I can’t thank my mother for much, I’m afraid, but my ability to weather storms and self-soothe is one tool she did inadvertently endow me with. You can’t have everybody simultaneously falling apart in a household, someone has to be the strong one.

I turn the key in the lock, push open the door and drop my bag on the kitchen counter as the door slams behind me. I grab two of the mini bottles of Scotch from next to the kettle and head through to the bathroom. Emotional pain is like any other pain: it requires anaesthesia.

Taps: on.

But all I can hear against the sound of water running is Hyacinth’s brittle voice as Stan and I stood in her office: ‘Harper, it’s too late now. Stan, we’ll run with your Femicide piece instead.’ And his face, pathologically smug.

Shame pulses through me as I twist off the cap of one of the bottles and down it.

Hyacinth gave me a chance. A proper chance. And I blew it.

I should have just written what she asked. I would have been finished by 3 pm yesterday instead of heading off to Le Voltage. It would have been sitting in Hyacinth’s inbox before Stan had a chance to break into my emails.

And I know that makes me sound ultra-paranoid but that’s what happened.

Yes, I should have changed my password. I’ve changed it now, of course I’ve changed it now. And I’m so highly strung about it I’m not even going to tell you what it is. But I should have done it before. That was careless.

But as obvious as Stan’s actions were to me, as I stood in Hyacinth’s office, I had a choice to make. I could tell her the truth and risk looking like a hysterical woman trying to shift the blame instead of taking responsibility for her own stuff-ups. The sort of woman who keeps flimsy passwords and inserts lies about ‘creative differences’ into her article to avoid personal embarrassment.

Or I could swallow my rage.

Vow to never let it happen again. Apologise. And go back to my desk before it got any worse.

I chose the latter.

And then sat there all afternoon, paralysed by fury, a deep gnawing in my solar plexus as I stared blankly at my screen until the clock hit 5.30 pm and I could come home.