The Hearth research

A shopfront on a cobbled street in low golden light, its window full of open brass cases showing little maps of the city. Above the door, one gilded word: FAMILY. Every handbill in the window is small print too fine to read. In the doorway a man holds one of the cases open, watching a single bead creep along a street on its map; behind him, along that same street and lit by the same low sun, a woman walks home past the shop without glancing in. She is the bead. A watchman leans on the corner writing in a notebook, recording neither of them.

Research brief, The Morporkian Civil Liberties Union (MCLU)

A household service in Ankh-Morpork sells a shared plan: one account, one named holder, and as many numbers and devices on it as the household needs. It bills to the holder, it reports to the holder, and it takes its instructions from the holder. It is working exactly as sold.

The person who brought it to the MCLU left the household six weeks ago. He knows she has left. That is not the difficulty. The difficulty is that her number is on his account, her device is enrolled on his account, and the itemised record of every call she makes arrives, monthly, as his bill.

She has asked the desk to move her number into her own name. The desk cannot. It takes instructions from the named holder, and she is not the named holder. There is a route: he authorises the transfer. There is no other route, and there is no version of taking it in which he is not told she asked.

Nobody has exceeded an authority. He holds exactly what the account gives an account holder and has used none of it unusually. The desk has applied the rule it is required to apply. The MCLU’s interest is in what is left of a person’s position when the only exit from an arrangement runs through the person they are leaving.

There is one thing the desk will mention if she asks, and it is smaller than it sounds. A call that costs nothing to make does not have to be itemised. This provider leaves those calls off, so the one conversation that will not reach him is with a helpline. It is not a protection she holds. It is a house practice, and the house could change it with the next format of the bill.

  • When the person who holds the account and the person who is merely on it want opposite things, whose instruction does the provider take, and what does the other one learn from her having asked?

  • If everything is authorised and everything works as described, what exactly has gone wrong?

Download the case file

Last updated: 17 September 2026