‘God, no,’ I said. ‘Would you?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know.’

Which meant yes. ‘Really?’

‘Maybe if I were a man I’d feel like you do.’

‘What’s the difference?’ I asked.

‘Duh. People still find you attractive – I’ve seen them looking at you. But women our age are invisible.’

It was natural that I should think of Melia earlier that evening, the pleasurable glow of her gaze. I wondered if she’d have paid me so much attention if she knew of my lack of assets. ‘Men our age without money can be just as invisible, believe me,’ I told Clare.

*

Well, perhaps the feted Vicky Jenkinson would be in a position to offer a solution to ageing in an unfriendly marketplace.

It wasn’t until I sat face to face with my career coach in a pair of mid-century chairs upholstered in Delft blue that I understood why I had needed Clare to step in and schedule my consultations for me: I didn’t want to look for a new job. I was quite content with the one I had.

That wasn’t to say I didn’t like Vicky or her very cool live-work unit in a former spice warehouse in Shad Thames that I passed twice a day on the boat.

She invited me to choose from a collection of herbal teas, individually packaged and with names like Rejuvenate and Reinvent. I scanned for one without a ‘re’, but there was none and so I chose Reawaken.

She spoke in brisk certainties. ‘You’re demoralized from applying for jobs and not being invited for an interview. We hear a lot about unemployment figures, but not very much about the million-plus people who want to work but don’t get fairly considered for the roles they apply for.’

‘Try not even having the application acknowledged,’ I said, though the truth was that since starting at the Comfort Zone I had not applied for a single job in my old sector.

‘The thing to bear in mind is that hiring someone is a risk-weighted investment decision. You need to lean on your gifts.’

I felt myself wince, and, noticing, she dialled down the jargon. ‘Jamie, I can help you return to marketing by expanding your network and refining the way you sell yourself, or, alternatively, identify a new career, one that has a healthy supply of roles. Do you have a sense of which it will be?’

‘Neither,’ I said, slurping the hot green Reawaken potion. ‘The thing is, I kind of like the job I’ve got. I’m happy there for now.’

She was not discouraged. ‘Is your current salary acceptable?’

‘It matches the unskilled work, I suppose. Clare says it’s pin money, but it’s not pin money to the millions of people who earn it. It’s how they put a roof over their heads and feed their kids.’

‘While studying for qualifications in some cases, I imagine,’ Vicky said. ‘Qualifications that you already have, Jamie.’ She talked about earning power, self-esteem and peer status, which made me remember Steve’s casual disregard and, to an extent, Kit’s.

‘The issue is, Vicky, I have a public-transport phobia, so how I get to work is more important to me than the kind of work I do when I get there or what my friends might think of it. So any new job will have to be within walking distance of London Bridge – or commutable by river bus.’

‘River bus?’ This sparked a connection and she opened a nearby storage box. ‘I have an exercise I do to discover how someone feels about their current position when they can’t identify it easily in words. Let’s try it.’

I thought I’d identified my position perfectly well in words, but I looked anyway at the picture cards she laid on the low table between us. They all involved a man and a boat of some sort, including one of an athletic type in a canoe heading towards a tsunami, another of a drudge on a ferry looking blankly out of a rain-spattered window, and a third of a rakish sort steering a yacht, with friends in the background drinking champagne. I had to say which one was me.

‘One client said she was none of these,’ Vicky commented. ‘She said she was in the water, drowning. Now she’s a vice president at a nonprofit organization. Her dream job.’

‘This is easy for me,’ I said, pointing. ‘I’m the one on the ferry.’

‘Are you heading to work or back home?’

‘I’m heading home.’ I paused, starting to enjoy this. ‘But my season ticket’s run out. I’m a fare dodger.’

‘Interesting,’ Vicky said.

‘Were the teas a test, too?’ I asked, sipping.

‘The teas? No.’ There was a pause. ‘Let’s take a look at your A to Z of skills, shall we?’

*

One evening on the boat, we got talking to a red-haired woman who boarded at Blackfriars with Kit and Steve and beat them to the bar for her G&T before removing all outer garments and settling into a seat near ours as if in her own home. When she called out hello in a celebratory tone, I realized she’d already had a few.

‘What we need on this thing is a bit of decent music, don’t we? Not this soporific crap.’

Weary after a shift at the café so manic I hadn’t been able to take my breaks, I smiled only thinly at the prospect of a floating dancefloor.

‘There’s always the option of a silent disco,’ Kit said, laughing. ‘Plenty of space to dance.’

Our new friend was called Gretchen, a digital project manager whose ambition was to be an artisan gin distiller. I put her at thirty-five but knew better than to do so publicly in case she was in fact twenty-three (later, I found out she was thirty-six). We offered our elevator pitches: Kit the insurance drone, Steve the marketing maverick, I the dropout who frothed milk and mashed avocados for a living.

‘Good on you, Jamie,’ she said, as if I’d said I volunteered in a hospital for terminally ill babies. ‘I would never have put you in insurance,’ she told Kit. ‘How do you even stay awake in that world?’

‘I have my ways.’ Kit winked at her.

When he and Steve disappeared for a cigarette, it was no surprise that she should interrogate me about him. ‘Is he married?’

‘No, but he lives with his girlfriend.’

‘What’s she like?’

‘Really nice.’

‘Really nice as in not at all pretty and you’re being kind to her or really nice as in unbelievably pretty but you’re being kind to me?’

I gave her a look of exaggerated horror. ‘Is this really how women think?’

‘Just put me out of my misery, Jamie.’

‘I’m afraid she’s gorgeous.’ I smiled, ruefully. ‘He’s a lucky man.’

‘Damn. You got some sort of love-triangle thing going on?’

‘Not at all. Kit’s very happy with Melia. I’m very happy with Clare.’

As I made these statements, my voice smooth and convincing, I was aware of a twitch of uncertainty inside my chest.

Anyway, Gretchen joined the gang with or without any prospect of bagging Kit. Now, the fourth seat was saved for her. Now, on the evening boat, a round was four beers, which at £4.50 a go was almost twenty quid, over two hours’ worth of my working day (what with the drinks at the Hope & Anchor on top, I’d soon be working at a loss).