‘Drain it then, but put a splash of the water in the sauce. To be fair, I did just find you half-cut, in the dark, listening to God only knows what.’

‘Rory Gallagher,’ Dan said. ‘Irish lad. You ought to know that.’ He tipped the spaghetti into the colander, then tipped it out of the colander and into the sauce. Back on the heat, it spluttered and hissed.

‘Well, anyway,’ Katelin said. ‘Just don’t.’

‘Look, while you’re away, I’ll do what I always do, which is write about music, listen to music, stare at the wall and sometimes drink beer in the dark. Oh,’ he said, remembering a phone call he’d had much earlier that day, ‘I had a call from Tess at Six Music today. They want me on a regular slot, some kind of panel, me and a couple of other hacks.’

She said, ‘Good,’ in that tone she sometimes used that drove him nuts. He’d by no means decided to do it – it was a Thursday morning gig, and getting to Media City in Salford every Wednesday night wasn’t the most tempting offer he’d ever had. But there was Katelin with her encouraging, condescending ‘good’, as if he’d been slogging away fruitlessly for years and had finally had a lucky break.

‘Good, why?’ he said.

She raised her eyebrows, as if it was obvious. ‘Regular work.’

‘Katelin, I do regular work, but I do it in an irregular fashion, and it’s never let us down yet.’

‘No, I know, but there’s always that feeling it could all dry up.’

He stared at her over the top of his beer bottle. ‘No, there isn’t,’ he said. ‘I don’t have that feeling.’

‘You know what you should do? You should write another book.’

He laughed. ‘Oh, should I?’

‘It’s a while since that last one, the Made in Sheffield thing.’

The Made in Sheffield thing. A book he’d written that Katelin had never read, about music she’d never listened to. ‘Yeah, well,’ he said. ‘All in good time. Most music books don’t sell. They don’t dole out advances like they used to.’

‘But you have too much time on your hands.’

‘Katelin, that’s bollocks!’

‘Well, you do!’ she said, gesturing at him with her free hand as if he was exhibit A, the living embodiment of an under-employed journalist.

‘No, I don’t, I’m up to my neck in work.’

‘Good,’ she said again cheerfully, to properly convey her scepticism. ‘Great. So let’s eat.’