For want of anything better to do, Marina eats more cake. In a few hours, she is due for lunch at her parents’ house. She thinks about meeting a friend for coffee beforehand. It’s Saturday so someone will be free, but while she is searching for a dress to wear the temptation fades and dies. She will arrange a drink for later. Now, she makes a strong cup of coffee, adds two teaspoons of sugar and takes it to her desk.

But she can’t concentrate, and not for the first time she debates whether editing is what she wants to do. Maybe she should go back to teaching. She had lasted twelve months at a comprehensive school in Bristol teaching French and German. It wasn’t the kids that had drummed her out; it was the strict policies staff were expected to abide by. One day, she had downed her chalk and given in her notice. She had ended up in Warsaw for a year, working in a bar and learning Polish to add to her repertoire of languages.

A spontaneous act. Like dyeing her hair auburn when she was a teenager to make herself look more like Ruth. Like visiting a psychic and asking about her mother. Like taking a detour through London streets at midnight to look for a mysterious house. Maybe she’ll spend the rest of her life lurching from one decision to the next, living hand to mouth.

Ruth says Marina will settle eventually, but she’s twenty-seven, and with no full-time job or relationship on the horizon, there’s no sign of it happening any time soon.

She ransacks a drawer looking for cigarettes. Finding an old packet of Marlboro, she lights up, shoves open the window and leans into the cold air. She hasn’t smoked for months and the cigarette tastes stale and makes her feel shaky. Still, she draws harder and steadies herself, fixing her eyes on the White Horse.

In the street, a neighbour is unloading shopping from the boot of his car. He waves cheerily at Marina and she smiles at him. They’ve been out for drinks a few times. He’s good-looking in a strong-jawed way, owns a cafe, enjoys travelling. Her friends joke they would make beautiful babies together. Maybe so, but Marina isn’t ready for that. Besides, it’s too late. There’s a blonde woman sitting in the passenger seat of the car. One more opportunity lost.

At her desk, she spots a typo, a misspelling of a Polish town, and smiles wryly. Languages are her strength. Her mind works well piecing together the rules and regulations of grammar and syntax, weighing up words, producing sentences that make sense. Circling the mistake, she scans the rest of the page. One of the tenants at Harrington Gardens had a Polish surname. Marina chews the end of her pencil, remembering. Kolinski.