She retrieves her Palm PDA from her coat pocket and taps it with the stylus. ‘Yup, I was right. It’s Frankie Crowther’s leaving party. I presume you’ve been invited?’

I’d forgotten that Crowther was quitting journalism, like so many of my fellow foot soldiers, for the putative gold of public relations. ‘I imagine my invitation is on my desk in the Burma Road.’

‘Kevin will be at the party, won’t he?’

Wilkinson was on the Telegraph for years, so it’s likely he and Crowther are mates. ‘Probably.’

The train screeches into Finsbury Park station and the doors rattle open. ‘This is your stop,’ Jess reminds me.

I don’t move. Neither does Jess.

‘You really don’t have to come with me,’ I tell her. ‘You went well beyond the call of duty tonight. Why don’t you head home?’

‘Fuck off, Gil. I’m coming.’

‘Thank you.’

‘’S’all right.’

‘I’m grateful.’

‘So you should be,’ she says. ‘The wine will be shit.’

With a beep, rattle and swoosh, the tube doors slide shut, and the train starts to crank forward again.

Fifteen minutes later we are in front of a low-rise, 1960s modernist block that is an island between the brutalist concrete of the Barbican housing development and London Wall’s multi-lane highway. The building belongs to the Woodcutters’ livery company, one of the medieval guilds that has survived wars, fires, famines and plagues to become a sort of Boy Scouts’ pack for City executives who can’t bear to go home after work. There aren’t many foresters and lumberjacks active in the City these days, but there are plenty of bankers, brokers and solicitors who join the livery for the rich dinners – normally a heavy slab of beef and cauliflower cheese – the cellared claret, the ritual of passing the loving cup, and the opportunity to share confidential information away from the ears of regulators.

Crowther’s leaving do is on the top floor, the fifth. Stepping out of the lift, I’m confronted with a blast of noise and colour. The carpet is blinding orange and there’s a hubbub of voices (mostly male) and clinking glasses coming from the tapestried livery hall at the end of the corridor. The party’s been going for some time. I walk past portraits of the aldermen and Lord Mayors who represented the guild, and queue at the booth which functions as a cloakroom. There’s only one, overworked attendant, who barely looks at me as she takes my Gore-Tex jacket and hands me a raffle ticket in exchange.

We’re about to enter the main room when Jess tugs me back.

‘What if Lorimer’s here?’

‘He never comes to these dos. Don’t worry.’ Slightly belatedly, however, I realise that there will be FC journalists here. Word will get to Lorimer that I am back in circulation, days earlier than he expected or wanted.