If Sarah hadn’t been sitting down, she would have dropped to the floor.

She would have preferred anything, anything at all, to that.

She would rather be fired. She would rather be slapped and insulted, at least then she would know where she stood. Anything but this slow, unbearable death by isolation. She felt like a bull being sacrificed in the ring. She knew it was pointless to object, nothing she could say would change his mind. Her fate was sealed. Johnson had made his decision. She was sick, and no longer of any use. No one could count on her now.

Gary Curst would swallow the Bilgouvar case whole. He would take her biggest client. Johnson knew how he operated. Together, they were picking her apart, while she was still alive. Sarah wanted to shout for help, to cry ‘Stop thief!’ like a character in a kids’ cartoon. But it was a cry in the wilderness. There was no one to hear her, no one to come to her aid. The thieves were impeccably dressed, the ambush was invisible, even respectable and well intentioned. A smart attack, perfumed with expensive cologne; aggression in a three-piece suit.

Gary Curst was exacting his revenge. With the Bilgouvar case in his portfolio, he would become the most powerful partner in the firm, the dream successor to Johnson. He wasn’t ill, or weak; in fact, he was at the height of his powers, like a vampire engorged with the blood of others. At the end of the interview, Johnson gazed at Sarah with sad eyes and uttered the cruellest of phrases: You look tired, you should go home and get some rest.

Sarah returned to her office, destroyed. She had expected to be dealt some blows, but she hadn’t expected this. When the news broke a few days later, she wasn’t even surprised: Curst had been appointed Managing Partner. He would succeed Johnson in the top job, at the head of the firm. The appointment sounded the death knell for Sarah’s career.

That day, she went home in the middle of the afternoon. This was something new to her – an hour alone in her empty house. Silence reigned. She sat on her bed and began to cry, because she was thinking about the woman she had been, even yesterday: a strong, determined woman with a place in the world; and it seemed to her that today, the world had abandoned her to her fate.

There was nothing to break her fall now. The long descent had only just begun.

This morning, one of the strands broke.

It seldom happens.

But it happened today.

It’s a disaster, a tidal wave

On a microscopic scale,

That wrecks the work of several days.

I think of Penelope on Ithaca, then,

Tirelessly reworking

Each day what she destroys in the night.

I must start all over again.

It will be a beautiful piece,

The thought consoles me.

Never lose the thread.