Towards them through the dappled sunlight on a woodland lane strode a dark-clad little group of journalists from the Beast. The chief had blustered them past the police, demanding whether they really wanted to prevent the free Press from investigating whatever it wanted and then, when they tried to insist that the journalists stay inside, asking whether they’d like to explain that to the Editor.

Will wasn’t worried about being beyond the bunker’s walls. Although he knew it was irrational, he felt protected by being the junior among these men. If someone was going to be burnt alive, it shouldn’t really be him. And it was elating to be taken up into their group. In the bunker the chief had shouted across to him, ‘Saddle up then, recruit, you’re coming, too. And bring your friend.’ Now the summer air lay warm on his skin, the leaves above his head swayed gently and his eye rested on variations of bark, moss and foliage, relieved for once of the city’s smooth planes and right angles. There was some respite from his solitary competition against the massing crowds, some real, many imagined, above whom he would have to clamber if he was to have anything he wanted.

So he did not speed up to walk next to Rosie, though opportunities to talk to her outside the newsroom were few. Instead he thought dreamily about the vanished typesetters the chief had invoked on the bus. Wasn’t the dad in Updike’s Rabbit books a typesetter? Will thought he remembered that Rabbit senior worked in linotype, which certainly sounded obsolete. And when was that set? The 1970s? The sixties?

He found himself walking next to Turkish Anna, whom he liked despite her being middle-aged, in a different department and of little use to him. As when speaking to the chief, he wanted to set her off, so that he could absorb her: ‘It’s good to get out of there,’ he ventured. ‘The atmosphere was getting pretty full on.’

‘Atmosphere? People just don’t want to get firebombed by some brainwashed muppets from Acton.’

‘No, no, I guess not. Do you think it’ll be alright here?’

‘I don’t think any of this is alright. We’re in the middle of nowhere with nowhere to go if they work out where we are. There’s only one fucking street here in case you hadn’t noticed. And have you ever seen a picture of someone who’s been burnt? I mean really burnt. Where their face has started to cook? Let me tell you – if you had, you’d wish you hadn’t.’

‘So do you think we should go back to London?’