“Why the hell not?”

“Because it makes me feel stupid. It makes me feel like . . . like it was so obvious like . . . why did I even stay with him?”

“For the sex!”

“Was that it?”

“And the apartment. Jesus, I’d have shagged him for sex and the apartment, but he’s still an arsehole.”

“He told me he loved me.”

“Fucking men.”

“When it was good, when he was . . . when he was kind it was . . . and when he wasn’t I desperately wanted him to be kind again, for it to be good again, for him to be pleased. And when he was, it was such a relief. I was so grateful that he was kind to me, it was a buzz, like – does that make sense?”

She is drunk; it is fantastic. She is swollen with food, bloated and vulgar, she is repulsive and stuck in a shitty little room near Streatham Hill, wherever the fuck that is, and is almost dizzy with the relief of it, she might fly; she might soar up through the ceiling. As soon as Jazzy is gone, she’s going to strip off naked and wobble round the flat waving her arms like a child, flapping a pigeon-flap to see if she can soar just by dreaming.

“Jazzy?”

“Yeah?”

“I didn’t think, I mean of everyone down the office – I didn’t think you were kind. I didn’t think that was who you were.”

“Darling, you’ll make me go all soppy.”

“I mean it. You’re so . . . You’ve got all the upgrades, you’re so confident, you’re so – like, you make every choice for you, not for anyone else, and you’re so good on it, you look so great but like, it’s this greatness that if you didn’t have the upgrades feels like you’d still be amazing, you know? I’ve had a lot to drink. This feels, I mean, this feels . . . ”

Her voice trailed off into the sugary occlusion of her empty glass.

For a long time, Jazzy was quiet, staring up at the sloping, shallow ceiling as if she could see through to the surface of the moon. Then she murmured, her voice the softest, most human thing Harmony had ever heard, “It makes me feel good to be beautiful. It makes me feel confident. It makes me feel like who I am inside is reflected on the outside. I like the way people look at me. I like that it gives me choice. I can choose to say yes, because the option is on the table. I can choose to say no, because it’s my body, my life. The power of that – of being able to choose – is a rush, it’s the greatest drug, it’s . . . Most people can’t, you see. They think they can choose, but all they’re doing is deciding between one fuck-up or another fuck-up, trapped in their little hourglass lives like that’s all there’s ever going to be. I know what I am. I know what I want. Fuck if anyone will ever tell me how to live, or to be someone else. This is me.”