“Good morning, Ms Meads; my name is Gillian! How are you today?”

A flood of relief. Gillian was a kind, caring human, who’d make everything better. This was apparent from twelve words of Yorkshire chipper, two dozen syllables of compassionate interest in all the problems of Harmony’s life, which were, if she was honest with herself, legion. “I want to report a problem with my nanos.”

“Oh no, what kind of problem?”

“I’ve . . . I’ve got a spot.” Even in the relative privacy of her bathroom, a cupboard-sized cell with pipes that carried the arguments of Mr and Mrs Patel in No. 1 up and the weed-stenched cushion of Hailey and Phuong’s gaming marathons in No. 2 down, she whispered the words.

“Say again, Ms Meads?”

A little louder, her humiliation given voice. She shielded her phone from the vent above the sink through which all sound travelled, including Mr Patel’s morning shower rendition of “When I’m cleaning windows”, and hissed, “I’ve got a spot.”

“Ah yes, I can see how that might happen.”

“Are my nanos malfunctioning? Do I need to go to hospital? Is there a programming error? Are they . . . doing things? Can you diagnose that from where you are?”

“No, no, Ms Meads, no need to worry at all. I can see your account details and your nanos are running perfectly fine. What’s happening is that some of your boosts are being shut down, including Dermaglow, which might explain this incident. There’s an adjustment period.”

“What do you mean, shutting down?”

Now her voice was rising in anger, indignation. She’d imagined many causes for this calamity, ranging from a massive malfunction that was at this precise point liquefying her organs from the inside out, through to the first signs of an infection she didn’t have coverage against – leprosy perhaps, whatever that was. Gillian’s explanation had not featured in any of these fantasies.

“Looking at it . . . Ah yes, so there’s a few boosts that will be shutting down in the next twenty-four hours, including Dermaglow, Rise and Shine, Fresh and Perky, Powerful Poise . . . ”

“All right, I’m going to stop you there Gillian – Gillian, was it? Gillian, I’ve got to stop you. I haven’t authorised this. I haven’t . . . I have a contract and I’ve been letting a lot of services lapse I know – but shutting down is absolutely unacceptable; these upgrades are . . . ”

“Ms Meads, I’m very sorry, but you are several months behind in your payments to Fullife and until payment is received, we are obliged to shut down non-essential services.”

At the black hole that lay at the centre of the spinning galaxy of her life, Harmony Meads felt her world collapse.

There were questions she should ask.

There were things she needed to say.

Arguments to have.

She thought she should shout, curse this stupid fucking woman in wherever she fucking was, tell her to check again, tell her that she was wrong, that it was all wrong, that this wasn’t how it went, to fix this fuck-up right fucking now.