Set just off from the flat but ceaseless movement on these screens was his own department, around which all others were arranged: Production, the very belly of the Beast. From this cluster of grey desks were reporters sent out to sleep in hedges and pick through bins; from here were photographers told to get closer to the fighting; from here were envelopes of cash dispatched to prostitutes, to PAs, to political advisers. And to here copy was returned, to have its grammar disentangled, its ignorance corrected and its significance identified; it was here that raw, mud-caked nuggets of information were cut and polished to have revealed in them the shine and sparkle of the news. And fixed to one of this department’s pillars was the symbol of the newspaper’s – of all English newspapers’ – true home, prised loose and taken the night they went into exile: a metal road sign reading ‘EC4 Fleet Street’.

In the line of desks closest to the TV wall, and facing away from it into the newsroom, the bosses were already seated and typing. That meant the Editor was in personal charge today; otherwise they would still be standing around drinking coffee. In front of that back bench were the subs’ desks, taken out of their traditional rows by management consultants and arranged into what Jeremy had reluctantly become modern enough to call ‘pods’. Some of the men who’d traditionally been middle-bench subs and were now ‘pod leaders’, men his age, were already at their desks. Of the younger generation, only one, Lauren, was wandering around. She must have come in early.

Max stood up when he saw him, took the pencil he was chewing from his mouth and raised his hand in a loose salute.

Jeremy broke into a wide grin and on impulse gave him the finger.

Max made his swaggering walk towards him. By right of being generally acknowledged as the best sub, he was allowed to come as close to not wearing a tie as a news sub ever could: a black one that was almost invisible against his black shirt. The shirt was tucked loosely into black trousers, from which it escaped behind him. His black hair was gelled, and it glistened as if newly glued along the deep comb-furrows from forehead to nape. He hunched a little from years at the keyboard, one shoulder slightly higher than the other.

He put out his hand and said, ‘Alright, Jez?’

Jeremy shook it. ‘Alright?’

Max didn’t usually stoop to the banterous riffing that was the newsroom’s idiom and pastime, but was so pleased to see Jeremy that, not knowing how to express it, he reached for the nearest mode. ‘Your face is a bit blotchy. You didn’t shave all week, did you, till this morning? Were you trying to hide your ugly mug from the Irish?’

‘Thanks for that.’ Jez was very pleased to see him too.