Back at The Complaints Department: Laurie’s life feels meaningless. Every time she grasps at meaning, every time she tries to decide what her life should be about, meaning evaporates. Hope is like an hourglass and the sand keeps ticking through.

Late one night, Laurie pushes her complaint through the Complaints Department letterbox and keeps hoping.

Laurie doesn’t know what she was expecting, but it wasn’t Sadie, the young, annoyingly effervescent woman who takes her by the arm and leads her into the carnival, challenging everything Laurie thought she knew to be real...

In this story, we return to the Complaints Department and meet Silas.

Silas is brooding, mysterious, and does it on purpose. He’s a field officer at the Complaints Department, a mysterious organisation that resolves complaints of an existential nature. The Complaints Department endeavours to address all complaints within 30 days.

Mr Cotton (having looked over the wall and seen the Complaints Department letterbox goes nowhere) isn’t sure the Complaints Department is even real, and yet something keeps him writing reams of petty and contradictory complaints every day, trying to provoke a response.

Today is the twenty-ninth day.

There’s a knock on the door.

It’s Silas.

June is lonely. Her parents are dead, she hasn’t a partner. She’s thinking about getting a dog. Then, she finds a letterbox in an alleyway with ‘Complaints Department’ written above it. She pushes her complaint through the flap and second guesses herself all the way home.

Her complaint reaches the Complaints Department, a mysterious organisation that resolves complaints of an existential nature. Enter Simone, clairvoyant and kind. How will she arrange events so that June doesn’t spend her days feeling desperately lonely?