‘Hungover?’ Xav eyed me suspiciously as he reshuffled the headlines.

‘I wish. I slept so badly last night I’m practically tripping now.’ I thought of Danny’s mouth on my neck. I felt heat suffuse my body.

‘I thought you’d given up illegal substances for Lent.’

‘Funny. I couldn’t – I couldn’t sleep actually.’ I pushed the memories down. ‘This Kattan thing’s really beginning to bug me. I wish you’d never mentioned it, you know.’

‘Right …’ His desk phone rang. ‘Well, I’ve got some news for you.’

‘Brilliant.’ I sat up, alert for the first time that day.

‘It’s not brilliant, actually.’ He picked up the receiver.

I poured us both coffee from the percolator in the corner whilst Xavier harangued whoever was on the end of the line. His office was as immaculate as ever, his stereo gently playing Bach, his reference books neatly ordered, magazines stacked in date order, all belying the frenetic nature of his job. Behind his sleek head hung a framed picture of a younger and more carefree us in evening dress, laughing at the Journalism Awards the year before I married; beside it a picture of the photographer Dean Harding in a flak jacket, taken just before he was killed in Afghanistan last year. Much loved, much mourned.

‘Get Johnny Field on to it, now,’ Xav snapped into the phone. ‘Cherie Blair might be fucking litigious, but I will not go down the whole fucking Caplin route again and get shot in the arse with no story to show for it.’ He dropped the phone into its cradle with disdain. ‘Fucking Telegraph. Stealing our bloody thunder a-fucking-gain.’

‘Kattan …’ I began.

‘The Kattan story is going nowhere,’ Xav said flatly, adding four sweeteners to his coffee.

‘Look, I know I’ve been a bit flaky about it all,’ I soothed. ‘But give me a chance.’

‘I mean it’s going nowhere because it’s a dead end.’ He studied his manicured fingernail as if it were the most interesting thing he’d ever seen. ‘It’s not you, darling. It’s me. I’m pulling the plug on it.’

‘But I am finally getting somewhere.’ I put my coffee down and leaned on the desk. ‘There’s a story there, Xav, I know there is. Maya Kattan is a haunted woman with what I reckon are some seriously dodgy politics. She’s all over the shop. I think she might have been radicalised by her Somalian boyfriend. Just let me—’

‘Rose, I admire your passion, as ever. But you’re not listening. I said it’s a dead end.’

‘But why? I don’t understand.’

‘Just accept it, sweetheart. I’ll give you something far better. How about the front row at London Fashion Week?’

I stared at him, appalled. ‘Is that a joke?’