‘They didn’t pay much at the Deptford Gazette,’ I say, smoothing down my coat as rain spatters my lap. ‘I was an apprentice on the copy desk and needed…’ I trail off, blushing even harder as Dominic roars with laughter.57

‘What did she do, pick you up over a ready meal and a bag of Percy Pigs?’

‘We got talking, didn’t we? Her break was just when our shifts changed so I used to see her. I worked a couple of nights a week, whenever my shifts at the paper started late enough…’

‘See her? What do you mean? Did you chat to everyone buying midnight munchies or just the ones who weren’t drunk and disorderly?’

‘She’d dropped her ID. I found it, and gave it back to her when she next came in.’

‘And just like that, she gave you a job?’

‘No, she gave me advice…’

‘On how to break out of the Deptford Gazette?’

‘Sort of, she…’

‘Oh stop it, Dom,’ Mary says before he can get going again. ‘Countless times I’ve listened to you bang on about how working at a local paper is the best training you can get.’

‘OK, OK, OK,’ Dominic says. ‘Marie knows I think the Gazette is actually pretty good. It’s moonlighting with Jonas that I don’t get. She’s never been one for the local rag … well, not since she hit the big time, anyway. How did you get talking? The scoop on a fox stuck in the Dartford Tunnel?’

‘Well there was a lot of cat-up-a-tree stuff,’ I say, wiping raindrops from my forehead. ‘But I also got to do some court reporting and—’

‘Court reporting? Like what?’

‘I got my first real start around the Damilola Taylor trials.’

Dominic whistles. ‘Really?’

I close the window with a thump.

‘The Gazette was his local paper. They were desperate. It was all we covered for a while.’

‘Damilola Taylor…’ Mary murmurs. ‘Why do I know that name?’

‘He was just a schoolboy. Stabbed to death in a stairwell on his 58way home when he was ten,’ Dominic says. ‘Black, obviously. So for a while the defence tried telling everyone he fell on a broken bottle…’

‘I must have missed most of it after 9/11,’ Mary says. ‘Damilola? Where was he from?’

‘Nigeria,’ I say. ‘Like Jemima…’

Dominic’s snort echoes round the car.

‘I should have known … Jonas is such a soft touch.’

Mary’s head wobbles in and out of the mirror as she shakes her head.

‘Don’t let this macho crap fool you, Marie,’ she says. ‘Dominic is as soft as they come.’

‘Yes I’m all heart and no trousers,’ Dominic trills. ‘That’s what the ladies say about me, at least.’