‘Melissa, please. Don’t cry. Newspapers have to discover how to make money again. You’re young enough to blog and so on. You also have energy and curiosity. Unfortunately, as you get older, you tend to lose those. You’re only twenty-two, aren’t you? If anybody’s equipped to survive this, it’s you. What is happening to newspapers, particularly newspapers like this one that hope to be bought by somebody with deep pockets, is that they are cutting fixed costs. So we are going through the motions, but I am not intending to cut down the editorial content at all. In fact, I want you to go and see Cornwall’s second greatest theatrical producer, Mr Artair MacCleod, about his thrilling new spring programme. I want a sparkling piece, informative but not PR, and I want to know why he’s rolling out bloody Thomas the bloody Tank Engine for the third year in a row. He’s supposed to feed the Cornish mind. If there is one. Don’t cry. You can make it work. Ask him about the Arts Council, but not too much. Unbelievable though it may be, our readers don’t give a monkey’s about the Arts Council.’

Back at her desk she wonders how she is going to live. Sixty pounds a blog, if they buy it, and the miserable freelance payment, subject to approval, will never add up even to her modest salary. She’s about to call Artair MacCleod, but then she wonders if this is a freelance job or if she is still on salary, at least to the end of the month. She emails the editor, and he assures her that she is on salary for a full four weeks.

‘Think about your blog,’ he writes, ‘a young Cornish girl’s take on our duchy. That sort of thing. You’ll be brilliant.’

That sort of thing. She rings Artair MacCleod.

‘Mr MacCleod, Melissa Tregarthen here from the Globe.’

‘Ah, the old Gobble a Male. Your name sounds familiar.’

‘Yes, we’ve met once. We talked about your Wind in the Willows. The editor would like me to interview you. Could we do that tomorrow?’

‘What do you want to talk to me about?’ he says, rather guardedly.

‘Oh, your spring programme. Spring and summer, in fact.’

‘I’m very busy at the moment on a major project involving Daniel Day-Lewis. How long will you need me?’

‘About an hour. And then at some stage a photographer will need to take your picture. Can I give him your number?’

‘Absolutely fine, as long as he isn’t a budding Irving Penn.’

‘No, I don’t think he is. No surprise. But I would like to know about your Daniel Day-Lewis project.’

‘It’s hush-hush at the moment, my love. Anything I tell you will be off the record. Understood?’

‘Oh, absolutely.’