‘And you know, I was trying to explain to my parents, who obviously can’t believe that I would work for the Beast, that it’s kind of absolutely awful and vicious, as you’d expect, but somehow sometimes quite fun at the same time.’

‘Would you really call it fun? You’re lying there having what I assume are anxiety dreams about it.’

‘Sure, you’re right. Of course it’s super-stressful. But when there’s a huge story, like this one, and you do well with it…’ He let the sentence drift off, remembering that she hadn’t been doing well. ‘Or when you’ve got a big scoop about blind Bulgarians.’

She clapped her hands over her face again. ‘Oh, God, don’t remind me! It made it so much worse that Max kept calling it that.’

‘Maybe it was the Bulgarian who was blind.’

‘It would have made as much sense as anything else.’ She shook her head. ‘There was something really dodgy about that old woman as well. Why do you think she let us think she was properly blind?’

‘Blind robbers, lying old ladies, are you sure at least some journalists aren’t as bad as their reputation?’

She glared, warning him but not warning him.

Their wandering had led them to the compound’s perimeter. Cutting through the woods was a stand of ten-foot chain-link fencing, topped with an unwinding spiral of razor wire. It was out of place, arbitrarily dividing trees from trees, and reminded Will of the solitary lamppost in the forest in Narnia. He asked, ‘Shall we do a circuit?’

She nodded. ‘Mmhmm.’

They walked along in silence, the decision to go on having made each very conscious of the other at their side. After a while, Rosie said, ‘I can’t believe Lauren didn’t come today. I texted her but she didn’t text me back. That basically means she’s quit, doesn’t it?’

Will made an awkward face. ‘Looks like it.’

‘I totally thought she was going to be the Beast’s first female chief sub one day. But they’re never going to let her come back, are they?’

‘I mean, I think the way the chief sees it, not turning up today’s pretty inexcusable. It doesn’t really make you look like what he would consider a born hack.’

‘You’re the one who got sacked by the Stentorian, or didn’t you?’

Will raised his eyebrows at her. Touché. ‘Yeah, I did, I got made redundant the week after I finished my traineeship.’

‘I’m sorry, I was just kidding. That’s such a bad way to treat you, especially when they’ve trained you. And I bet there were loads of lazy, not-even-very-good middle-aged people who kept their cushy jobs on four times what you were getting.’

‘To be fair, quite a few of that lot had already gone.’