‘Those are pretty,’ says Wesley from his side of the desk.

‘Thanks,’ I say, my voice deadpan. Because, no, Wesley, they are not pretty, they are twelve little Trojan horses full of poison. Treat them as such.

But this is partly my fault. I shouldn’t have told Harrison I got this job. But when he dropped his last just checking u r well text it felt so good to say: Actually all is great, I got a job in Paris! It was the first time my news was the exciting news.

There’s movement in my peripheral vision, the smell of bruised flowers I recognise from the elevator, and then there she is beside me. Leaning in to smell the roses. Claudia.

‘Who are those from?’ She grins at me. ‘You’ve only been here, what – three weeks – and already you’re getting flowers?’

‘You can have them if you want.’ I move back from them like they’ve been sent from Chernobyl. Because I’m thinking about those Instagram posts with him and Melody and that glistening pool beneath a perfect LA sky and screw him. He doesn’t get to live in two hearts simultaneously.

Claudia looks at me, shocked.

‘I mean it,’ I snap, pushing them towards her. ‘Take them. I don’t want his stupid flowers.’

‘Wow, Harper,’ she says, picking them up. ‘Whoever he is, he’s just being nice. You know, it wouldn’t kill you to be nice sometimes.’ And then she walks away.

Statistically speaking, she’s wrong of course. Being ‘nice’ absolutely could kill me. Being nice, being polite, is precisely how most women end up being pulled into a panel van by their killer. These are the helpful hints I used to write about in my ‘How not to get murdered’ column. If that magazine hadn’t folded, I’d happily forward her the link. But I don’t say that, do I? No, of course not. Because while the likes of Stan get to glare at Hyacinth and challenge her in meetings, I’m a woman, so I have to at least pretend to be likeable. Agreeable. Nice. That’s the final frontier of feminism right there. You can be anything you want to be as a woman these days, but don’t you dare be unlikeable.

Claudia is whispering to Nathalie now. The one who was talking about perfume in yesterday’s meeting; the one I’m going to ‘be a guinea pig’ with. Probably about how fucked up I am. And she has a point: I am a bit fucked up.

But here’s my point: so what?

Focus, Harper, focus. Because I don’t have time to care about things like office bitchery right now. I have bigger problems, problems like Mum.

I need to make sure she isn’t still in bed.

Chapitre sept

We’re sitting in a bistro not far from work. It’s the compulsory Friday team drinks thing. Except Hyacinth isn’t here. She somehow got out of it the way people always do when they’re in charge. The seats are covered in shiny red leather and there are a series of yellow-lit stained glass lanterns hanging from the ceiling. I’m nestled up against the exposed brick half-wall – lined with bright green fake plants – that separates us from the tables behind. The windows are all open, the sky outside is a deep navy black. My mother didn’t answer the first four of my calls, and when she finally did pick up call number five, she told me to ‘calm down’ because she and Neville had ‘worked things out’. That’s code for: expect a repeat performance in a month. So now I’m four piña coladas deep and the world has shifted into soft focus.