My hands slip as I brace myself inside the cubicle, shiny walls slick under my sweaty palms. Did Olivia even notice me legging it? Or that crowd at the water machine, as I bungled into the glass doors? Rage, confusion, disappointment, all coming at me like churning fog … I could have been anywhere but the newsroom. Andromeda, back from the dead, back to torment us all yet again, right as I was about to haul myself, giddy and triumphant, over another rock on my own personal mountain. Presenting our trafficking story to the Met was always going to hurt. It’s not like laminating institutional failures in technicolour is ever going to feel good, is it? But answering back with Andromeda, practically gift-wrapped in stinking corruption – it can’t just be down to Dominic’s middle finger in the eye?

My stomach churns as I gulp and swallow, forcing the lurch back down my throat, open toilet gaping up at me like a frozen, silent scream. Not at work, never at work! Quick snatch at mundane details – tuneless humming as someone peers into the mirror, click of lipstick, clack of face powder. A rustle and clunk to my left, the swish of a door to my right. The slow drip of a tap, the tinkle of a cistern, the hollow, shallow rattle of my breathing. Smear hands on trousers, pull out phone, type in the usual code, blue screen flashing back practically before I can blink. And with that, I’m back in the current, flushing the empty toilet as I leave, 76down the stairs, through the turnstile, out into the still-sheeting rain and into a cab before the shower can roll off my coat.

‘Where are you?’ Jemima shouts almost as soon as I’ve got the phone to my ear. ‘Grinding the coffee beans yourself?’

‘We’ve got a problem,’ I say, pinching the phone between my head and shoulder to finish buttoning my coat. ‘Olivia is climbing the walls. I bumped into Thomas buttering her up in the kitchen. The Met has convened a massive press conference out of nowhere this afternoon…’

‘What? Wait … where did you say you were? I thought…’

My heart sinks as newsroom clamour rises suddenly in the background, even over the thunder crashing across the darkening sky. That’s her up and out of the edit suite, then. Months of work immortalised on tapes that no one may ever see. I spit into the puddles gathering in the gutter as I keep the passenger door open with my foot.