It was the fiftieth golden oldies column she’d written and it felt like a milestone – and a millstone around her neck. She could ask the questions in her sleep. She could practically predict the answers. She dreamt of Dennis and Gladys and Trevor and Ivy, their experiences merging with hers and Jim’s so she woke up feeling she was seventy years old, with deep folds under her eyes and her wedding ring so entrenched on her finger she couldn’t get it off. She’d type up her interviews diligently, wanting to do justice to the time and respect – mostly – her interviewees had given her, wanting to convey the energy, love and wisdom she saw in their weathered faces.

But she couldn’t help but feel dismay when Valerie came back to the office after interviewing Glenda Jackson, or Ellis was roundly applauded for his feature about the social and economic drivers behind the emergence of punk rock, or Max was sent off to America to report on the 200th anniversary of the declaration of independence.

After Roger told Sylvia her replacement had been appointed and she would be expected to show her the ropes when she started in late August, she stared at the blank page in her typewriter as though her fingers were paralysed. She’d only earned her place in the thick of things so recently, and yet already she was relegated back to the periphery, with someone else poised to erase her from the paper altogether.

But whenever she felt such despair, a wave of guilt crested inside her and washed it away. She kept picturing Anna’s shy smile and twig-like arms, kept thinking about what Evelyne said: Dad was a bit of a taskmaster. She always looked so damned miserable. Despite what the girl had been through, despite the situation she now found herself in, that smile was so hopeful it had clamped shame down on Sylvia like an iron fist around her throat. Anna had practically nothing. No money, no job, no home, no family in the picture – but she had hope for the future and a fierce love for her unborn child. Sylvia hadn’t needed to speak the girl’s language to understand that. Is that why she’d agreed to meet Jim after work?

He was wearing shorts – he never wore shorts – and the sight of his bare knees, the comically pale and bony knees of a desk-bound fitness-phobic, made her smile. She’d missed those knees – and, for that matter, those arms, that face.

Jim shrugged at her quizzical look. ‘What? It’s bloody hot.’ He grabbed her left arm and pulled her to him, and she let him plant a kiss on her lips. ‘God, Sylvia, I’ve missed you. And you.’ He looked down at her belly, her light shirt skimming the curve. ‘Wow, he’s really growing.’

‘He?’

‘Or she. I don’t mind.’