Dawn was stood down from Melbourne Today a week after Bowman’s arrest. It was ostensibly due to the restructure but no doubt hurried along by the fact he was blackmailing her to bury certain stories, as well as feeding her convenient leads now and then. A few years ago he’d learned she had recently accepted a bribe from a senior figure in the Catholic Church to pull a story on alleged abuse at a suburban church, and Bowman had agreed to keep quiet if she did him a favour from time to time.

Neither TJ nor Oli wanted Dawn’s role. They handed in their resignation to Joosten together. He wished them the best of luck, confirming that the paper would be sold within months and that its future was uncertain. The poor man looked close to tears.

Thirty people were let go from the paper a week later, and Chelsea Waters, Cooper’s colleague and film club friend, was one of them. Within forty-eight hours she was talking Oli and TJ through an unsolicited twenty-slide PowerPoint presentation and a social media strategy for their new business. Her contagious energy was the kick they needed.

And now the three of them are partners in a media company. It’s a subscription model that charges members a few dollars a week and offers comprehensive investigations, researched pieces and in-depth interviews, plus a daily news podcast that will drop at midday. They have no idea if it will work but have assembled a small team of freelancers and committed to a year: twelve months of praying they can make a living from doing things their way.

The bell on the door chimes, signalling new customers. Oli glances at the clock above the counter. She has a childish desire to pull the pin on the meeting she arranged, but she wants to get this done, and she wants it done before their first edition goes live. As she pushes back her chair it scrapes noisily on the polished concrete floor, jarring with the pop song that blares from the tiny speaker system on the counter. She looks around in apology, but the cafe owner grins and holds her hand up in a friendly wave. ‘See you soon!’

Oli smiles and waves back. Looping her scarf around her neck, she crosses the road to enter the Fitzroy Gardens.