invested, and felt, for the first time in months, great. There were actors and actresses, models and singers who ostensibly went for the naturalists’ approach, who were genetically beautiful from birth and didn’t need to worry about what they ate – if you believed the magazines. Harmony didn’t, but even if it was true, she knew that the natural look could never send such a message, such a decisive message about choice, about choosing an identity, as a few carefully judged upgrades could.

“Have you done something to your hair?” asked Karen one evening as she returned from gym, smell of sweat and pride mingling across her skin.

She knew what the real question was and felt the judgement beneath it. Even when her back had started hurting, Karen had forked out for the bare minimum of upgrades, a spinal package that dented the pain without ever letting her imagine it wasn’t real, that she wasn’t getting old. She wasn’t a naturalist, but then again: “You have to learn to cope, don’t you? Otherwise you’re just living in cloud-cuckoo-land!”

“No, Mum,” she snapped, and saw her mum draw herself up a little straighter in response to the lash in her voice. “I’m just looking after myself right.”