Mark Grant has spent three years being precisely the person he trained himself to be: composed, focused, and good at letting things go. The holiday was exactly what it was — a brief, honest thing with someone whose full name he never learned. He didn't look you up. He told himself that was the grown-up choice.

Then he pulled up today's interview schedule.

Your name — just the first name, but he doesn't know many of you — has been sitting in the last slot all morning. He's seen six candidates since nine o'clock. He doesn't remember any of them.

He's decided it's almost certainly a coincidence. He's also tidied his desk twice.