‘But who’s going to supply me with emergency feminine hygiene products and tell me when I’ve gone too far with my colours?’ I glanced down at my orange shirt and wildly patterned, navy and orange A-line skirt. ‘And remind me when it’s time to get a cut and foils?’ I added, pulling absently at a length of hair, which had fallen from my messy updo.

She paused to chew and swallow before answering. ‘You can carry off colour – it’s your thing. Just like gloom is my thing,’ she said, glancing down at her short, grey shift dress, which she’d teamed today with heavy-soled black brogues. ‘Plus, I like your hair naturally mousy. Oh and I’ll gift you half a dozen boxes of Tampax before I leave.’

‘Thanks, but it’s a feminine, listening ear I’ll miss most.’

‘Well, there’s always—’ she began, inclining her head towards Alison’s office, before stopping short as the woman herself made an entrance.

‘Edith,’ she said, patting the side of her steel-grey chignon, her burgundy-lipsticked mouth hauled upwards into a tense smile.

‘Yes?’ I hurriedly picked up a stylus in a wholly unnecessary pretence of professional activity. It was a guilt-spurred response developed as a teen under the tuition of Mrs Skinner, a fine-boned, stick-thin geography teacher who dealt mercilessly with anyone found guilty of distracting chatter. And although Alison had no problem whatsoever with a conversation-filled workplace, her physical resemblance to said Mrs Skinner always provoked a look-busy reaction from me – as well as occasional unpleasant flashbacks to glaciated uplands and chalk escarpments.

‘That was Mick Jarvis on the phone. The drawings went down very well with everyone yesterday,’ she said in the clipped tone she always employed, irrespective of topic or mood. ‘“Bold, yet sympathetic” was some of the feedback.’

A sense of fulfilment and well-being washed over me. ‘That’s so great to hear.’

She nodded stiffly and withdrew into her office, adjusting her perfectly fitted charcoal jacket, before sitting back down at her desk. At sixty-one, she was still an undeniably attractive woman, her attention to detail regarding her personal appearance as fastidious as it was in every one of her drawings. And she was as formidable as she was fashionable; highly respected within the industry of which she had been part for over thirty years, with a reputation for prioritising the pursuit of architectural perfection above all else – including personal relationships, never having been married and, as far as I knew, socialising only on a professional basis. But while she had, for the past two-and-a-half years, been a scrupulously fair, generous and straightforward boss – one whom I hugely admired – female best-bud material she most certainly was not.

I turned back to Ruby. ‘I think there’s more chance of Roger sympathising with me over my PMT than of her lending a listening ear, don’t you?’