‘Go on then, get your holiday anecdotes out of the way. How are you?’

‘Oh, you know, glad to be back.’

Max chuckled. ‘You lie so well, my friend.’

Before they could pick up all their threads, the chief sub bustled up, bald, voluble and menacingly avuncular. ‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘Did I just hear you say you were glad to be back?’

Jeremy slipped into the newsroom tone: ‘Back in England, not back here. I’ve not gone mad.’

The chief sub pretended to wipe his expansive brow. ‘Phew. I thought you must have caught some sort of brain disease out there. Where were you again?’

‘Dublin. It was—’

The chief sub pantomimed horror and grasped for Max’s arm to steady himself. ‘He has gone mad. You went on holiday to Ireland? What’s wrong with you? Don’t you get enough violence and alcoholism in this office?’

Max watched, amused.

The chief sub carried on. ‘Did you like it?’

Jeremy shrugged. ‘Well, it wasn’t—’

‘Of course not! No one likes Ireland. Not even the Irish. Why do you think they’re always swarming off to other people’s countries? Australia, America, New Zealand. Imagine wanting to move to Australia – what a noxious fart your life must be.’

‘Or Canada,’ prompted Max.

‘Canada, right. Canada’s lovely. No one for thousands of miles. It’s like being dead. Wonderful. Of course, the food’s shit, but they don’t know any better. Go there next time. You won’t come back spouting gibberish about being glad to be here.’

‘Look at him,’ said Max, egging on the chief. ‘He’s gone on holiday and not even managed to get a tan.’

The chief sombrely shook his blocky head, as at someone beyond the reach of reason. Jeremy was smiling openly at all this attention and went to speak. But the chief was already back to thinking about edition, and spoke over him: ‘I’ve put you under the supervision of Max today, just in case you do anything mental now you’ve had a sniff of freedom.’

‘What do you mean, under his supervision?’

‘You’re not on the middle bench, Little Miss Shamrock. Just one of Max’s grunts. Front bench. Front rank. Cannon fodder. Just like the Irish.’

‘What do you mean?’ Jeremy flushed as if he’d drunk too much hot tea at once, and his shirt collar seemed to tighten around his neck. ‘I’m not one of the grunts. I’ve been on the middle bench for… since I came here.’ He heard how plaintive it sounded. ‘That’s fourteen years.’

‘Not today, Gerry Adams. Britain says no.’

‘But who’s on the middle bench instead of me?’

‘Lauren.’

‘Lauren? But she’s about eight years old.’

Max tried to explain. ‘She started doing it while you were in Dublin.’