‘I don’t think I could cope with moving every few months, though.’ I think about Albany Road and feel a wave of gratitude for Becky. She could have put that place on the market and sold it for millions. I still don’t know what came over her when she decided to gather us lot together and let us stay there for a ridiculously low rent. As it is, my new publishing salary isn’t stretching very far. By the time I’ve paid rent and my share of the bills, there’s not an awful lot of money left. February wasn’t so bad because it’s a short month, but March has barely started and I’m already feeling the pinch a bit.

‘I don’t mind moving if it means I get to stay here. London’s so bloody expensive.’

‘We could move back to Bournemouth,’ I say, waiting for her reaction.

‘No chance in hell. I’d rather live on 20p noodles from Tesco for the rest of my life.’

‘I think that’s what’s going to happen to me. Payday’s only just gone, and I’m absolutely skint already.’

She looks at me, brows knitted together. ‘I thought your snazzy job in publishing was paying really well?’

‘Yeah.’ I nod. ‘In Bournemouth terms, maybe. Not so much in London.’

‘It’s fine as long as you don’t want to go anywhere or do anything.’ Gen lifts her mug up. ‘Even a coffee’s more expensive here. Not to mention drinks . . .’

‘Yeah. I was invited on a night out to celebrate someone’s leaving do the other day, but I turned it down when I looked up the menu. Cocktails were about £18 each.’

‘Is everyone you work with loaded then?’ Gen swivels herself round on the old black office chair, spinning herself like a child visiting a parent’s workplace.

‘I don’t know. Maybe they’ve got private incomes or something. I reckon half of them are subsidised by parents, and the other half are like me. Jav didn’t go on the night out, either.’

Jav and I have taken to going off to the café down the back street behind our office for lunch a couple of times a week. It’s full of plaster-splattered workers from the building they’re redeveloping round the corner, but they do a pretty decent soup and sandwich for the same price as a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice from the posh restaurant below our building.

Jav’s nice, and I relate to her because she comes from a housing estate in Peterborough, and doesn’t have parents in the business. There are an awful lot of people in the office who seem to have found their way into the job because of someone knowing someone. The MD of the company is so posh that when he talks I have to focus very hard to work out what he’s actually saying. He doesn’t just have a plum in his mouth – I reckon he’s got several fruit trees.

‘Jess?’