One of the Rays pulled their head back, an almost-nod of recognition. Ilse appeared to tighten. Kay smiled, though only specialist devices aboard the Hubble Space Telescope could have detected it. The others did not react.

‘The mugging guy,’ Eddie said.

‘Yes, the mugging guy.’

‘He’s been interviewed a lot.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘He was interviewed a lot, when the mugging book came out. But he hasn’t said anything to anyone in years. Not a word. Deleted his Twitter, doesn’t answer emails …’

‘Does he have a book coming out?’

‘No,’ I said, too quickly, a mistake. Then, scrambling to recover: ‘Well, he must have been working on something – when I—’

‘Maybe he’s got nothing to say,’ Eddie said. ‘No book, no hook. How do we make it urgent?’

‘He must have been working on something …’

‘I haven’t even seen any pieces by him lately,’ Freya said. She was as bright-lit as the rest of us, but it was as if she had stepped from the shadows. I had tuned out of the meeting during a lengthy argument about feature lifestyle, her domain. We used to have a food correspondent, but after she left, food was added to Freya’s brief. Freya hated food. Her one idea had been a feature about the next big thing in grains – trying to sniff out the next quinoa, the spelt-in-waiting – which Eddie, Polly and Ilse had united in hating. Boring, impossible to illustrate. It had been a bruising business for Freya, and part of her recovery was to try to make someone else’s ideas and preparation look worse than hers had been. That someone would be me. Every month the flatplan served me up after Freya, a convenient victim if the meeting had gone badly for her. Unless I booked an interview high-profile enough to lead the feature section (not for a while now), feature profile followed feature lifestyle like chicken bones in the gutter followed Friday night.

‘Nothing on Vice,’ Freya continued, ‘nothing in Tank. What if he’s blocked or something?’

Pain, a steady drizzle behind my eyes. The quake visited my right hand, which was resting on the table in front of me, on top of my pen. I stopped it by picking up the pen and making a fist around it. The aquarium air was acrid in my sinuses, impure. What time was it? The Need wanted to know. I had to push on.

‘Isn’t that interesting in itself?’ I asked, emphasising with the pen-holding hand, keeping it moving until the quake subsided. ‘A writer has a smash hit like that mugging book. Big surprise. Awards. Colour supplements. Then, he goes Pynchon. Recluse. Emails bounce. Changes mobile number. Why? Isn’t that worth a follow-up?’

‘But he’s not a recluse,’ Eddie said. ‘He’s talking to you. Why’s that?’

I wished I knew. ‘He must have something to say.’