Rahim has been through four apps with counters on them. The longest he ever got was fifty one days, and the fortnight after that number went back to zero was the worst fortnight of the year.

What he tries this time has no number in it at all.

It happens on a Tuesday. The hour starts the way it always does. The sentence arrives, and it is the usual one, which is that he is a fraud and has been pretending for years.

He writes it down. Then he writes it again with one word changed, so that it is about Tuesday night rather than about him. It does not feel true. It feels thin, and slightly stupid.

Then he does the thing that turns out to matter, which is that he goes and does the washing up, which was already on his evening. Not as a distraction and not as a punishment. Because the evening was still going and he was still in it.

Wednesday is an ordinary Wednesday. That is the entire result, and it is more than he got from any of the four apps.