‘And to compete with cowboy Polish shackle-makers who’re knocking out dangerously low-quality shackles in illegal workshops, some of which have even snapped, allowing rogue sub-editors to escape into the outside world.’

Lauren smiled again. She said, ‘Thanks, Jez,’ meaning it.

He nodded her away, pleased to be generous. Telling himself he was an idiot who deserved demotion, he went back to his desk, where Max asked him, ‘Had enough chatting, have you? Or are Newsdesk going to invite you back for another chinwag later on?’

Max’s concern for the everyday question of how to get the work done by deadline made Jeremy feel as if he’d returned from a foreign ordeal and found his home just as he left it. Everything was going to get worse now that the Editor was involved in this story, but he was sick of worrying and the chief was right: it could be Newsdesk’s problem for a while. For now, everything was as usual. That sulky, ambitious kid Will was hammering intently at his keyboard. Rosie was dialling someone on the phone.

Out of middle-bench habit, he scrolled through PagePlanner to see what the pod was working on. Rosie’s story fitted into the paper so perfectly it could have been told just in the caption kickers: ROBBED, by a photo of an ancient blind woman with a cloud of wispy white hair; and MIGRANT by a camera-phone mugshot of a Big Issue vendor. Apparently, she’d opened her purse to give him the sweetly granny-ish sum of 50p and he’d filched a £20 note from under her nose. Not only that, but she’d been a Wren during the war. Pictures had got a service photo of her, which was captioned HEROINE. In it she was sixty years younger, wearing a thick cloth uniform and a narrow naval cap on her crimped hair, pluckily doing her bit to save Britain from the Nazis.

Rosie was asking the person on the other end of the phone, ‘And what about the guide dog?’

Jeremy relaxed a little further. Normal service had been at least temporarily resumed. And this blind woman, Anne Palmer-Hassett, 86, of Taplow, Buckinghamshire, a loyal Beast reader, had supplied the perfect quote: ‘I’m a Christian and I do forgive him because of that. But what I don’t understand is why he’s allowed to stay in this country.’

Rosie must just be tying it up. She was having to repeat herself because her voice was too soft. ‘I said, but if she didn’t have a dog or a stick, there must have been someone with her… Yes, or if she did have a stick or a dog after all… That would be great… I’m on…’ She gave the reporter her extension number.