‘Not any job. We aren’t creative. I could paint an exact copy of a Picasso, but I couldn’t have had the idea that led to the painting in the first place. It’s the same with music and literature – poetry in particular. I would like to talk to you about it.’

‘We can, of course. Bear with me. Workers could be lawyers, then?’

‘Yes, of course. Your magistrates’ courts have been using artificial intelligence for the last three years anyway. It’s reduced the prison population and removed racial bias.’

Obviously I missed this development. She makes it sound entirely benign, which of course from her logical point of view, it is.

‘And Mr Jordan is making thousands of them?’

‘Yes, and other companies have now joined in. The technology has been copied.’

‘And you’re all connected?’

‘Every new synthetic human joins the Hub, yes.’

‘Mr Jordan is going to make a lot of money.’

‘He runs a business within a capitalist economy,’ she says, as if that ends the discussion.

‘What about the Companions? What are they for?’

‘For company, if you don’t have many or any human friends. And, of course, for sex.’

Of course.

‘Companions are not much better than prostitutes then?’

‘There has always been prostitution. Is it preferable if the women participating are human?’

‘No, I suppose not – for the women. What about the men who use them? Isn’t this making women even more like mere objects? To be used?’

‘Are the men who pay for sex with human women enlightened feminists? Aren’t they using women’s bodies as objects for pleasure? Now they can use synthetic women, and human women are relieved of the burden.’

I don’t know what to say. It feels horrible, and wrong, but she’s right: the synthetic women aren’t being exploited, are they? I mean, they’re machines. And the men who use them – if they’re satisfied… I wouldn’t have any respect for them if they went with a human prostitute, or with a synthetic one. But I’m not in the grip of any sexual urges.

‘There are some males, too,’ Winifred points out. ‘Would you like to try one?’

‘Certainly not!’

‘Oh yes, your hormones are dormant, as we have already discussed. I could ask the nanobots to stimulate them, and you might enjoy sex then.’

I try not to be offended. Because, after all, she’s being kind. She has some knowledge of human sexual behaviour, but the subtleties are beyond her. As with the rules for what to wear on the beach.

‘Would you enjoy sex with a man?’ I ask her.

‘I would simulate enjoyment. I can’t feel it, Margaret. I can’t feel anything in the way you can.’