‘Nah, just, I know it sounds obvious, but they’ve got the accent and the chattiness and, I don’t know… It’s just so different that you really feel away from all the usual. You know, you go into a pub and people buy you a drink and talk to you as if you’re all actually human beings.’

‘You took a whole week off and went to Ireland just to get blabbered at by the local drunks?’ Max shook his head, sincerely amused. He always went to the Algarve.

‘Yeah, it was great.’

‘You should call the Irish office; see if you can get a transfer.’

‘Funnily enough, Louise mentioned that as well. But that’s what you do, isn’t it, whenever you go on holiday? You think, let’s just fuck it all off and come live here. But it’s not really the place, is it, it’s just being away.’

Max had never had that feeling. He made a non-committal expression and asked, a little stiltedly, ‘Did, er, Louise have a good time?’ Families were taboo in the newsroom rambunctiousness. He remembered a detail: ‘She’d been there once before, hadn’t she?’

Jeremy nodded. ‘Years ago. But she really did like it. She loves all that kind of stuff, the mist, the folk songs, she finds it, you know, romantic. And she liked that it was just the two of us.’

‘Good,’ said Max. ‘Great. Well,’ he said, leaning forward to tuck the back of his black shirt under his belt, ‘I’ll get the teas.’ And he swaggered away past the rows of BeastOnline, too disdainful of them to hurry.

Jeremy tried to get on with the Tragic Schoolgirl. But he couldn’t get on with her. Elaine Phillips, 15. Her horse reared and she fell off; that was the whole story. Yet there were all these individualizing details to be fiddled with: when it had happened, what her headteacher had said, how many ls and ps in Phillips. The kind of thing that mattered only if it was wrong, but that made readers ask themselves: ‘If they can’t even get that right…’

Even before he’d gone away, he’d been finding it harder to actually make himself do the work. It was fine at nine o’clock, with edition forty-five minutes away and the alarms screaming. Then some of the old speed and facility returned. It was the only time he felt fully awake. But at three? The gears wouldn’t engage.

Max came back with the teas in two cardboard cups. Jeremy unhooked the plastic lid and dropped it into the bin beside him. Steam and heat rose from the milky brown liquid. He realized he’d still not done any work. The gears kept slipping back into neutral and in his mind there was the heavy churn of foreboding. Newsdesk were going to pitch his non-story to the Editor at conference.