‘Why’d you not run, girl?’ asked The Man.

He was probably in his thirties but looked younger till you saw his eyes. Good looking, slim, medium build, he wore a pristine white shirt that accentuated the deep black of his skin against which glowed a heavy golden necklet, gold rings on his fingers and a gold bracelet on either wrist.

‘I’m Fleur Delay,’ she said. ‘I’ve come for the interview.’

The hammer made another gesture, and she subsided on to the grey man’s seat. Her eyes took in the desk’s nearer edge. A series of small craters suggested that grey man was not the first to have sat here. She didn’t feel safe, but she felt safer than she would have done running.

The craters vanished beneath a sheet of paper bearing a column of about twenty sums of money ranging from the teens to the thousands.

‘Add it up,’ said The Man. The hammer, she was glad to observe, had vanished.

She took her time. Something told her that accuracy was more important than speed.

‘Nineteen thousand five hundred and sixty-two pounds fourteen pence,’ she said.

‘So you can add up,’ said The Man, pulling the sheet out of her fingers. ‘But can you shut up? The guy who was sitting there when you came in-’

‘What guy?’ she interrupted.

He stared at her with a blankness that could have concealed anything.

‘You know who I am?’ he asked after a while.

‘Never seen you before in my life, Mr Gidman,’ she said.

Slowly the blankness dissolved into a grin, then The Man laughed out loud.

‘Tomorrow, eight thirty, sharp,’ he said.

She stood up and as she reached the door found the courage to say, ‘What about wages?’

‘Let’s wait and see what you’re worth, why don’t we?’ he replied.

At the end of a week what she got wasn’t much more than she could have earned stacking shelves in a supermarket, but she didn’t complain.