‘Thanks for having me, Brenda … The world? It feels … unsafe. This morning the lights went on at seven and I shuffled downstairs and stood in line for my tray of breakfast, which was scrambled egg and bacon, and soggy white toast, and I ate it in my cell – I won’t go on. Life was structured; safe, I know, is an odd word, but that’s what it was inside. It became that way at the three-year mark.’

‘When you found your tribe?’

The presenter was referring to the letter in his book that was all about his tribe, how he’d lost his malehood on the outside, piece by piece, because of the women he was forced to try and be equal with. In the letter (number eighteen, Mary reckoned) he concluded that the only place men can flourish these days is in prison.

‘Yes, and myself.’

‘Does that mean you’d like to go back to prison?’

‘God, no. I intend to flourish on the outside. I intend to help men flourish and be free.’

Mary turned off the radio. It was 2:07, and she was late for a joint visit to the World’s Best Sex Offender with Detective Sergeant Minnie Mouse, who she texted as she drove.

Fortunately, Min was running even later.

Mary planned to put in her resignation as soon as Roddie’s contract was finalised, which would be any day now. Eighty grand he was getting, to be head colour-in-er-er on a graphic novel series Mary should have heard of. Roddie was going to give her a break, just in the nick of time. The two of them were going to live the life.

After the flexi incident, Mary had let her boss, Catherine, know that she intended to leave as soon as possible, and asked if she could have daily supervision. She hadn’t felt so unable to control her mood since she’d first got her period. And she was so over the job; certain things were pressing her buttons. There was talk of the service being decentralised again, for example. Mary had been centralised and decentralised to fuck, and simply could not handle it happening all over again. Then there was the computer system, SWID, which was soon to be replaced by something that’d take Mary seven years to learn how to use. She had to get out before either of these things happened. In the meantime, she wanted Catherine to be formally aware that she was not feeling herself, and to record the meetings. She had hoped to be sent home to bed, but that was too dangerous for a stage-three girl. Catherine, much younger and much better at everything, also decided it was better not to record Mary’s confessions – of which there were many – on the system.