I could write down all the tasks I need to do at work.

Send an email to XXX confirming your ten o’clock. Chase XXX for those minutes. Remember to book in a half day in February when we’re going down to see XXX’s auntie. Water the plants. Get the bodies out of the back office and somehow get them downstairs, out back to your van with no one seeing.

They’re starting to smell and if you don’t do it now, someone’s gonna call the cops. Wait till everyone leaves then turn out the lights and do a test run with one of the thick plastic bags, heavy like it’s full of water, bumping down the stairs, pausing at every landing, listening over the sound of your heartbeat for the noise of your approaching downfall.

To the ground floor and bump the button with your hip to release the back door and out into the cold clear night. The parking lot’s empty except your rusty old van. Pause for a second, undecided whether to drag the bodybag thirty feet to the van or leave it, run and go get it.

Err.

You drop it and run, heart in mouth, across the asphalt. Fast, as though you’re a child again and there’s monsters at your back just about to get y- to the van, unlock it and in. Fire it up. Come on. It’s choking. Guttering. Coughing into life and roaring as you stamp down on the gas and skid tyres in your haste.

Screech up to the door. But. Oh Jesus. The body bag’s rising. As though the person inside was standing. Facing the van in the harsh white light of the headlights. Slowly, from the inside, the zippered front opens like a black orchid and your nightmare, guilty conscience and violent comeuppance peels itself out of the bag.