I told my line manager, Craig, in the following September, nine months after, because it came up sideways in a conversation about annual leave and because I was too tired to construct the alternative.

He was decent about it.

He was startled and then decent.

And then it went round the floor in about four days, the way these things do, and for approximately three weeks I was the most interesting thing in a building of two hundred and forty people, and I want to describe the reactions because they sorted into three types and the proportions surprised me.

Most of them were kind and completely uncomplicated. Seven or eight people said a version of that’s an extraordinary thing to have done and meant it and then left me alone about it, which is exactly right.