Cullen adopts a thinking pose, as though the idea is only just coming to him. ‘Just off the top of my head here, but how’s about something like this? Ratner agrees to resign with immediate effect “for personal reasons” and signs an NDA and we guarantee a reference? I believe Thirsk is recruiting at the moment. I could put in a word?’

Maddy drums her fingers on her chin. ‘Leave it with me for now,’ she says, finally.

Returning to his office but finding himself too tense to focus on his work, Cullen tells Tina to cancel his afternoon appointments and drives to the Fig Tree in Clifton where he downs four whisky and sodas before heading home.

He arrives at the house not long after Veronica has returned from shopping and his heart immediately sinks at the sight of the swag bags from silly, overpriced baby boutiques lined up along the kitchen table, like a drumbeat to his failure. Veronica is nowhere to be seen but from above him comes the muffled sound of footsteps.

He moves out into the hallway and shouts up the stairs, ‘Hey, I’m home!’

Veronica comes down the stairs. She is six weeks pregnant, the thing inside her is no more than the size of a pea and she is already cradling her abdomen in a way Cullen finds irritating even in women who have something to show. She knows nothing about the pawnbroker’s ticket, of course, or the unanswered demands from the bank accumulating in the glove box of the Volvo, and he will never be able to tell her, especially now. Of all the things he seems to have – job, house, a mother who loves him, and a small version of himself growing in the womb of his trophy wife, the car is the only thing he truly loves. And what has he done with the thing but make it a vehicle for his shame? The unpaid bills, the demands, the quarter bottles of whisky, hidden away out of sight but never for one moment out of mind. How easy it would be just to drive off the cliffs at Clifton Downs or Leigh Woods.

He shakes himself free of the thought, and of the mood, remembering how clever he is being, how close to ridding himself of Natasha Tillotson, Mark Ratner and his debts. Going over to Veronica, he gives her a peck on the cheek and to his surprise feels her stiffen and back away. She is not smiling, he realises now, and her face is uncharacteristically stony.

‘I see you’ve been shopping. Did you just get back?’ he says, wondering if the source of her irritation is that he is home rather earlier than usual, before she has had time to hide her purchases.

‘No, I have been back some time, but I’ve been rather busy.’