Drinking with your colleagues was dangerous, when would she learn? Ellen had heard plenty of her friends’ horror stories from Friday evenings that had gone awry: boasting about recreational drug use in front of senior managers; ill-placed seductions. Once, Sophie had clambered on top of a table at a leaving do, gesticulating with a bottle of (house) Sauvignon Blanc as she did an impression of the boss, who had – inevitably – just walked into the snug where they’d reserved a table. When she was made aware of this, she promptly fell off the table. It was 7 p.m.; she was in a taxi by 7.30 p.m. (and throwing up in the loo at 49 Rokeby Close by 8 p.m.).

Ellen’s colleagues were mainly women in their twenties – aside from Martin, who worked on the tech side and whose ears went very red when Felicia asked him to redesign a banner on the homepage which directed users to a promotional deal on The Flowdown’s prestige, super-absorbent tampon. Felicia had sat at his shoulder all morning, rewriting the words countless times, while he tried to pretend he didn’t care that everyone else in the office was laughing at him. Still, the fact that the office was staffed mainly by Ellen’s peers did, at least, mean there were fewer opportunities for career-ending humiliation. The millennials shared plenty – from hangovers to dates to nights out that sometimes ended only hours before their alarms squawked and they all struggled back into the office to wrestle with the coffee machine. Ellen, particularly, was an oversharer. Kayleigh – who was both the company’s graphic designer and the younger crowd’s de facto leader – was virtually impossible to embarrass. On mornings after nights before, she’d gather the millennials around and, hand on hip, toss her long blonde hair back and start on the graphic details of her latest outlandish misbehaviour.

Ellen shifted her weight now, nudging the ancient mirror, which let out a low moan, and placed her fingers on the side of her neck, feeling for her pulse. She did this often when she was anxious. There was something else from last night eating away at her: Ellen was fairly sure that Lee, from Two Wheels Good, was ignoring her. It bothered her because she’d thought they had quite a nice, non-committal flirty thing going: a stirring distraction that also worked as a mutually beneficial arrangement.