I returned to my seventh-floor cubicle, only to find a woman I’d never seen before sitting in my seat.

“Who are you?” she asked, looking up from the computer screens. She seemed annoyed.

Evidently this was not my cubicle. “I—I’m sorry, I, er, must’ve made a wrong turn somewhere,” I stammered. “Have a good day, sorry to disturb you.”

“Damn right you are.”

I was about to turn, but it struck me that if this was her cubicle, it was eerily similar to mine. The monitors arrayed in the same way, the jade plant on the left, the Starbucks cup on the right, the books on the upper panel, the framed photo of my boyfriend—

“Why are you still here?” she snapped.

“Hold on, sorry, I really am, but I’m pretty sure this is my cube,” I ventured, halfway sure of myself. “I mean, all of this stuff is mine. I don’t know who you are, but this is my spot.”

“So you’re saying,” she narrowed her brows, “that I’m the one that doesn’t belong here?”

“No, no, not like that! But yeah, a bit like that. I mean, if you check the name tag right outside of the cube, it should say Kate Lainey.”

“No it doesn’t.”

“You sure?”

“No. It doesn’t,” she repeated. “Check for yourself.”

“Alright, sure.” I backed gingerly out of the cubicle and checked. Embossed in steel, glinting under the overhead lights, was the name Lucy Harris. I glanced back at the woman, who was staring at me wordlessly.

“But I could have sworn—”

“Now get out.”

“I’m sorry, look, I really am, I don’t know what’s happening to me—”

“I don’t know what the hell is happening to you either. Now get out or I’ll call security.”

“—but that’s definitely a photo of my boyfriend!” I pointed at the picture of Ben on the beach. “I know this is my cube!”

“This?” She picked up the frame. “You mean my husband?”

“What?”

“Are you trying to suggest that my husband is cheating on me?”

“What? No! That’s not what I said! All I’m saying is, that’s my boyfriend Ben, we were on the beach for a photoshoot last summer, he’d just proposed—”

“I don’t know who the hell you think this is, but this is my husband Henry.”

“So he’s not cheating on you then! Maybe we just happen to have fallen in love with men who, uh, look exactly the same. Because that photo’s definitely from our photoshoot.”

“Your point is?”

“Look, I’m not going crazy. I swear. This is my cube. Right next to it is Shreya’s cube,” I pointed above the eye-level cubicle wall to where I could barely see Shreya’s Post-It-covered whiteboard, “which makes sense because she’s on my team. We’re next to each other. I mean, she’s not in the office right now but that is definitely her cube, and her handwriting.”

The woman stared sternly at me. “I have a job to do. I don’t have time for this nonsense.”

The filing cabinets! I continued in a feverish rush: “And those cabinets to your left, I can tell you what’s in them! The top one has some papers, the middle one is empty—”

“Now you’re telling me that you’ve gone through my cabinets.”

“—the bottom one I keep my snacks in, I can show you, I have the key to them! Because they’re my cabinets!”

“That won’t be necessary,” she said coldly, pulling out a set of keys from her purse. With a practised motion she unlocked the cabinets and opened them with a whoosh. All three of them contained rows of drab manila folders which I’d never seen before.

“What? How in the world—”

“You’ve wasted enough of my time. Now get out.”

I stared helplessly at my (her?) personal artefacts, arranged exactly how I had left them on my (her?) desk.

“Get. Out.”

At this moment two women in security uniforms appeared on either side of me and seized me by my arms. “Have a good day, Ms. Harris,” the taller one said as they both hoisted me away.

“Hold on!” I pleaded to my captors as they dragged me down the aisle to the lift. “What’s happening here? Have I been fired? Without anyone telling me?”

“Fired?” said the shorter one. “Girl, you don’t even work here.”