The room is long, a rectangle of weak fluorescent light, smoked glass and metal slats, the desks tucked tightly together, bottles and urns in smart ready rows, cameras pointed at each other, waiting to blink. “I honestly can’t remember the substance of the meeting.”

“Strike that.”

The stasis of the event settles in at length, turns on itself, the focus on the banal, to prove a point – my point! – no matter what, to win the fight of fights, which is no fight at all. The door leads into a hall back into a room like this, another door, another corridor, this room again. The faces stare back, featureless, trapped in the dull light and sound. “No, don’t strike that.”

“What was the question again?”