But by the time he’d sat for half an hour in the stuffy tube, and walked heavily up the steps on to the street at Bethnal Green, the last of the adrenaline had worn off, leaving him exhausted. All the extra energy his body had advanced him for edition was now overdue, and he ached. He trudged along the empty, lamp-lit streets to his flat and, as every evening, it seemed far further from the station than it had that afternoon. At least his meander could be on the road itself. There were few cars; the city had already had its evening.

He tried to keep around him the bright figures of the Editor and the chief and Max, but they flickered and fluttered off along the dark streets away from him. He could sometimes conjure them in talk with his housemates, but it meant having to explain so much; and at any rate when he got in this evening they were already asleep. He clicked on the bulb in the narrow kitchen and carefully shut the door so as not to wake them. The fridge hummed in the deep quiet that settles on a house after everyone has gone to bed, and the overhead light gleamed on the laminated counters and the shiny floor. From the fridge he took a plastic bottle of milk and that lunchtime’s leftovers, clumps of tomato-reddened penne. As he ate alone at the table, he found himself losing his hold on what precisely all the day’s exertion had been for.

Nonetheless, he felt better once the food was in his system, just a little empty, his brain burnt out. He tried to imagine this place they were going to tomorrow, but couldn’t form any coherent picture of it. He roused himself enough to write a note to the others explaining that he was going away. One was training as a lawyer and the other taught in a nearby comprehensive; they would probably be gone by the time he woke up. He smiled through his fatigue as he began his note with the words, ‘In case you haven’t already seen it on the news…’

*

Thirty miles away, in the commuter village of Kemsing, outside Sevenoaks, Jeremy softly opened the door to his bedroom. Louise had fallen asleep with the light on so that he’d know to wake her when he came in. He was already back among the mental furniture of home – the traffic, the commute that had lengthened since the Beast moved from Wapping to Kensington, the signs that Kemsing’s house prices were continuing to rise – but tonight he brought with him something more important.

Rather than crawl in next to Louise so she could unknot his tie with sleepy fingers, he sat against the headrest and crossed his shoes on top of the duvet.

She shifted towards him without opening her eyes, sprawled a hand across his belly and asked, ‘How was work?’