‘That’s a better question,’ says Connie. ‘Pierce Brosnan. I’d climb that man like a tree.’ ‘Agreed,’ says Ron. ‘Except the bit about the tree.’ The cage shudders. It would be a bad place to get trapped.

What use am I? I’m not going to discover Nick Silver’s code. Some women make history, and some women make tea. I will never be Elizabeth.

No, not unlucky. He had simply outlived his luck.

God, Ron loved a picket line. ‘I shook your hand,’ says Bill. ‘And then a copper hit you with a truncheon.’ Ron raises his pint. ‘Happier times.’ Bill clinks and agrees.

But then the computers all started talking to each other, and, before you knew it, your phone started talking to your computer, and your fridge started talking to your phone, and you willingly paid for a device that recorded everything you said and sent it to a server farm in the middle of the Nevada desert, just because it was easier than

Joyce thinks that perhaps bombs are women. Once they’ve exploded, that’s an end to it. Men are more like guns: they’re constantly reloading.

Ibrahim has never found answers in a church, but perhaps these people are asking different questions? We’re all just trying to make sense of things, and you must take meaning wherever you can find it.

Is this how it is from here on? Should he just accept it? To the family he looked after for so many years – as provider, protector, barbecue chef, turkey carver and chief rabble rouser – he’s now the old man on the comfy chair in the corner? That’s where they are?

But Elizabeth has hung up, and the familiar, business-like rudeness of that gesture brings a huge grin to Donna’s face.