It was the wrong place. He knew, but then doubted that he knew. All these names look the same, a shake of the same few letters of an alphabet soup into a three letter acronym. In the reception there was nobody there. Did he want to work somewhere where the desk was left abandoned? When a young woman did appear, and asked if she could help, he already knew what the reply would be:

‘There’s no-one here of that name’.

Outside the cold rain was falling harder, whipped up by the wind which was funnelled angrily by the angle of the wide avenues. His hands were cold and his spectacles blurred; he couldn’t read the map on his phone. He set off, hoping to find his way, but equally hoping not to and to trudge, sodden and relieved, back home. There it was, though, the right acronym, if only by process of elimination, and he was less than twenty minutes late. Another reception, on the first floor, this one squeezing in three staff, though they all looked puzzled by his advent.

‘I’m Leslie, Leslie Lamb. I’m here to see Gina.’

The youngest of the the three, who seemed so eager that Leslie assumed she must be unpaid, an intern of some kind, found and read out his name and the putative time of his interview from a screen. He stood and waited. Gina, when she arrived, was unperturbed by his lateness and led Leslie further along narrow corridors into a small, dim room stacked with spare furniture. He sat cramped, still in his anorak, slouched against the wall at a side angle to the table they shared.

‘It’s zero hours’ she said as if to get it out of the way, put him in his place. ‘So, tell me about yourself, Leslie.’

He knew, because he’d trained so many others, that you should answer in a way that’s relevant to the job, but here he was listening to himself rummaging through the odds and sods that made up his life. He couldn’t even stop himself adding ‘And watching a bit of t.v.’

Mostly, to his relief, she talked about herself and the company; there were great things coming, new owners, scaffolding was already up on a newly acquired property. In his mind’s eye, a cartoon appeared, crudely sketched, either by the cynic or the optimist, of him trying to get onto the bottom of the ladder.

But she was back to herself, ’And crazy me, I started in the pig season!’

The pig season? Was this some truncated neologism that had passed him by? As in the season was a real pig. But she came to his aid, inadvertently, now it had become the pick season. Pig, pick — she was trying to say peak, he thought, reprimanding himself dolefully. But then he bucked up; at least he had heard the difference and had restrained himself from interrupting her flow, embarrassing both of them. And in any case, what did it matter — it was all communication, after all. And didn’t the I stand for International?

He’d already noted that the receptionist couldn’t quite desist from trying to add a b to the end of his name, and in so doing had made it into a p. Leslie Lamp, a lamp unto the world. At least it was better than school, he thought, where he’d been a Lamb to the Slaughter, as Meek as a Lamb. He hadn’t put anything on his CV about school. He couldn’t remember much about it. Gina pulled him out of his reverie with a question about ‘inappropriate’ relationships with colleagues. He didn’t have relationships with colleagues and was stumped before he blustered something about respect. He dreaded her asking about inappropriate relationships with students.

When she did so he confessed: ‘I’m sorry, no, I can’t really think of any examples.’

In the moment’s pause that followed, Leslie thought he heard a blue tit reedily attempt a few notes — perhaps there was a garden beyond the obscured window — but it soon gave up. Spring was still a way off. Leslie crossed his right leg on his left; he was sure that wasn’t how you were supposed to sit. There was chalky mud from yesterday’s walk on his brown leather boot; it had dried then run again in the rain. A newly-made, deep scratch scarred the toecap; grey grease, which he could never work out how to remove, was ground into the brogue patterning. Gina’s glowing perorations on the company’s prospects and her part in its success came to an end. It was Leslie’s chance to ask a question; through resignation or self-respect he could only answer:

‘No, I think that covers everything, actually.’