Lindsay had staggered downstairs at ten past seven, lured by the smell of coffee. She’d found Kirsten reading the Guardian in her dressing gown, her short dark hair sticking up in a Fido Dido crest, hands wrapped round a mug of very black coffee. The room was an oasis of relative quiet, the radio there being silent. “Plenty in the pot,” Kirsten mumbled. “Croissants in the oven. A couple of minutes yet.”

Lindsay tried moving a mouth that seemed to be lodged in a concrete face. “I can’t believe you got her to switch off the radio in here,” she managed as she helped herself to coffee.

“I don’t mind bringing work home with me. But I’m damned if I’m going to wake up to it as well. I told her, it’s the Today program or me.”

“It must be love,” Lindsay commented.

Right on cue, Helen bounced into the room swathed in a kimono, her marmalade hair in damp coils to her shoulders. “Sleep okay, Linds?” she demanded, sweeping past them both and yanking a tray of hot croissants and pains au chocolat out of the oven.

“Yeah,” she said. “Could have done with a few more hours, but . . .”

“Don’t be daft,” Helen said, dumping the croissants on to a plate and balancing it on top of the papers she’d been working on the night before. “Never mind Tulsa, you’re back living on Tulse Hill time,” she continued, breaking into song and playing air guitar in a bad imitation of Eric Clapton.

“Helen,” Kirsten groaned plaintively.

“Best cure for jet lag,” Helen persisted. “What’ve you got on today, K?”

Kirsten frowned momentarily. Then her face cleared. “Doing a piece for Radio Bloke about holiday reading. One last interview to do, then I can cobble it all together.”

“Radio Bloke?” Lindsay asked faintly.

“Five Live,” Helen informed her. “‘Twenty-four-hour news and sport from the BBC,’” she mimicked, helping herself to a croissant.

“I do bits and pieces for them, but mostly I work for Four,” Kirsten said, her warm radio voice re-emerging from the early morning gravel. “Arts and media stuff.”

“That’s handy,” Lindsay said, perking up as the coffee worked its way through to her brain.

“Watch out, K,” Helen cautioned through a mouthful of pastry. “When this scally starts to take an interest, there’s always an ulterior motive. She’ll be after borrowing some fancy recording equipment or something, just wait and see.”

Reaching for a pain au chocolat, Lindsay shook her head. “You know me too well, Helen.”

“You can’t scam a scammer,” Helen said.

“Is there something I can help you with, Lindsay?” Kirsten asked between mouthfuls.

“I don’t honestly know,” she said. “Maybe. Do you know anything about Monarch Press?”

Kirsten nodded. “As it happens, yeah. Kaleidoscope did a feature on their tenth anniversary. I wasn’t producing, but I went along to the party. Lemme see . . .” Her dark eyes focused on the middle distance as Helen leaned across to refill her coffee cup. “Thanks, love. Now, lemme get this right. The guy behind the company is an East End wide boy called Danny King. He’s a proper cockney, one generation away from a barrow boy. Though that’s being a bit unfair. His dad actually got off the barrows and worked as a printer in Fleet Street.”