Blogs should be fun. She writes about cupcakes, about their sexual connotation, their bright colours and childish appeal, their resemblance to small breasts, and she writes about the Americanisation of sensibility. This leads to her thoughts on changes in language: ‘It’s so fun’ is one she admits to using herself and is probably a lost cause, but she doesn’t approve of nouns like ‘impact’ being used as verbs and she hates phrases like ‘going forward’, which businessmen seem to think lends weight to their every other sentence. She reflects on the increasing use of compound words like ‘counter-intuitive’ and ‘age-appropriate’. The explanation she has heard is that, because so many Americans are of German extraction, it is natural for them to link words. She also attacks the use of the word ‘comfortable’ to mean ‘happy’, and ‘characterise’ – a Donald Rumsfeld favourite – to mean ‘describe’. Her point is that the English language is infinitely rich and it is a crime to thin it out in this way. She puffs the local production of Thomas the Tank Engine, and decries the drying up of funding, under mysterious circumstances, for that ornament of Cornish and Celtic culture, Artair MacCleod.

But just in case she is sounding too pious, she ends with another little riff on the joys of cupcakes and just how perky and nubile they are, food porn. She puts the blog into the system. Her friend Steve in graphics says he will sort out the layout. She needs a template. Steve seems to be keen on her, but he is just below her threshold of acceptability, admittedly a rather fluid standard.

Then she Googles Lady Trevelyan-Tubal. She finds a picture of her with her husband, Sir Harry. They stand side by side outside a porticoed country house looking amused in a restrained sort of way as if it’s jolly clever what these photographer chaps can do, despite their frightfully common clothes. Fleur looks a little foxy, definitely a trophy wife. It’s hard to believe she was ever married to the rumpled and insanitary Artair MacCleod, pillar of Cornish culture.

The editor summons her. At least you can’t be fired twice, she thinks. He’s staring gloomily at his screen. His face is layered, an impasto created by the journalistic life and sixty cigarettes a day.

‘Melissa, I like your blog. I am going to print it and I want another one next week or sooner. And your piece on Artair MacCleod was spot on. How is he holding up without his money?’

‘Binster’s are sponsoring him for the Easter run.’

‘Poor sod. Keep tabs on him.’