‘Eddie’s keen to see this as well.’

‘I just spoke with Eddie.’

‘I think he said to help me out with the front? This is what I want you to do. Just this.’

I coughed, throat dry, and the action churned the liquid lunch in my stomach, acid frothing, rising.

‘Just give me your target list,’ Polly continued, no less sanguine. ‘You must have people you’re pursuing? Ideas? Ambitions?’

Once I did, sure. ‘Sure.’

‘Just stick ’em on a page and give them to me. Say by Friday? Then we can get planning for the future.’

‘Sure.’

‘Great!’ And she hurried away cheerfully, clipboard swinging like a scythe.

The photograph of the plume on my computer screen disappeared, replaced by the writhing rainbow tentacles of my screensaver. But I didn’t need photographs to see it. I could just raise my eyes to the window and look at the real thing: a tight black column at the bottom of the frame, an ominous addition to the dusty publishing trophies lined up on the sill; filling the sky at the top of the frame, choking out the light.

The tasks I had been set were impossible. Not for the others, but impossible for me. I knew I would not be able to do them. I knew that I was going to be fired. I knew the how, and I knew the when. And I already knew the why.

TWO

Latenesses, absences, missed deadlines, empty pages. I knew how it looked. It looked idle. It looked like the work – the lack of work – of a man who no longer cared. No passengers, Eddie said. We can’t carry anyone. He wasn’t the sort of boss to crack the whip unless he had to. No, his methods were persuasion and consensus. But I could see the change in him. The moment was coming. The moment when I could no longer be excused, when the accumulating evidence toppled into a landslide that would sweep me away.

Facts, accumulating. Polly’s scrupulous notes, the implacable grid of the flatplan. Gather enough facts and you have the truth. But an interviewer, a profile journalist like myself, knows different. There are, for a start, too many facts. Far too many. Punch a name with even modest achievements into a search engine and back come hundreds, thousands, of relevant results. Search someone like Oliver Pierce or Francis Quin – someone who operated online, someone with a following, an active fan base – and there are tens of thousands if not more.