But the intern seemed concerned. Sarah’s blood pressure was low, and she was dreadfully pale. Sarah made light of it. She was pretending, putting him off the scent. She was good at that; it was her job, after all. Everyone at the office knew the old joke: How can you tell when a lawyer is lying? You can see their lips move. She had got the better of some of the wiliest magistrates in town; this young intern wouldn’t catch her out. A minor blip, was all. Burn-out? She smiled at the term. The expression was very current, and very over-used, too. A big word for a passing bout of fatigue. She hadn’t eaten enough this morning, that was all. Or maybe she hadn’t slept enough? Hadn’t screwed enough either, she was tempted to add, with wry humour, but the intern’s severe expression dissuaded her from any attempt to get to know him a little better. A shame. He was almost good-looking, with his little glasses and curly hair, almost her type. She would take vitamins, if he wanted, yes. She could recommend a terrific pick-me-up, she told him, smiling: coffee, cocaine and cognac. Highly effective, he should try it some time.

The intern was in no mood for jokes. He suggested rest, a break from work. ‘Take your foot off the accelerator,’ he said. Sarah burst out laughing. So he did have a sense of humour after all. Take her foot off the accelerator? How exactly? By selling the kids on eBay? By declaring that, as of tonight, they were giving up food? By announcing to her clients that she was going on strike? She was handling a number of highly important cases which were impossible to delegate. Stopping was not an option. She’d forgotten the meaning of the term ‘take a break’. She could hardly even remember the last time she took a holiday. Last year? Or the year before? The intern muttered something she chose to ignore: no one is irreplaceable. Clearly, he had no idea what it meant to be a partner at Johnson & Lockwood. No idea what it meant to be in Sarah Cohen’s shoes.

She wanted to go, now. The intern tried to persuade her to stay for more tests, but she talked her way out of them, though it was unlike her to put something off until the next day. At school, she had been a star pupil, ‘very studious’, her teachers had said. She hated doing a piece of work at the last minute. She liked to ‘get a head start’, as she put it, and had always devoted the first few hours of each weekend, or the school holidays, to her homework, so that she felt freer afterwards. It was the same at work: she always had a head start over the others, that’s what had enabled her to rise so fast. She left nothing to chance. She always planned ahead.