‘You’re funny,’ she gasped. ‘I like funny. No, Ros, I haven’t got time to read a book, let alone listen to a podcast about reading books. Last novel I read was that one about that daft slag who had everyone thinking her thick husband killed her but then it turned out she staged it all because she was a mental.’

I digested her capsule review for just a moment.

‘Do you mean Gone Girl?’

‘That’s the one,’ she nodded. ‘What a waste of fucking time. Went on a mad rampage just because she didn’t like taking it up the arse. Just dump him, love, there was no need.’

‘I don’t remember that being her entire motivation but I hear what you’re saying,’ I replied weakly. We’d interviewed Gillian Flynn on The Book Report and I wished we’d had Veronica’s capsule review back then. ‘Maybe you ought to have your own podcast instead of Snazz.’

Veronica clacked her long, blood-red nails on the kitchen top.

‘Sad truth is more people will take an hour out of their day to listen to Snazz and his mates chatting shit than they would to listen to a forty-eight-year-old woman with something useful to say,’ she declared with a resigned shrug. ‘The world’s fucked.’

‘You never know until you try,’ I said, avoiding the sad fact that she was probably right by checking the time on my phone. ‘Is the young master ready for me?’

‘He is,’ she said with a deep breath in. ‘But I’m not sure what you’re hoping to get out of him. PodPad came to us with the idea of doing a podcast, he said he was into it and so I did the deal, but I’ve got to tell you, you’re fighting an uphill battle. Don’t take this the wrong way but I think they’d have done better pairing him with someone who didn’t mind doing all the work themselves.’

‘I’ll do the work,’ I said quickly. ‘I’m not afraid of hard graft.’

‘That’s not really what I meant,’ she replied, leading me back through the designer asylum. One Flew Over the Kardashian’s Nest. ‘They should have given him a producer who wanted to lead the show and just have him there for colour. You don’t seem like someone who’s interested in the limelight.’

‘Oh,’ I nodded as we passed what looked suspiciously like a baby shark, darting around a fish tank bigger than my first car. ‘Yeah, that’s not really my thing. My job is to make everyone else look great, in an ideal world no one even knows I’m there.’

‘You’re a dying breed,’ Veronica said, voice full of regret. We climbed the stairs rather than taking the glass-encased lift and took a sharp left at the top of the landing.