Even before she lost her job and Michael confessed that he loved someone else, Emily had become aware that confidence was draining out of her, that somewhere along the way she’d changed, she’d grown out of her youthful self-possession and her sense of self hadn’t been adequately replaced. She’d been parked on the subediting desk years ago, and she would have stayed there forever, her career decided. Now and then the editors would commission a sub to write a short review or a travel story—a sweetener to keep you on the copy desk. The last time she’d been on assignment was 1999, when The Independent sent her to the Venice Biennale for two days. Her brief was to produce an article from the perspective of someone for whom the Biennale was a new and strange experience, someone who didn’t have art-world knowledge to retail and professional criticism to offer, since the paper had already run two such articles by regular critics. At a pavilion in the Giardini she’d got lucky and witnessed a fistfight break out between German performance artists and heckling audience members. One of the artists appeared to break his hand in the shouty toing and froing; Emily noticed there were a few teeth on the floor, but she couldn’t tell to whom they belonged. No one picked them up. Emily was sitting with her notebook on her lap, describing the scene, when the Carabinieri arrived. ‘Looks like this piece basically wrote itself,’ said the features editor. But he never commissioned another word from Emily. No one did. No one accepted her pitches. In the newsroom the features editor was known as Uday, as in Hussein—a nickname coined by Emily—because he had a bad temper, shaved irregularly, and his father was the editor-in-chief. Uday’s eyes were also large and reddishly tyrannical. Emily coined several other unflattering nicknames in the newsroom of The Independent, and the epithets never failed to take hold. Two examples: a boozy subeditor frequently absent from his desk was called Red October, after the Russian sub that went missing; a self-important reporter named Donna, who ate dinner late at night, became known as Kebab (or, in full, Donna Kebab). Only in their absence, in safety, out of earshot, out of the office, were they referred to as Uday, Red October, and Kebab.

During her months of unemployment, Emily concluded that Uday had heard about his nickname, its origins, and pushed for her sacking.

Last week Michael had said that maybe all the petty newsroom politics and the stasis of subediting, of correcting the work of reporters and columnists she didn’t respect—maybe it wasn’t bungled life but preparation for this Sydney assignment? Michael, all that time, bending over backwards to cheer up his wife while still making time for his girlfriend.

More than once she’d asked him if her story idea was good. He’d said all her ideas were great.

4.