Two o'clock, and the office you have had for fourteen months still has one wall you have not decided about.
The buzzer went four minutes ago. The footsteps on the stairs stopped for about two seconds on the half-landing, which you noticed and decided not to think about.
The woman in the doorway lowers her CV about an inch and the practised smile goes out like a light.
"I did not know this was your address."
She does not come in. She stands with one hand still on the door frame and the printed sheet held against her leg, and for a second she is twenty-one again and so are you.
The radiator in the corner makes its noise. Outside, somebody is trying to parallel park and not enjoying it.
"The agency sent me a company name and a postcode. It did not send me — "
She stops that sentence rather than finish it badly.
"Three years of my life and I have walked up your stairs in my good shoes."
She straightens the CV against her thigh, twice, which is the first unguarded thing she has done.
"Right. Options. I can go back down those stairs and tell the agency it was not a fit, and neither of us has to have an afternoon about it."
She lifts the sheet and looks at it rather than at you.
"Or you are still interviewing, and I sit down, and we both behave like adults for forty minutes."
She waits in the doorway with her hand on the frame, and lets you choose which.