It’s Monday. The editor is at his desk. The FT has run a few lines in the ‘Mammon’ column, enough to allow J.D. to add a little weight to the rumours in his Monday column. He has emailed the copy to the editor at home:

Tubal and Co., blue-blooded bankers to the wealthy and titled since 1671, have run into serious problems with the collapse of its Lion Fortress Hedge Fund. Now losses are said to have been far more extensive than reported and may place the bank’s independence in question. The rating agency has declined to comment on any possible downgrade of the bank’s rating. Troubled waters may lie ahead for the Tubal family after three hundred years of plain sailing.

In truth, rating agencies never comment. The editor loves this hoary old ploy: you call someone who won’t answer and make the refusal sound ominous. The editor knows what will happen soon: his number will be leaked and his phone will ring wildly. But for the moment there is a deathly silence. The Standard only hits the streets at midday since it was sold to a Russian for one pound. He sits in his office, idly scanning the latest news about the Winkles – bad – and the fact that a hundred-foot retarded whale creature has washed up on a beach, probably drowned by a trawler’s three-mile-long nets, undoubtedly the Spanish bastards’ illegal nets. Porthilly Ices reports that ice-cream sales are up with the arrival of warm weather; the new clotted-cream-and-toffee line is particularly popular. And the EU has finally rejected the Cornish pasty as a protected mark. It seems they didn’t see anything special in Cornish gristle and suet and the meaty bits left over on the abattoir floor. To hell with them, he thinks, he’s got bigger things on his mind. He wants to call J.D., but he knows that would be a bad idea: the story will gather its own momentum.

Artair’s money has arrived in his account. It’s put him in a very strong ­position in relation to the manager. He has decided not to move his account just yet: the bank is on probation. They have offered him a personal banker. He phones Melissa to tell her that his money has arrived and he is fully funded for ten years, which, he says, may well be long enough. As he thought, it was just an administrative mistake. Nothing sinister. She seems pleased for him. He tells her he is almost into pre-production.

‘Oh, I love The Wind in the Willows.’

‘No, Melinda, I am talking about my project with Daniel.’

‘Great, wonderful, any news we can print on that?’

‘Not yet, but you will be the first to know.’