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didn’t have to think. I took it. Later I heard she found the guy who did the breaking and had him relocated. Much later I heard it was to somewhere underwater. Certain things are best never to know for sure. My fingers work fine now, thanks to sessions with the physio (billed to Cute’n’Cuddly), but I won’t be taking up petit point or bead threading in the foreseeable future.
    We sit in Gail’s orderly living room, me on her large white couch, spooning in sugars, and her folded elegantly into an armchair.
    â€˜Number 137 has been warned they’re a mark, and I’ve revised the schedule for all C&C couriers, starting now,’ she says. ‘Even if yours was a freak event, everyone needs to take extra precautions on their delivery routes until we know what we’re dealing with. I’ll enquire around the other Ethicals — see if they’ve had any similar incidents with the prayer groups. Now tell me about your fishing trip.’
    â€˜Nothing there to catch,’ I reply. ‘All I found was a love nest inside a paint factory off Barrow Road.’
    Gail’s well-shaped eyebrows rise, then fall into a frown. ‘We’re missing something,’ she mutters.
    I look at her. Two mornings ago this was about a casual recce.
    â€˜What makes you think they’re setting up shop in that area?’
    â€˜A little birdie told me.’
    Gail doesn’t divulge her sources. As one of them, I know it’s safer that way for all of us. I take a slow sip of tea, savouring the sweet liquid, letting its warmth course deliciously down my gullet. My boss makes a mighty fine brew. Imported contraband, I assume.
    Gail refolds her legs. ‘Something more serious may be happening out at Fishermans Bend,’ she says after a bit. ‘There’s a murmur the opposition is moving into town. There’s no sign yet of their product on the street, but I’m getting a bad feeling about this. Stay vigilant.’
    The Ethicals and Non-ethicals have waged war since day one of the pandemic. Early on, Gail formed an exclusive business relationship with EHg, one of a handful of companies, including NatureCure and BioSyn, that guaranteed their customers a free-from-cruelty plant-derived mix. That, of course, was when the compounding was done in pristine facilities, each company operating under licence and subject to regular Good Manufacturing Practice inspections.
    After Nation First won power, things went downhill fast. Quick to respond to the forced closures and sudden dearth of supply brought about by the B2N laws, the unregulated industry spawned the return of a number of internationally outlawed practices, including harvesting hormones from live and dead animals, and milking oestrogen ‘the old way’ from pregnant mares. These practices are the domain of thehormone farms, ugly windowless complexes housing abject animals that will never again see open ground. Much of what’s produced there is snake oil; but not all of it. The products from the CEO — conjugated equine oestrogen — farms are loaded with impurities, but also high yield and effective because pregnant mares make very good oestrogen factories. Meanwhile, their doomed foals get slaughtered for endocrinal supplements. So now hormonal help can be bought in a variety of forms, like any other illegal drug, coming to the buyer straight from the mare’s bladder or the dead foal’s pituitary. Poor bloody horses.
    Gail’s never dealt in the stuff — she’s kept her ethics and her association with EHg. But the rest of the world want their hormones on tap, including the two-faced Nation First politicians. It means only token effort has been made to shut down the thriving black market industry that operates outside city limits, its well-connected and carefully anonymous owners protected from prosecution by an endless series of parliamentary filibusters. Complicating the situation is