‘We need to talk about work,’ she tapped, and hit send on the text. She was pleased and a bit surprised when he messaged back soon after to say yes, he would drop in. He came soon afterwards, at lunchtime, but he said he wasn’t hungry. He looked rattled, hollow-eyed, as if he had slept poorly. He glanced distractedly at the football game that was playing on the TV in the corner, but his gaze didn’t settle.

‘Is something wrong?’ she asked, handing him a beer.

‘Yes,’ he snapped. ‘I’m being threatened.’

‘What?’

‘It’s petty stuff, unbelievably petty. The worst sort of jealousy. It’s sabotage really. It only looks bad, that’s the thing. Of course all my dealings have been completely legitimate.’ He opened his satchel, took something out and threw it on the table. It was a packet of papers. Rose saw Danny’s name and the words ‘charlatan’ and ‘corrupt’. There were photocopied pages, parts of company reports, some contracts regarding directorships and so on. Rose had never seen the papers before. There was also an old report from a disciplinary panel. Surprised and incredulous, she tried to skim the findings.

Danny stood at her elbow, radiating fury. He downed his beer quickly, setting the bottle on the table with a jarring impact. With him standing there like that, it was hard to focus enough to read, but phrases leapt out from the text, a litany of accusations: ‘aggressive behaviour’, ‘anger management’, ‘ruthless’.

She looked up at him and grimaced. ‘Well, you do have a history.’

‘What do you mean, a history?’

‘Nothing.’ She backed off, raised her hands, gestured at the papers. ‘Just all this.’

He glared. ‘Do you know why I came here, Rose? You’re the one person I can trust not to squeal about this rubbish.’ Narrowing his eyes, he asked, ‘Why did you want to see me?’

‘To talk about my job, my ideas for the centre!’ This was sounding like a plea, not the pitch she had in mind. There was a tremor in her voice.

‘And what were you planning to tell me? Out with it, then. I’m listening.’

This meeting wasn’t going how she wanted it to go. Danny’s attitude was hostile, but she launched into her spiel about researching poultry stress. ‘Think about it,’ she said. ‘The UK has twenty million hens in modified cages. This is what we’re about, addressing suffering, Danny. It’s what we’ve always been about.’

He looked at her with suspicion. She was veering off-script, making things personal.

‘You can’t forget the past,’ she said. ‘What we have is hard to come by. It’s about trust, about loyalty…’

‘What are you saying?’