THE GROUP SAT around the big table while Alexander talked to them. He appeared to be in his late twenties and was dressed in a white T-­ shirt and jeans and sneakers. His hair was just a touch too long, to hint at a non-corporate life, and it was obvious he had spent the bulk of the morning wearing a baseball cap. He smelt like mint and apple. Whenever it came time to use the furniture in the room, he never used it the way you were supposed to. He’d sit on the coffee table or backwards in the chairs. He’d flip the moveable whiteboard around to show them a secret formula that the colour spectrum engineers had been working on even though he said he wasn’t allowed to. Currently he was sitting sideways on a chair, using another chair to rest his shoes on.

Hannah was thinking: was this part of a test; were they meant to notice this use of furniture? Was Alexander meant to look like he’d ridden a skate-board to work? An infant man? If she couldn’t write them down she had trouble remembering the little things, the details, and so far she hadn’t been given anything to write on. At the reception desk, when she was signing in, they’d taken her phone and her wallet and put them into a small bucket.