‘No, Ms Tallis, she cannot. I shouldn’t have to remind you that this opportunity is not being afforded to any other journalist and you would do well to seize it when offered.’

She stared at the diary, put her hand on her stomach and felt the gentle swell. She could go to the hospital another time, surely. ‘Yes, absolutely, I’ll be there on the seventeenth.’

She put the phone down, picked up a pen and crossed out the hospital appointment.

‘Tallis. Why the smug grin?’ Max walked back to his desk with a mug of Betty’s coffee in his hand, an industrial strength brew that powered most of the office through the afternoons.

‘Warburton. I got her, Max.’ Sylvia blew out a long breath and sat back in her chair. She couldn’t take it in. The only British journalist to get an interview. An exclusive. This would be it. This would be the piece to give her career lift-off. And how apt that it should be about Anne Warburton, a trailblazer in a man’s world, whether she intended to be or not. Sylvia had admired the woman ever since she’d heard about her appointment by Callaghan, and last week she’d pored over the pictures of the ceremony in Copenhagen, when Warburton presented herself to Queen Margrethe, wondering what it must feel like to be in such a position.

‘Well, if you can get her then she’s yours, Tallis,’ Roger had said when she proposed the idea in the features meeting to snorts of derision. ‘I hear she isn’t giving any interviews at all.’

Well, she wasn’t – apart from one, now, to her.

‘Fucking well done,’ Max said.

‘Don’t talk to the lady like that, Harmer.’

Sylvia turned at Clive’s voice and saw him stroll over to their desks. His argument with Ellis had clearly come to an end but the rancour was still evident in his face.

‘I appreciate your concern, Clive, but the lady feels that swearing is entirely appropriate at this point in time,’ she said, before beaming at Max. ‘Thanks very fucking much.’

Clive rolled his eyes. ‘Why the excitement?’

‘Sylvia just pinned down Warburton for an interview.’

‘The new ambassador to Denmark?’

‘Britain’s first female ambassador, may I remind you,’ Sylvia said.

Clive pursed his lips in an expression of begrudging respect tinged with something else – jealousy, perhaps? ‘She’s granted an interview to you?’

‘She has. It’s an exclusive.’

‘That’s seriously fantastic, Sylvia. Roger might even crack a bloody smile,’ Max said.

‘Yes, well done, Tallis,’ Clive said, and Sylvia saw how much it pained him to say it. ‘I suppose she would want a woman so she’ll get less of a grilling.’