THE JOB, IT turned out, was mostly folders. Tricoloured, triaged, in need of fresh sticky flags. Each weekday at 8 am I tapped my government pass and rode the elevator to the eighth floor, where I had a desk in a converted cupboard and a half-bag of raisin toast in the freezer. I also had an attitude. I’d suffered through the mandated science degree and begun to dream of studying something useful, like social work. In response, my mother had manoeuvered me back to Canberra and into a plum entry-level job in the public service.

She was head of a small statutory agency, my mother. Her life brimmed with formal receptions, board meetings and quiet commiserations when the wrong party won. It was early in the new century, not long after we’d screwed up the republic referendum, and the political mood was…well, to be honest, I can’t recall. I was young. I thought a lot about the distant, fuzzy future (I’d be beautiful, successful, good); I thought even more about my present torture, which was working for the Tyrant.