I’d expected the interview to be in some big, space-agey skyscraper, but instead the taxi dropped me outside a beautiful mansion in leafy Hampstead – close to the Freud Museum, as it happens. I’d often wondered if lying on a couch talking about my problems – or rather, my mother – would have done a better job of fixing me than medication, but then I figured that slathering myself in snake oil or burying a potato at the root of an oak tree on a full moon would have done a better job of fixing me than medication, so the answer was probably a resounding yes.

I walked up the garden path and pressed the buzzer outside the red door, which had a crescent of stained glass in every colour.

A heavy-set woman with cropped platinum-blonde hair opened the door. She looked like she was mid-fifties, a handsome face and an intelligent, penetrating look about her.

‘I’m here for the interview?’ I said softly. ‘I’m Lex— Sophie. My name is Sophie Hallerton.’

Damn. I’ll never remember to keep that one up. Sophie. I’m Sophie. Sophie. Sophie. Sophie.

‘Maren,’ the woman said, holding out a hand. I shook it. ‘Do come in.’

It became clear that the house wasn’t an architecture firm but a family home, with rustic wooden floors, sage green walls dotted with family photographs, an old rocking horse and a glass cabinet filled with pictures and cute ornaments in the spacious hallway. A staircase swept upwards, where a children’s programme was playing on a TV. Maren gestured for me to follow her through the hallway towards a large kitchen, which was a mixture of high-end design and country charm. An open-brick chimney breast was filled with a silver range cooker; in the centre of the room was an island with six white bar stools and an arrangement of baby-pink peonies. To my left, a pretty garden was visible through French doors: a weeping willow, a pond. The marble surfaces were pristine, but I could make out children’s drawings stuck to the doors of a double fridge freezer standing at the far end of the room. Whoever lived here clearly cared a lot about their family.

‘Can I get you anything to drink?’ Maren said, and I noticed a hint of an accent. Clipped, European. ‘Tea? Coffee?’

‘Just … a glass of water,’ I said. She took a glass from a cupboard and filled it at the fridge freezer’s water dispenser, then got one for herself.

‘Thanks,’ I said.

She gestured for me to take a seat at the kitchen island and did the same. This wasn’t how I expected the interview to go. I noticed she was wearing a floaty navy tunic with white linen trousers, and I suddenly felt overdressed.

‘Thank you very much for your application,’ she said. ‘We were very impressed by your experience. This is clearly a vocation for you.’