It was a big enough room for the bed, a wardrobe, a neat desk in one corner and a sofa facing it. A white Ikea Billy bookcase like the three I had crammed into my room was out of keeping with the display furniture of the corridors, and stuffed full of paperbacks, unalphabetised. Two piles of books were stacked next to it, Jenga towers a couple of moves away from collapsing. There was a plastic crate of CDs on the floor next to an integrated stereo of nineties vintage, the type of thing you bought in Argos, and which proudly advertised its Megabass. The contrast between the room and the style of the rest of the flat made it seem like an installation: a young person’s room in a shared house, inside the grand surroundings of a public gallery. Outside the window were neat strips of neighbours’ gardens, a small and ancient-looking church, a little plot of gravestones. She turned the desk chair around to the sofa and gestured to it.

‘Thanks for agreeing to do the interview,’ I said, sitting down. ‘You may have been surprised to find out we even had a books page.’

‘I’m not sure I’ve seen the magazine.’

‘Well, there’s no reason why you should have. Perhaps you’d have browsed through a copy waiting in a hairdresser’s. There are approximately seventy pages of adverts before you reach the contents page.’

Emily flopped back onto the sofa as if the news had exhausted her. ‘My publicist was keen to emphasise the quality of the books coverage. That did make me suspicious.’

‘That’s nice of her. She might have been stressing the contrast. There’s a toxic level of irony in much of the content. Though I don’t know if that’s the word, actually. I don’t know if the photos of the models on the toilet are ironic. Or the high-school-massacre fashion shoots. I think they’re just corrupt.’

‘Why do you write for such awful-sounding people?’

‘I haven’t had much success offering myself elsewhere.’

‘I begin to worry where I fit in here.’

‘You’re my choice. I’m the magazine’s gravitas. Stop raising your eyebrows.’

‘I was looking at your wrist. Is that a map?’

‘It is, yes.’ I pulled my sleeve up further and showed her how to get to her house from the Tube stop. ‘If we end up becoming mates, I could have it done as a tattoo as a souvenir of today.’

‘That would be original. You probably have a “bad tatts” section in the magazine.’

‘Let’s not talk about that. It’s three times the length of my book section.’

I put the recorder on the table.

‘So, shall we begin? Emily, tell me about your body art.’

*