She spotted the gap at the bar between the two men, each waving money at the harassed bar staff and shouting orders incomprehensible in the general hubbub. Lindsay ducked under their arms, brandished a tenner and made eye contact with one of the barmaids. After the woman had finished pouring the three pints of bitter in her current order, she glanced across at Lindsay, who mouthed “Budweiser,” held up two fingers and pointed to the familiar red, white and blue can. She smiled sweetly at the scowling men flanking her, paid for her beers and resumed her search for Pauline.

She found her in a distant corner with half a dozen other women, all of whom Lindsay recognized from her JU days. Three of them were clerical and administrative workers like Pauline, and the others were lay officials from the book and magazine sectors of her old union. Even from a distance, Lindsay could see this wasn’t a cheerful girls’ night out. In a serious huddle, heads close together, the women were speaking forcefully to each other, fingers jabbing at the table top, cigarettes, dragged on furiously. They were so engrossed that no one even noticed Lindsay till she said, “Is this a private council of war, or can anyone join in?”

Sally, a book editor who had represented the staff of a major publishing conglomerate for as long as Lindsay had known her, growled, “Anyone who isn’t one of the bosses.”

Pauline squeezed up to make room for Lindsay, who said, “Surely you’re not expecting the bosses here?” She waved at the room in a gesture that would have been expansive if she hadn’t clobbered a lager-drinking woman with a Sinead O’Connor haircut, black leggings and a short black skirt. She looked like a punk Tinkerbelle in mourning. “Sorry!” Lindsay exclaimed.

“ ’S all right,” the woman said. “She means that lot,” she added, gesturing over her shoulder with her thumb across the room at a group of National Executive Council members who surrounded Tom Jack and Andy Spence.

“The management,” Sally said, her voice even more hostile than the poisonous look she cast at Union Jack as he threw his head back and guffawed. “Call themselves trades unionists? If Margaret Thatcher stood as this union’s equality organizer, they’d vote her in.”

“I guess I’m a bit out of touch,” Lindsay said. “What’s been going down?”

“It’s the same old story,” one of the other clerical workers piped up. “If you’re looking for a lousy boss, pick a trade union baron.”

“After the merger, there was a surplus in the new joint staff pension fund,” Pauline explained. “We’re talking millions, not thousands. We wanted to use the money to improve benefits, but Union Jack and his buddies on the NEC decided instead that in their role as our employers, they’d take a pensions holiday.”