[...] It wasn’t just Handler’s politics that repelled her, it was the entire ideology these life-hacking white boys espoused. Unable to explain their privilege by any other means, they had convinced themselves and others that everything that had landed in their laps had landed there not through basic structural imbalance but through some sort of philosophy. Tech-bros weren’t overpaid and over-lauded because they’d had everything handed to them on a plate, went the accepted wisdom, but because they’d focused, or lived their vision, or actualised. Because they’d done it, anyone could do it. Because anyone could do it, anyone who didn’t do it had only themselves to blame.

‘Let’s just bear in mind,’ said Hugo, ‘that much as you might like to throw your weight around with regards to offering or withdrawing your support for my campaign, which I assume is what you’re implying with all this vague talk of interests, your project is going to take a hell of a lot longer to complete than mine, and while you’re completing it you’re going to want someone who’s sympathetic to your cause in a position where they might actually be able to help you, so let’s stop pretending that my getting elected is solely of benefit to me.’

‘Of course,’ said Jones. ‘But let’s also not pretend that you’re the only one who can help.’

Hugo thought about this for as long as he could manage without giving the impression he’d been thrown by it.

‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘How many people are you backing?’

‘Like I said, Mr Bennington. We’re very much results driven.’

[...] She found herself wondering how they had got here. There had been, she remembered, once, an intimacy – one that had existed in the very space they now used as a forum of harm. She remembered how they used to text each other at parties, even when they were standing side by side, maintaining a closeness right under the gaze of the people they were speaking to; how, for a long time, they’d sustained a cautious flirtation over Twitter, each of them thrilling a little at what was both concealed and suggested in that tentative public affection. When, she wondered, had a channel of affinity become a vector of hostility? Text messages and tweets had become open-ended, all-night conversations in bed. Then the bed had become a place for sleeping, and the dinner table a place for talking about what happened online, until finally the internet was a place to work out what happened at the dinner table, in bed, between minds that now couldn’t reach each other. Now, here they were, yards apart in a public place, dealing each other deeply private, deeply personal wounds.

‘OK,’ said Hugo as the car eased up to the kerb and he took in the scene, ‘I’m seeing an ambulance.’

Teddy didn’t look at the ambulance but instead checked his tablet for news of it.

‘I’m not seeing anything that would suggest an ambulance,’ he said.

‘I’m literally looking at the ambulance, Teddy.’

Teddy tapped around. ‘Looking at it doesn’t tell us anything,’ he said.

‘It tells us it fucking exists,’ said Hugo.

‘Right. An ambulance exists. I could have told you that without seeing one, no? It’s irrelevant. That ambulance could just be there as a matter of protocol. Visual confirmation of its presence is, like, literally useless at this point.’

‘Maybe we should briefly speculate,’ said Hugo.