‘Roger wants to see you,’ Max said, when she got back to her desk. His eyes were bloodshot after what she imagined was the usual three-hour lunch break in the pub. Just a few sharpeners, he always said. The sort of social boozing that worked tongues loose, ensuring stories were told, career-enhancing friendships were made and gossip was shared.

She knocked on the door of Roger’s glass-walled office and he beckoned her in.

‘Tallis. You look peaky.’

‘I’m fine.’ His office was airless. With no windows and the heating ramped up to combat the February chill, the air felt stagnant and smelt stale, a bilious blend of body odour, fags and vegetable soup that made her want to run to the toilet again. The same thought she’d had in the chemist popped into her head again, more vocal this time, insisting its presence, like Max with a shorthand notebook and a sensational headline ready to go.

Roger gestured to the chair in front of his desk. It was just about the only surface not covered with paper. It spilled out of box files stacked in dense rows along the floor-to-ceiling shelves behind his desk, it lay in piles on the industrial-grey carpet, ostensibly propping up the glass walls, and it smothered his desk: rival papers, opened envelopes, an overflowing in-tray of letters and board-meeting minutes neatly typed by Janice. She wondered if he ever read them.

‘I’ve thought about it,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry?’ Her head was full of Marjorie and weddings and avocado-green toilet lid covers and how many days it had been since—

‘Your pitch. Five years on from women’s suffrage in Switzerland.’

Her head cleared and she focused fully on her commissioning editor.

‘June, you said the first vote was?’ he continued.

‘Yes. They were granted suffrage in February 1971, and first voted in a referendum in June.’ She picked her fingernails behind her back. Was he going to…?

‘I know you want this, Tallis. And I know you’ve paid your dues around here. So I’m commissioning you. Go off to Switzerland and bring me back a damn good piece, okay? We’ll run it before June.’

Sylvia couldn’t help her eyebrows from shooting up. ‘Really?’ Her head felt woozy, but she wasn’t sure if it was the shock or the nausea. ‘Thank you, thank you so much,’ she managed.

‘When can you get out there?’

She mentally ran through her diary and discarded anything she found. ‘Next week? There’s a rally in Bern I’d like to go to on 6th March.’

A smile twitched at his mouth. ‘Good. Ask Janice to book you a flight to Geneva. Expense the hotel. And make sure you get all your regulars done before you go. Oh, and I’m not throwing in a photographer so borrow the office camera and get some shots yourself, okay?’

‘Right, yes. Absolutely.’

‘And Tallis?’

‘Yes?’

‘Take a decent coat. Bloody freezing country.’