Three weeks into the job she had developed a small talent: she could feel the phone buzz in her left front pocket from across the room, where the phone was, on the desk, dark. Four times before lunch her hand went out and stopped halfway, an unfinished gesture nobody in the open-plan office remarked on, because six other people were doing it too.

What she was waiting for was a two-line message from her manager about whether the probation period had gone fine. It came on a Thursday and said it had. The buzzing did not stop. She checked her settings that weekend and found that vibrate had been switched off since April, four months of a sensation her body was generating on its own, at no cost to anyone.