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direction of the butter-soft suede objet d’art and swivelled her own chair to face Liv. “How are you feeling, Liv?”
    “Getting better every day. Really. I’ve almost forgotten about the whole thing. And I’m sorry about the mess out there—I just got a bit light-headed. I came in early and haven’t had breakfast yet.”
    “It’s probably not wise to skip breakfast, Liv,” said Fay. “But I think that’s just a symptom of skipping other things, isn’t it?” she added meaningfully.
    Liv sprinted through a list of things she could be accused of skipping . . . lunch: never. She was terminally hungry and, try as she might, had never been fashionably anorexic—even the breakup had just forced her headlong into the cookies. Missed periods: only once and that was because she’d misunderstood the instructions on her packet of pills and consequently endured a month of “I’m too young to have a baby” hysteria. Though now she wished she had got preggars, because Tim would have had to stay and love her. Work: Liv used to skip work occasionally when there was a decent Wimbledon game on television or for emergency Christmas shopping, but it wasn’t something she made a habit of. Therefore, what on earth could Fay be talking about?
    “I don’t think I follow, Fay.” Liv thought that judging by the look of compassion on Fay’s face she wouldn’t
want
to follow, either. Perhaps Fay was going to ask her to skip coming into the office for the rest of her life. Skip being paid and skip down to the Jobcentre to sign on. She hoped not; now she was a spinster she was going to have to put some money away for her pension and the one-bedroom bungalow she was going to live in with her cats when she got old. A tin of Whiskers was going to be the price of a small car by the time she was sixty, the way inflation was going.
    Fay picked up a tidy pile of papers and stroked them flat on her immaculate lap.
    “I found these in my in-tray.” Fay shuffled the pile of papers in Liv’s direction.
    Liv squinted at them, wondering if she’d managed to fill the spreadsheets with Tim’s name in the throes of devastation. Rows of Tim and columns of fuckwit.
    “I left them there this morning. I double-checked and they looked okay to me,” said Liv, instantly rising to her own defence.
    “The spreadsheets are fine. As immaculate as ever.” Fay remained unsmiling. “It’s not the spreadsheets I’m interested in, Liv. You also left these on my desk.” Fay handed Liv a pile of poorly spelled documents: her fantasy obituary, a grainy Internet printout of Naked Brad, her desert island discs, her short story about Francesca the French resistance fighter, her day in the life as milliner to the stars. Liv wished for death by water. Death by lemon tea. Death by rushing headlong into the lift shaft. She wanted very much not to be in the room right now. She couldn’t imagine how her dream life had got caught up with the spreadsheets.
    “I’m sorry. I’ll work late every day for the next year. I’ll sweep the workroom floors in my lunchtime. Only please don’t fire me. I need this job. It’s a distraction. God knows if I were at home right now I’d probably have drowned in my tears.”
    “You need this job like a hole in the head, Liv.” Fay’s stony-faced boss look was beginning to grate on Liv’s nerves. What the hell did she know about heartache with her randy husband and perfect kids?
    “No. You can’t fire me. Please.” Liv saw only mornings at home when she’d be reduced to calling daytime television phone-ins with psychiatrists and cotton-wool-haired agony aunts.
    “Liv, I have no intention of firing you. Listen, love, I think this is all a bit deeper than you think. And in a way a lot more exciting.” Liv was beginning to doubt Fay’s sanity now. On the scale of fun-stuff-to-do, how exciting was getting dumped? And she was cringing as she realised that Fay would now know what a sad loser she was and that Spandau