“Did you hear the laxative survey in Quebec has been cancelled?” Millie said when we were seated at our usual table at the wretched, but closest, restaurant across the street. “Great big job it was going to be, too – a product test in their own home and thirty-two pages of questions.” Millie always gets the news first.

“Well I must say that’s a good thing,” Emmy sniffed. “I don’t see how they could ask anybody thirty-two pages about that.” She went back to peeling the nail polish off her thumbnail. Emmy always looks as though she is coming unravelled. Stray threads trail from her hems, her lipstick sloughs off in dry scales, she sheds wispy blonde hairs and flakes of scalp on her shoulders and back; everywhere she goes she leaves a trail of assorted shreds.

I saw Ainsley come in and waved to her. She squeezed into the booth, saying “Hi” all round, then pinned up a strand of hair that had come down. The office virgins responded, but without marked enthusiasm.

“They’ve done it before,” Millie said. She’s been at the company longer than any of us. “And it works. They figure anybody you could take past page three would be a sort of laxative addict, if you see what I mean, and they’d go right on through.”

“Done what before?” said Ainsley.

“What do you want to bet she doesn’t wipe the table?” Lucy said, loudly enough so the waitress would overhear. She carries on a running battle with the waitress, who wears Woolworth earrings and a sullen scowl and is blatantly not an office virgin.

“The laxative study in Quebec,” I said privately to Ainsley.

The waitress arrived, wiped the table savagely, and took our orders. Lucy made an issue of the toasted Danish – she definitely wanted one without raisins this time. “Last time she brought me one with raisins,” she informed us, “and I told her I just couldn’t stand them. I’ve never been able to stand raisins. Ugh.”