Maggie smiled and shook her head. ‘Why don’t you move, you daft sod?’

Woody shrugged. ‘It’s cheap.’

‘You’re not short of money, are you?’

Woody was immediately embarrassed because the answer was yes, he was bloody short of money. Always was. And always would be unless he got a staff job. The shifts weren’t coming as often as they used to, he was overdrawn at the bank, yet he still had to stand his round at the pub while he brown-nosed his way back into the good books of the guys on the news desk. ‘No, it’s convenient, that’s all.’ Sure, if you fancied an hour on the bus to get into work.

‘So is LA still an option?’ she asked.

‘Sure. Sure it is.’

They drank and sat for a while looking at each other in silence. Woody spoke first.

‘Now it’s my turn to ask what you’re thinking about.’

Maggie pulled a face. ‘I was actually wondering why you didn’t get a better job, why you waste your time on a comic like the Sunday World.’

He sighed deeply, and explained that he didn’t even have a job with the Sunday World, that he was only a freelance, dependent on shifts, and that even that didn’t pay particularly well, not since the print and journalists unions had been broken along with the dockers and the miners and any other groups that had once been able to withhold their labour. She listened patiently and then reached over and touched his shoulder, a friendly nudge that showed she understood. Maybe even cared. She asked him why he couldn’t get a staff job. At first he didn’t want to tell her, but she pressed, pointing out that he was obviously bright, she’d begun reading his stuff and she could tell that it was good, so what had happened? She wormed it out of him eventually, his time on one of the broadsheets, the investigation into high-level corruption within a north of England police force, the drive home along the motorway, the blue flashing light in his rear mirror, the two surly traffic cops and the discovery of two hundred grams of cocaine under the passenger seat of his office car.

‘They framed you?’ she asked, wide-eyed.

‘Yeah. I managed to avoid being sent down, but I lost the job and for a few years I couldn’t get any sort of work. The papers didn’t trust me, partly because of the drug thing, but I know for a fact that the cops were putting the word around, too. I stuck with it, though, went to work in the West Country for a while, and then some of the nationals began taking my copy again and now at least I’ve got my foot in the door. I’m lucky to have that, I guess.’

‘Jesus, Woody, that’s terrible. That’s appalling.’

‘That’s life, Maggie.’

She forced a smile. ‘I suppose the Sunday World isn’t that bad,’ she said sympathetically. ‘Do they let you travel much?’