Yusuf has not opened anything with a window in the envelope since March. There is a pile behind the clock in the kitchen and he moves it when people come round.

He picks half past seven, at the table. The first evening the list has eleven things on it. Two are jobs. The other nine are versions of the same sentence, which is that everyone is going to find out.

The following week he does the other half. He does not open the pile. He picks one number, the balance on the card, and he looks it up on his phone. It takes ninety seconds. He writes it on the back of a receipt.

The number is worse than the figure he had been using at three in the morning, and he says afterwards that it was still a relief, because a fixed number is a thing with edges. He puts the receipt in his wallet. Nobody else sees it and nobody asks for it.

That is the whole exercise. He has not made a plan. He has one number and a slot, and the pile behind the clock is still there and is a matter for the adviser he rings in lesson six.