Elise dropped the smile. ‘Ah.’ She closed her laptop and pointed a remote at the AV screen to close it down. ‘So, when would be the soonest you could join us?’

Zia made a judgement from financial need and the lawful limit to her current stay in Italy. ‘Third or fourth week in September.’

Elise’s expression lightened and she exchanged a look with Tim, who nodded. Elise’s smile returned. ‘Not ideal, but we can work with that.’

They rounded out with enticing prospects for advancement and finished at five o’clock. Zia felt jaded. She’d heard of people finding it hard to return to the workplace after an absence but hadn’t given it much credence till subjected to a day-long interview. She trudged, rather than walked, back to Victoria.

The commute home was a pain. After not getting a seat until Haywards Heath, alighting at Brighton station she barely had the energy to battle along the crowded narrow pavements of Queens Road. Glad to turn off, she passed the Royal Pavilion Gardens with tourists crowding the lawns and then clopped across Old Steine with a herd of other pedestrians. Her phone sounded when she was trudging along St James’s Street. The screen showed that it was 19.20 and the caller was Brendon. ‘Yeah?’ she said, less enthusiastically than ever. If she didn’t think Ursula would suffer the backlash, she’d just block him.

‘So? How’d it go?’ he chimed cheerfully.

‘OK.’

‘Only OK? Elise seemed enthusiastic.’ Brendon sounded as if he thought Zia might be holding out on him.

She stopped so suddenly a Goth girl bumped her shoulder and gave her a sour look down her pierced nose. ‘You’ve spoken to Elise about my interview?’

‘Obviously, I gave you a great report—’

‘What?’ She half-shouted. ‘What the hell do you mean, “a great report”? She was my boss and you and I were the same level. Don’t be so bloody presumptuous.’

‘Oh, you know what I mean,’ he said, in a joshing tone, as if Zia was being purposely prickly and he was the man to jolly her out of it.

‘No, I don’t.’ Zia realised pedestrians were tutting as they danced side-to-side to get by her but fury was fizzing up her spinal cord and shutting down the part of her brain labelled ‘manners’.

Brendon persisted. ‘You’re going to take the job. Right?’

‘None of your business!’ she exploded. Three women in front of her looked round.

His tone slid into resigned pleading. ‘Oh, Zia, stop being precious! If you insist on me spelling it out, here it is: I want you back. I did a bit of cheerleading to Elise because if you have a good job in the UK then—’

‘It’s nothing to you whether I’m in London, Italy or Timbuktu,’ Zia interrupted, stepping out again, faster and faster as if her frustrations were rocket fuel. ‘Nothing. Your drunken sexploit ended my feelings, which were going the wrong way anyway. We’re done.’ Now pedestrians were dodging her, pressing themselves against walls as her fury propelled her through them like a wrecking ball.