Despite the dire predictions, no planes fell from the sky. Toasters did not burst into flames. Nor did computers crash and bring about a global economic collapse. A pool of calm had settled around Carla and she clung to its order, rising at the same time every morning and working in her apartment until lunchtime. In the afternoon, she spent an hour catching up on emails, checking details with the person whose memoir she was ghost-writing, and speaking on the phone to Frank. She worked on her laptop for a further two hours then went to the gym where she exercised and swam with the same discipline. Her apartment was surrounded by office blocks. Glass bee-hives of activity. From her balcony she watched men and women at their desks. She envied their camaraderie yet knew she would hate the enforced closeness, the closed gossip of the water cooler, the tedium of waiting for five o’clock. But was she any better in her self-imposed isolation, ghost-writing the lives of other people? Frank’s ambition was to publish the uncomfortable books, the memoirs that no one else wanted to handle.
