We order what we always have – pizza for Simon, seafood pasta for me – and it arrives too quickly for it to have been cooked from scratch.
‘I looked at the adverts in the Gazette this morning. Graham had a pile in his office.’
‘They haven’t promoted you to page three, have they?’ He cuts into his pizza, and a thin trickle of oil oozes from the topping on to his plate.
I laugh. ‘I’m not sure I’ve got the necessary attributes for that. The thing is, I recognised the woman in the advert.’
‘You recognised her? You mean it’s someone you know?’
I shake my head. ‘I saw her photo in another newspaper – she was in an article about crime on the Underground. I told the police about it.’ I’m trying to keep it light, but my voice breaks. ‘I’m scared, Simon. What if that photo in Friday’s paper really was me?’
‘It wasn’t, Zoe.’ There’s concern in Simon’s face; not because someone put a photo of me in the paper, but because I think they did.
‘I’m not imagining it.’
‘Are you stressed about work? Is it Graham?’
He thinks I’m going mad. I’m starting to think he’s right.
‘It really did look like me,’ I say quietly.
‘I know.’
He puts down his knife and fork. ‘Tell you what, let’s say the photo was of you.’
This is how Simon addresses problems, boiling them down to their very essence. A couple of years ago there was a burglary in our street. Katie became convinced they were going to break into our house next, and the thought stopped her sleeping. When she eventually dropped off she had nightmares, waking up screaming that there was someone in her room. I was at my wit’s end. I’d tried everything; even sat with her till she fell asleep, like she was a baby again. Simon took a more practical approach. He took Katie to B&Q, where they bought window locks, a burglar alarm, and an extra bolt for the garden gate. Together they fitted security measures to the entire house, even coating the drainpipes with anti-climb paint. The nightmares stopped instantly.
‘Okay,’ I say, finding the game oddly cheering. ‘Let’s say the photograph really was of me.’
‘Where did it come from?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve been asking myself the same question.’
‘You’d notice someone random taking a photo of you, surely?’
‘Maybe someone took it with a long lens,’ I say, realising as I do how ridiculous it sounds. What next? Paparazzi outside the house? Mopeds zooming past me; a photographer leaning to one side, in an effort to get the perfect shot for a tabloid splash? Simon doesn’t laugh, but when I acknowledge the absurdity of the suggestion with an embarrassed grin, he cracks a smile.
‘Someone could have stolen it,’ he says, more seriously.
‘Yes!’ That seems more likely.
‘Okay, so let’s imagine someone’s used your photo to advertise their company.’ Discussing the advert like this, in such a rational, dispassionate way, is gradually calming me down, which I know was Simon’s intention all along. ‘That would be identity theft, right?’
I nod. Giving it a name – and one so familiar – instantly makes it feel less personal. There are hundreds – probably thousands – of identity fraud cases every day. At Hallow & Reed we have to be so careful, double-checking ID documents and only ever accepting originals or certified copies. It’s frighteningly easy to take someone’s photo and pass it off as your own.
Simon is still rationalising what’s happened.
‘What you have to consider is this: would it really hurt you? More than – say – if someone used your name to open a bank account, or if they cloned your card?’
‘It’s creepier.’
Simon reaches across the table and puts both his hands over mine. ‘Remember when Katie had that problem at school, with that gang of girls?’ I nod, the mere mention of it filling me with fresh rage. When she was fifteen, Katie was bullied by three girls in her year. They set up an Instagram account in her name; posted photos of Katie’s head, Photoshopped on to various images. Naked women, naked men, cartoon characters. Infantile, puerile stuff, that blew over before the end of the term, but Katie was devastated.
‘What did you tell her?’
Sticks and stones, I said to Katie. Ignore them. They’re not touching you.
‘The way I see it,’ Simon says, ‘is that there are two possibilities. Either the photo was simply of someone who looks like you – although not nearly as beautiful’ – I grin, despite the cheesiness of the compliment – ‘or it’s ID theft, which – although irritating – isn’t doing you any harm.’
I can’t argue with his logic. Then I remember Cathy Tanning. I produce her as though I’m playing a joker. ‘The woman I saw in the newspaper article; she had her keys stolen on the Tube.’ Simon waits for an explanation, his face registering confusion.