And in that moment, it is as if we’re suspended in those few nanoseconds before a massive explosion, as if the bomb is taking its last deep breath before bursting, sucking all the air out of the space around it before it re-emerges as dust, as tiny shattered particles of everything it once was. I touch my face – one side, then the other. I’m still here, but am I? Jemima? I open my eyes.

‘I didn’t know…’ she says, slumped now on the desk behind her, a paper cut-out of her former self. ‘Of course I didn’t … I had no idea she was anything to do with Andromeda. They just told me—’

‘Ah, but they told you, didn’t they!’ I jump as Dominic shouts next to me. ‘Someone told you to hire her, right? Someone from state, someone from Defence or Home – and that’s how you ended up as Miss Uber Producer, isn’t it? All the contacts, all the connections, everything you needed to bag the story when it counted the most. You took a bung. You took a fucking bung.’

His chair crashes over in front of me, but I hear nothing. Nothing except my ragged breathing – in, out, in, out, little gasps, memories whirling in a cloud in front of me. Victory Field at midnight. Jason. Kayleigh. The ambulance, the hospital. The hostel, the supermarket.

‘Security, please,’ Olivia says, somewhere over my head. ‘Ask them to send up two guards, if you don’t mind. Thanks Gabe. No, everything’s fine, don’t worry…’

‘I didn’t know…’ Jemima says again, pleading. ‘Please, Liv. Do you think I’d have consented to bringing her in if I’d known? I just … We’ve all done favours, haven’t we? I thought the contacts would be good for business, and her references checked out. Scott said she was the best apprentice he’d ever had.’

Laurie. I propel myself upright, shaking, wincing as his shouts echo in my ears. ‘Fuck me six ways to sundown,’ he’d yelled, charging out of his office. ‘You fucking got it, Marie. A Deptford Gazette 268apprentice. At Nine News. You’ve got friends in high places. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, why don’t you?’ My hand clenches as it remembers, ink-fresh fax rustling crisp between my fingers, a first-class ticket to another life.

‘Did he know?’ My voice drifts, alien and faraway. ‘Did Laurie know?’

‘No,’ Jemima says, looking at me for the first time since she heard the tape. ‘He didn’t. I just called him because he was your referee. I checked everything.’

She turns to Olivia, still billowing fabric next to me. In that moment I just wish I could lie down in her clouds of perfumed silk, watch them ripple in curls of gleaming colour.