‘Don’t tell anyone you didn’t write the column, not even your husband,’ he ordered Halliday. ‘Everyone has to believe you’ve written it.’

Her eyebrows shot up. ‘Come again?’

‘I need you to—’

‘What is it? Who wrote it?’

‘I did.’

‘You? Ha! Fuck that! You expect me to publish your words as my own? Of course!’ Halliday rolled her eyes. Sellers noted that she was better at the gesture than DC James Wing. ‘I’m only a woman, so naturally I’m going to leap at the chance of replacing my trivial pink lady-words with your superior alpha-male ones. If I’m lucky, people might fall for it and imagine I’m capable of saying something that matters! Though, actually – silly me! – that won’t happen, because the column would still have my name on it right? In which case, it could be the wisest thing ever written and no one would recognise it as such. Whereas a man—’

‘Could publish any old shite and have it taken seriously,’ Simon supplied the end of the sentence. ‘That’s what you were going to say, isn’t it? If I were a programming genius, I could write software that’d churn out Sondra Halliday columns and no one would be able to tell the difference.’

‘Wow. You really are the misogynist king, aren’t you?’

‘No. I just don’t like fantasists, that’s all. You whine on about the subjugated class, meaning women … Every single man who lives on the Winstanley estate in the Culver Valley – every single skint jobless one of them – is more oppressed and subjugated than you are.’

‘DC Waterhouse.’ Halliday took a deep breath. ‘Be sensible. A man tells a female journalist that he could write software to replicate her words, and you’re honestly claiming that’s not misogyny?’

‘Yes, I am. I wouldn’t say it to Emily Brontë or George Eliot. I don’t think I could replicate Wuthering Heights or Middlemarch, or anything truly interesting or original. I don’t care what sex the author is.’

Simon stood up and walked over to the Sainsbury’s bags. He pulled a six-pack of Diet Coke out of one, tore away the plastic wrapping, freed a can and opened it. After taking a sip he passed it to Sellers, who was too parched to worry about etiquette. No doubt Halliday would care even less about the deaths of men henceforth and Sellers’ thirst would be partly to blame.

‘You think your thoughts and writing style are so unique? Let’s put it to the test,’ said Simon. ‘Publish this column I’ve written as your own.’

‘Get the fuck out of my house.’