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at a similar time and shared a passion for their work, as well as an ability to laugh at it and talk about something else entirely. This wasn’t to be underestimated in academia. Many of their colleagues were incredibly earnest. Something about experiencing life on an exalted plane of ‘clever’ could lead to malfunctions on the everyday level. As Patrick put it, they were people with brains the size of planets who couldn’t boil an egg.
    Patrick often began his day by bringing Anna a cup of tea, drinking his while sitting on the bright blue office supplies chair, once he’d moved a pile of box folders, Anna’s coat and sundry items of course. Anna usually sat at her desk, scanning her emails and gossiping.
    Patrick passed Anna her cup.
    ‘Goodness me, new frock?’ he said, watching Anna set her tea down.
    ‘Ah, yeah.’ She turned back and stood with her hands on her hips and legs slightly apart, as if she was a plumber about to give her price for addressing a particularly capricious combi-boiler.
    ‘Is it for the Theodora show? I thought that hadn’t kicked off yet?’ Patrick added.
    ‘No, I wish. School reunion tonight. Not sure if I should go. I had a molto horrifico time at school.’
    Patrick squinted. ‘Oh. Right. So why are you going?’
    ‘My friend said it would be a defiant gesture. She’s mad, isn’t she? I don’t think I can do it. It’s a stupid plan. Oh, and do us a favour while you’re over there, and top Boris up?’ Anna said, nodding towards the large, beleaguered-looking cheese plant, and a scummy-looking milk bottle of water on the windowsill. ‘I’m thinking Prada and spillages don’t mix.’
    He obligingly tipped an inch of greyish fluid into Boris’s soil.
    Patrick had very neatly-cut auburn hair and the quivery, undernourished look of someone who had been shucked from a shell, rather than woman-born.
    His uniform was fine knit V-necks and a mustard-coloured cord jacket with leather elbow patches. He claimed it had become such an academic cliché it had gone right through cliché and come out the other side as original.
    He looked up at a portrait on Anna’s office wall.
    ‘Ask yourself this. What would your heroine Empress Theodora do?’
    ‘Have them all killed?’
    ‘Then second best; knock ’em dead,’ Patrick said.

6
    Anna stood on the stairwell in front of a Blu-tacked sign in a distinctly ungentrified pub in East London with two stark options spelled out in Comic Sans.

    Damn, she wished she knew Beth. It was a young name. Probably off to travel the world. She could hear a very bad karaoke rendition of Take That’s ‘Patience’
drifting from Beth’s party HQ.
    Anna felt the vodka and oranges she’d had for Dutch courage sizzle acidly in her gut and trudged up the creaking, threadbare stairs and along the musty-smelling corridor to the appointed door. She had the pulse-in-the-neck trepidation of someone navigating the Ghost House at a funfair, her whole body tensed for surprise. Underneath the Milanese chiffon, she was clammy.
    Another, deeper breath. She remembered what Michelle had said, that this was a demonstration of strength. She opened the door and stepped into the room. It was near-empty. A few people she didn’t recognise glanced over, returned to their conversations. In her many, many rehearsals in her head, a gallery of familiar faces turned towards her, accompanied by a needle scratch noise on a record. But no, nothing.
    The worst of them weren’t even here yet, if they were going to turn up at all. Was she relieved, or disappointed? Weirdly, she was both.
    A sagging banner above the bar announced a school reunion:
16 YEARS SINCE WE WERE 16!!!!!!
Oh dear, multiple exclamation marks. Like having someone with ADD shaking maracas in your face.
    Anna got herself a glass of bathwater-warm Stowells of Chelsea white wine and retreated to a wallflower location on the left hand side of the room. She judged that everyone was only one alcohol unit away from