In his eagerness, he’s too close in the small car, his tired old face moist, his thick, nicotine-and-grey hair sticking out now, apparently responding to the static he’s generating on the plastic seat covers. His teeth are soiled in the crepuscular light, but his eyes, small though they are – he dabs himself at this moment with a handkerchief from his top pocket – are fervid. He hates these people! It’s class war. He hates the upper-class twits who have always had their manicured fingers on the nation’s jugular.

‘I’ll do it,’ she says, and gets out.

The windows are fogged and she can just make him out, undulating like an undersea creature caught in a current.

Artair is working on his screenplay – finishing touches, you never know when to stop – and he’s happy to take a break. As if in response to his upbeat mood, the weather has become benign and they sit on the slipway outside the boathouse looking across the quiet and unruffled and bucolic estuary. Swans are idling about. Melissa is drinking the viscous, lethal coffee. Artair is wearing a Barcelona match shirt, made for a smaller man. On his back is ARTAIR and the number 7. He has a new, jaunty, tweed pork-pie hat, which sits on the sheaves of his hair like a chimney pot.

‘Now, Melinda, have you got a boyfriend yet?’

‘No time for that, Mr MacCleod. The editor keeps me very busy.’

‘What a loss to mankind. Top man, Tredizzick. He was deputy editor of the Mirror in London, I think it was. He had a breakdown and decided Cornwall was his spiritual home after all.’

‘What caused his breakdown?’

‘A fat crook called Maxwell. Beyond parody, a crook on a Homeric scale. You had to admire him for his balls. Balls of brass.’

‘How’s your screenplay coming?’

‘It’s brilliant. When you’ve been in the business as long as I have, you develop an instinct. By the way, is this an interview?’

‘No. I was doing a piece on sewage pollution on the beaches. The editor wanted me to look at it.’

‘The sewage?’

‘No, the underinvestment by local government, the threat to tourism, dead fish, anything, and I thought I would pop in. I hope you don’t mind. If I am honest, I want the scoop on Daniel Day-Lewis for my blog. Has he signed up?’

‘Signed up? No, no, it doesn’t work like that. We are in the phase I call the mating dance. We are circling around one another. My final draft will wing its way to El Camino Drive in a day or two. Whence it will be sent to Daniel in his Irish fastness and he will read it. We are a few months away from consummation.’

‘You won’t forget me when it’s agreed?’

‘No, you’ll get the news first. I promise. How’s the coffee?’