Will had put into revise a Scientific Study about how parrots could predict the future, which he’d headlined ‘Polly sees a cracker’. Good headline, that; the kid had talent. He was already on to another about how dogs would reject puppies born of incest, which he’d headlined ‘Oedipus Rex’. Jez didn’t get it. Wasn’t Oedipus that play about a boy who wanted to fuck a horse, the one Daniel Radcliffe got naked in when he wanted to stop being Harry Potter?

Anyway, that headline would have to change. It wasn’t for him to mention, he wasn’t pod leader. But there was no doubt Max would – and even as he was thinking it, Max said, ‘Will, “Oedipus Rex” isn’t going to make it.’

‘But it’s—’

‘I know what it is. But you’re not writing for your Oxford don any more. You’re writing for Mrs Thompson, 56, housewife and part-time secretary, of High Wycombe, who’s reading the Beast at the hairdresser’s. She doesn’t know that Oedipus is a made-up Greek who fucked his mum, and she doesn’t want to know. So get it out and write a headline that she’s going to like.’

Will looked stung.

‘And while we’re on the subject, in your parrot story you’ve said the testing centre was in Camden. But Mrs Thompson doesn’t know where Camden is; she only goes up to London once a year to watch The Mousetrap and buy her grown-up children’s Christmas presents. And Mrs Thompson gets very angry – and rightly so – when the media assume that everyone in England is the kind of dickhead who lives in London. The whole purpose of this paper is that it’s for actual English people and not for the kind who live in Islington townhouses, give their children foreign names and think it’s clever to make jokes about fucking their mums. So go into that story and write “Camden, North London” before you lose us a reader.’

Will’s lips bunched as if he were about to spit, but he sucked it down and just double-checked the style guide for whether the N in North London was capped. Max was about to say something more when yelling broke out around one of the outlying desks. Several hundred heads turned to see what was going on. It was Features. A tall, slim old man in an outdatedly formal herringbone suit was weakly holding up his palm, looking dazed.

‘Fuck me,’ said Max, swearing because he was still angry with Will. ‘It’s John Dyson.’

Jez looked at the clock behind the back bench. It was five. ‘This must be his last day.’