In truth, Harri knows she is all out of fight and flight. Every single drop of adrenaline has evaporated through her pores. She might cry now. She’d have to go to the disabled toilet in the basement. The toilet reserved for weeping juniors, rats and—apparently—ghosts. And once Keith Richards during a legendary interview for the now defunct Rock Show. (A title that was unsuccessfully relaunched as a geologists’ periodical.)

Harri knows that if she goes to the basement, she will never leave.

Blinking hard, she sends Giles a message. Then, eyes screwed shut to keep the tears at bay, not caring whether she gets run over, she stumbles all the way over the road to the Angel, and waits.

Harri and Giles have seen out many a crisis upstairs in the Angel. It is their War Room—the sticky, stinky antithesis of Media London. Too grubby for a gossip columnist to bother with. As a young, ambitious hack, Harri would go out of her way to be seen in the smartest bars. Now she can only really relax in a pub where nobody knows her name.

‘All right, Kev!’ Giles nods at the elderly regular, as he dumps four bags of crisps on the table. And, to Harri, sotto voce, ‘It’s a shame. Acid, they say. The old fella used to be such a raver, down the Blitz every Tuesday night in his leather vest.’ Kev gave nothing away but Giles was always full of theories.

Harri tears into the cheese and onion. ‘Careful with your references, Giles. Blitz was before you say you were born. If word gets out that you’re a day over thirty-five, they’ll fire you too.’

‘Ah, I’ve always been precocious! What did I hear someone saying the other day? We’re all convinced the nineties happened ten years ago, and no one is willing to accept that they were actually thirty years ago.’ He leans forward conspiratorially, ‘Anyway, to catch me out you have to be really good at maths. Never a mag hag’s strong suit. You think anyone spends two grand on a Balenciaga blazer if they’re good at maths?’

‘This Mackenzie is, apparently,’ Harri mutters gloomily, before she slurps her white wine, ‘a real pound buster. Or dollar buster. But then, she’s not one of us, is she?’ She bites her lip, hard. ‘It’s humiliating, so humiliating, to be ditched for someone whose biggest career achievement is a stint at The Racing Hound.’

Giles pats Harri’s forearm. ‘But that’s the thing, surely? It would be awful if they brought in an Anna, a Carine. You’re not being replaced by an icon. You’re the icon, and they want a…what? Look at Diana Vreeland! Being fired by Vogue only made her legend greater. Anyway, you’ve not been fired,’ Giles punctuates his point by crunching a fistful of crisps.