He looked like he wanted to slither away under the door. “I’ve done my best to make them reconsider…”

So, he’d known this might be a possibility? He’d known that the future of The Silver Ness News was at risk?

Frances and I swapped electrified looks. “Why didn’t you talk about all this before?” I managed, unable to conceal my accusatory tone.

Doug looked wretched as it was, without me piling on the guilt. Nonetheless, why, if he had known about what was to happen, hadn’t he told Frances and me? Why hadn’t he warned us? He was often calling us The Three Musketeers, for pity’s sake!

Could we form a united front together to fight this? To make management reconsider?

Doug swallowed, hurt and shame etched into his anguished features. “I hoped I could do something. I thought I might be able to make them change their minds. But Sir John was adamant that with the general decline in circulation of local papers and so many people accessing news online, they had to make some tough decisions.”

Now it was Frances’s turn to go on the defensive. “So why the hell didn’t you tell us, Doug? Maybe we could have helped.”

Doug let out an impatient sigh. “You two had more than enough to contend with at the time.” He gestured to me. “You and Miles had just split up.”

I flinched at the memory.

“And Frances, your mother-in-law had just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.”

“I appreciate that,” responded Frances. Then realisation kicked in. Her mouth dropped open. “But wait… all that stuff with Sarah’s diagnosis and Leonie and Miles splitting up… that all happened at the beginning of the year.”

Doug paced like an anguished zoo animal behind bars backwards and forwards in front of his desk, which bore his Scottish rugby team coffee mug and a couple of photos of Cheryl – a smiling twinkly brunette.

“You’ve known for all this time that this could happen?” I gasped. “You’ve known for ten months and yet you didn’t think to warn us?”

He struggled to speak. “Ok. Ok. I’m sorry. I’ve cocked everything up.” We watched him reach into one of his desk drawers and produce a brown cardboard folder. He slapped it down on the desk. “But I haven’t been sitting here with my thumb up my arse. I’ve been trying to salvage this bloody newspaper. I haven’t been pulling all these extra hours in the office to do bloody sudoku!”

Frances gave the folder a contemptuous look. “What’s that?”

“See for yourselves.”