She reluctantly shook her bob, capitulating, and said, ‘Oh, fuck you, Max. Fine. With any luck I’ll get raped before they shoot me, just as a sweetener.’

Max wasn’t going to comment on that.

‘But I’m keeping this van on standby – and if anyone comes through those doors, it’ll be nothing to me if you get a seat in it or not.’

Max nodded, feeling paternalistic; this was how it would be when he was chief. Anna went back to her desk, but Jeremy sidled closer and said quietly, ‘Maybe she’s right, you know. Maybe we should get out of here.’

Max was in no rush to listen to Jez and his renewed pessimism. But he said under his breath, ‘OK, bring your chair round next to mine.’ And while they sat, and Jeremy shifted closer to give the pretence that they were working on a headline, Max looked around the newsroom. One of the Health reporters had braced her head between her knees, as if for a plane crash, and was doing breathing exercises. The shabby-dignified veterans on Politics were not very surreptitiously passing around a hip flask. On his own pod, Rosie looked about ready to cut and run. Will was trying to reassure her. The boy was useful. Max pulled down his hunched shoulders, stretching them into better posture for a moment, and said to Jeremy, ‘I see the fairer departments are starting to show the strain.’

‘Fair enough, don’t you think?’ Jeremy said at a volume below the level of anyone else’s hearing. He was thinking of what fire would do to him and felt his whole body try to flinch at once, as if the skin were puckering. He was suddenly aware of what bad shape he was in, his belly protuberant, his lungs shrivelled with smoke, his right arm and shoulder knotted tight from typing. He said, ‘I don’t even just mean for myself. What would it be like for Louise and the girls? They’re only fourteen and twelve; imagine how it must fuck you up if your dad gets killed when you’re that age. Maybe Anna has got a point and we should be getting out of here while we still can.’

‘What happened to Jez the jihadi-finder general? I thought you were the plotter spotter extraordinaire.’

‘Huh.’

‘What?’

‘Didn’t you hear what Frank said in that pub? Jez the jihadi sniffer dog, rooting through shit? That’s the way it always is here, isn’t it? You bring in the biggest story anyone’s ever seen and at first it’s all “X-ray vision, Jez the jihadi spotter”, then it’s sniffer dog and, by lunchtime, it’s all back to the usual shit.’

‘Do you want the Editor to give you three cheers after every edition?’