Somehow, when it isn’t your own life, it isn’t so hard. For two hours, I behaved like Frances’s view of an accountant. There was nothing magical involved, no smoke and mirrors, no cleverness. I just piled up pieces of paper that looked alike. I made lists of dates, which I also, surreptitiously, transferred to my own notebook, I checked receipts against bank statements. At eleven o’clock Beth arrived. I gave her a list of phone calls to make to check delivery dates. She was as shocked as if I had asked her to clean the drains. She pulled a face and glanced resentfully at Frances, but she did what I said.

Twenty minutes later, Johnny arrived; he nodded at me, then sat next to Frances and talked menus. I barely looked up. I was holding a lot of information in my head temporarily. If I spoke or thought about something else, even for a moment, most of it would dissipate and I would have to start again.

My sense of time was imprecise, but a short while later I felt a presence beside me. It was Johnny.

“I’m a bit worried walking around here,” he said, gesturing at the piles of paper circling my chair.

“Then don’t,” I said, frowning at the distraction.

“This isn’t—”

“Stop,” I said, holding up my hand. I wrote down a date followed by an amount of money and then the VAT. Then I looked at him. “Yes?” I said.

“I was going to say that you’re doing all the boring bits of the job and none of the fun bits.”

I waved at the office. “That’s what seems to be needed,” I said.

“Whereas,” said Johnny, “my own strategy is to do the fun bits and leave the boring bits to sort themselves out.”

“That sounds like a recipe for going bankrupt.”

“All restaurants go bankrupt in the end.”

“That doesn’t sound much fun.”

“It’s great,” said Johnny, and added thoughtfully, “until the end. And then you start again. It’s got a sort of rhythm to it. But what I really wanted to say, really wanted to ask, in fact—you remember I mentioned my restaurant—was whether you might want to come over and I could show you the sort of food I do. Some time. Today or tomorrow or whenever.”

He was handsome in a louche sort of way, well dressed, a man who went bankrupt and didn’t let it get him down. He was perfect, in a certain fashion. Perfect if I wasn’t me—although, of course, the person he was talking to wasn’t actually me. “I can’t,” I said. “Not at the moment. I’m not in the right place for that. In my life.”