“Baz Burton. Penny’s editor.”

“No!”

“Would I lie to you?”

“Not and live. I want chapter and verse on this, Lindsay, but not now. Call me tomorrow, okay? Love you.”

“Love you too,” Lindsay said to dead air.

Radio stations all smelled the same, Lindsay had realized in recent years. It didn’t matter how old or new the studios were. A blind person who had once sampled the ambience would have it indelibly stamped in their olfactory banks for ever. It was an indefinable smell: a history of cigarette smoke now abolished but present like a ghost; a faint whiff of nervous sweat, the decaying molecules of the pheromones still lingering; the unmistakable tang produced by hot coffee in plastic or polystyrene; and dust. The office where Kirsten was working had the radio smell, even though it was in a sixties building behind Broadcasting House which seemed to be occupied almost entirely by teenagers.

Lindsay was sitting on the tiled window-sill, feet on a chair, head tilted back and hanging out of the metal window-frame in a vain attempt to get some air in her lungs that hadn’t already been breathed by half the population of London. Kirsten sat at a cluttered desk swigging some designer fruit drink from the bottle while sweat ran down either side of her nose as she talked into the phone. “. . . that’s right, you remember! Well, I’m sort of looking at an idea that might make a piece for one of the media magazine programs . . . Yeah, that’s the sort of thing. I was wondering, you know. We still keep hearing about authors getting swag bags of money—Jeffrey Archer getting millions for his backlist, Martin Amis getting half a mil for a two-book deal. Plus, with the end of the Net Book Agreement, what seems to be happening is that bottom of the list authors, the unpromotables, they’re getting the bullet, leaving the marketplace to the ones who can reasonably claim to be worth half-decent advances, yeah?” Kirsten paused in her flow, obviously listening to the voice on the other end. It was the third call she’d made so far.