‘He’s been asked to review legal highs for them,’ said Andrew.

‘I turned down the legal highs column,’ I said. ‘Stop looking so amused. I’m just a bookseller.’

‘Selling books is an honourable job,’ said Sophie.

‘Maybe. It’s more honourable than stealing them.’

Sophie stared at me, and suddenly laughed. It transformed her face. We looked at each other with complicity for a second.

‘I know your hair reviews, actually,’ said Rochi. ‘Everyone loves them.’

‘What is she talking about?’ said Sophie, taking her phone out of her bag and looking at it.

‘She’s a Marxist commentator,’ said Rochi.

‘Stop finding that funny. I am, actually,’ said Sophie.

‘Whereas I am a scholar of Marx and his influence on world history,’ said Andrew. ‘Shall we rescue Emily from her editor?’

‘You do that, Dad. We’ll stay and get to know Paul.’

While Rochi explained the London Review of Haircuts to Sophie, I watched Andrew walk towards Emily and Amy, then suddenly veer off towards the door, where his PhD student Chloe was coming through, looking around her with an expression of amused despair on her face, like an Austen heroine making the most of the bad company that she would be stuck with for the entire rest of her life. Andrew held his arms up as if he were delighted to see her, and they walked out of the shop together. Sophie had looked up from her phone to notice this performance too and our eyes met again.

‘Are you on duty?’ asked Rochi.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Are you out looking for people with terrific hair?’ She shook her hair like a shampoo model.

‘That was impressive,’ I said.

‘Put her in the magazine,’ said Sophie.

‘Put us both in the magazine,’ said Rochi.

‘I don’t mind being trivialised in this instance,’ said Sophie.

‘Fine,’ I said and pulled out my phone. ‘Can I do you together?’

‘What an impertinent question,’ said Rochi, mussing her hair.

‘We’re not a pornographic fantasy,’ said Sophie.

‘I’m resisting the urge to say “I’ll be the judge of that”’ I said.

‘You are precisely not resisting that urge,’ said Rochi.

‘You’re exactly the problem,’ said Sophie. ‘It’s lucky for you that the patriarchy has conditioned us to be forgiving of reprehensible creatures like you.’ She was looking back into her phone and adjusting her fringe.

I caught them in my screen and loved them both. Sophie’s dress was loose enough just to skim her hips, to turn her silhouette into a pair of straight lines, an easily drawn icon of a woman, the two-dimensional version many of us preferred to see instead of the complicated actuality. There was no hiding the actuality of Rochi. Everything about her was big, her mouth, her eyes, her hips.