Either Siobhan didn’t notice, or else she was in investigative journalist mode. “He must have been pretty demoralized to find he’d been replaced by a golden retriever. I thought at first it must be a guide dog. I mean, there must have been something wrong with her eyesight, fancying Ian enough to have lived with him all these years.”

“That’s the trouble with you feature writers,” Lindsay said. “You’re all so superficial. Image, image, image, that’s all that excites you. It takes a news reporter to penetrate below the surface and discover the truth.” It was an old argument, but none the less attractive. It had the advantage of shifting the conversation away from Ian, and it kept the two women occupied until the end of the order-paper.

“Coming for a drink?” Siobhan asked as they shuffled their papers together.

“Tom Jack’s speaking at a fringe meeting,” Lindsay replied, thinking that answered the question.

Siobhan looked horrified, then her face relaxed into a grin. “I keep forgetting it’s your first time,” she said patronizingly. “I bet you still think fringe meetings are a vital part of conference business.”

“They aren’t?”

“They’re a distraction from the serious business of drinking and socializing,” Siobhan told her. “Come on, let’s go and have a hair of the dog. Whoops, remind me not to say that to Ian!” She giggled.

“Thanks, but no thanks. He’s talking about how workforces cope when they get bought up by media buccaneers. Since we’re still reeling from being taken over by Carnegie Wilson, I feel obliged to go and see what Union Jack’s got to say for himself. God knows, he’s said little enough at the meetings in the office.”

Siobhan winked. “Say no more. I can read between the lines. You want to find out what he’s not been telling you guys, then you can slip a banana skin under the sexist pig at your next meeting.”

Before Lindsay could deny it, Siobhan had slipped away. With a sigh, Lindsay headed for the committee room. She still felt she had a duty to the colleagues she was supposed to represent. Like the rest of them, Lindsay was worried about her future following their recent invasion by the New Zealand media tycoon. As well as being the senior JU official at Nation Newspapers, Union Jack headed the loose federation of the seven different unions represented there. If anyone could speak from experience about the implications of take-overs, it was him.