The interview was with a panel of three people: a senior manager, the new CEO, and an HR manager. It went well. She knew what she was talking about. When they asked the diversity question she knew they were going to ask she made the standard sensible points and then spoke about coming from a place without much ethnic diversity, which was 98 per cent white and with hardly any art funding, and how important she thought it was to include these places, to remember that there were lots of places that weren’t at all diverse in the way people in London used the word because no one who hadn’t been planted there for generations would ever want to go there. The CEO had nodded along, and Amy had decided that was more promising than the slight worry that crossed the HR manager’s face.

It was very difficult to decide, said the HR manager the next morning, but I’m afraid we’ve gone with Matthew. He was just that little bit stronger than you on certain questions.

‘Which questions?’

‘Well, say, the diversity question.’

‘How so?’

‘He stuck to our priorities. We worried you weren’t quite as familiar with them.’

‘Was it because I said that thing about there being places where white isn’t really anything like a synonym for privilege?’

‘Of course not, of course not. An interesting nuance but of course class isn’t a protected characteristic and so it’s a much more difficult metric to assess.’

‘Right.’

‘I am sorry, Amy.’

Matthew wasn’t a bad man, probably. A little man from Hertfordshire, he enjoyed his job, and the conferences, and saying ‘strategic’ in meetings. He kept a neat beard, wore black turtlenecks, and looked fifteen years older than her but was two months younger. The argument came at the end of a team meeting. Matthew asked her to stay behind, because of certain things she was saying that weren’t in tune with agreed priorities, and because she was making her points in meetings too aggressively.

‘I care about this,’ she said.

‘Now, Amy. It’s great that you care. I just wonder… We’ve never spoken about the fact you went for the job I’m doing.’

‘Well… That’s not relevant. I wasn’t disappointed.’

‘OK. Fine. You weren’t disappointed.’ He nodded sagely, as if he understood her in ways she did not understand herself, and she recoiled at the way he half-shut his eyes.

‘Look, Matthew, this job isn’t my life. I know it’s your life and so it must be hard to imagine it isn’t everyone’s, it must be hard to have thoughts that haven’t arrived in a PowerPoint presentation, but I don’t care.’

‘Now, you’re being aggressive and rude now. Please lower your voice.’

‘I’m not being fucking aggressive, we’re having a conversation.’