He doesn’t look at her for a moment but continues to read the early edition of the New York Times. He has a very sixties hairstyle, with a low, solid grey fringe. Oddly it doesn’t make him look young. His skin is deeply folded, probably the effect of smoking for fifty years. He has a growth on his top lip, which could have been prospering there undisturbed in the shadow of his nostrils for a very long time. It could be removed in about thirty seconds, she thinks, as her verrucas were in the Royal Infirmary. But Mr Tredizzick doesn’t seem to care. Perhaps it’s a point of honour with him to leave his face in the order which nature has decreed. Above his desk he has a sign which reads, To search for an ultimate reason is emotionally understandable, but not intellectually coherent. As a graduate of sociology and philosophy, the first time she saw it she felt duty bound to ask him where the quote had come from.

‘I found it in a Christmas cracker,’ he said.

He looks up.

‘Now, Melissa, you have probably noticed that I think you have the makings of a very good journalist. The problem is that journalism, yes, even the Cornish Globe and Mail, founded 1862 by Sir Josaiah Twelvetrees, a great man who believed – wrongly, as we now know – that newspapers could hasten the spread of understanding, even the Globe and Mail is in steep decline. Revenues have fallen twelve per cent over the last year, thanks to our capitalist geniuses in the City of London. ‘I have here a letter’ – he moves the printout and scrabbles around – ‘I have here a letter, a real letter, not an email, from the managing editor who has in turn received a letter from head office, declaring that we have to cut staff costs by fifteen per cent.’

‘Oh no. You’re going to sack me. I love it here, Mr Tredizzick.’

‘I’m not going to sack you as such, Melissa, but you are going to have to go freelance, although I would be very disappointed if you were to work for anybody else. You won’t be paid a salary, but you will be paid the top freelance rate for any piece we use. You may also want to blog. We have a plan to use blogs more and more and we will pay £60 for each one we use. I don’t know how blogs work, but you can ask Gavin in IT.’

Melissa wonders how Mary Wollstonecraft would have taken this and what she would have said about the rights of women. But she sits silent, her eyes welling.