Chapter 1 — The Kingdom of Cheap Things

The story opens at a failing gymnastics venue on a Newcastle industrial estate. The building is a depressing collection of peeling paint, damp patches, flickering strip lights and bargain equipment held together with tape. Parents pay as little as possible for their children's lessons, while the owner, Denise, insists that her business empire is thriving.

Denise is a formidable businesswoman with an immaculate public image and a talent for making failing enterprises look successful. Alongside the gymnastics club, she operates a tiny beauty booth selling cheap fake tan, bargain cosmetics and beauty treatments. Behind a partition, a separate cosmetic-surgery operation offers liposuction to customers attracted by low prices and promises of dramatic transformations.

The surgery business is becoming notorious. Every week brings another furious customer, another solicitor's letter and another allegation of misleading advertising or poor treatment. Denise insists that the complaints are exaggerated and that the business will survive if everyone simply keeps quiet.

Hidden beneath her respectable business persona is her relationship with Mara, a tough, uncompromising lesbian who refuses to be treated as a dirty little secret. Mara is deeply involved in Denise's life, but Denise will not acknowledge their relationship publicly. She fears losing customers, damaging her reputation and exposing the fragile arrangements holding her businesses together.

In the back office, two Albanian business partners run a cheap online dating website. Their office is cluttered with old computers, takeaway containers and unpaid bills. They specialise in aggressive subscription renewals and lurid advertisements promising romance and discretion. They know everybody's business because their customers constantly send messages to the wrong accounts, complain about charges and threaten to expose one another.

The two men have also discovered that the businesses on the industrial estate are more closely connected financially than Denise admits. They begin keeping records of transactions, gossip and private arrangements, partly to protect themselves and partly because they see an opportunity to make money.

Mara discovers that Denise has been using their relationship as a private refuge while publicly presenting herself as an entirely different person. When Mara demands honesty, Denise promises that everything will change once the businesses are financially secure.

But the businesses are not becoming secure. They are collapsing.