Jack might end up sitting in this blowhole of a reception, Mary thought. He’d be the one in the kennel, everyone looking in, everyone – even Mr Rapist, Mr Junkie and Mental Mother Two, who had just vomited in the plastic bin – would look at Jack and feel better because they were not the lowest of the low after all.

She pressed her ID against the machine. Minus seventeen hours, it said. She stared at it a long time. Minus seventeen hours. She took the stairs to the first floor.

The hangar-like space was heavy with Monday-ness, which was the saddest day of the social worker’s week. Weekends always failed to deliver, and workers wore the disbelief on their faces all day. I am back here already. This is my life. This is all I do and I hate it.

It was 3.50 p.m. Mary walked past the community service pod, where Keith was enjoying his power on the phone: ‘You got to the food bank, yeah, yeah? If you can get there, Michael, you can get to your unpaid work, see what I’m saying? No, no, let me speak. No, that’s a final warning, Michael.’ She tried to catch Keith’s eye, but didn’t manage. He might talk to Roddie that way, she thought.

Her pod was empty, bar the pile of papers on her chair.

She spotted Lil exiting at the childcare end of the room. Lil was here, thank God. Or had she seen Mary first and pelted? News might well have reached the office about Jack’s arrest. Minnie might have phoned Catherine, who might have messaged Lil. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight. She had too much to fix and must repel the red mist.

The papers on her chair included a new life licence, which Mary scanned. Iain Sanderson, who’d raped and murdered three elderly women in 1987, 1988 and 2007. She had been allocated five court reports: assault, drink driving, drugs, stalking, one for racist prick Simon Gallacher and one for Derek McLaverty (bail act, domestic assault).

She put her head between her legs for a moment, then opened the window to take in some sewage air. A moment later the desire to smash everything in the room subsided a little, and she returned to the complaint against McLaverty.

After returning from the Edinburgh Book Festival, he had turned up at his in-law’s house to see his boys and banged on the door till his ex-wife came outside. He was found guilty of breaching bail, pulling her hair, punching her in the face and throwing a large rock at her back. Whoever allocated the report was blissfully clueless. Mary would ask to have this report reassigned.