Then: Bloody Kirsty Mitchum’s been waiting to land one on us. What a fuck-up this is … WHERE ARE YOU?!!

My heart rate quickens as I step inside. Although I’m not late, clearly Rose reckons I should have been here already, and up to speed with whatever drama is going on. As I wait for the lift I flick through the news sites on my phone. First impressions aren’t good:

Global food company pushing RABBIT PELLETS on kids …

If it’s good enough for bunnies … here’s a tasty treat for your TOT!

Major mix-up means PET PELLETS sold to PEOPLE …

Oh, bloody hell. There must be some kind of misinformation out there – fake news – as, understandably, certain journalists are suspicious of the products we make. I mean, I am. Obviously, they’re perfectly safe to eat – everything’s highly regulated – but there’s something about witnessing the whole process, the gigantic churning machines and thousands of gallons of beige slurry being pumped around that makes the final puffed corn snack seem … kind of less than enticing.

I’m less than happy that Izzy loves some of the snacks that started off in our factory. For the most part, I try not to think about it. The finished products bear little resemblance to what we produce anyway. However, I’m aware that Kirsty Mitchum, a big-shot journalist, thinks about it a lot. As the one who seems to have broken the so-called ‘story’, she takes a keen interest in food production and, as Rose had stated, she’s been waiting to ‘land one on us’ for ages now.

Maybe she’s gained insider info and deduced that the ingredients for rabbit pellets and human-edible snacks are eerily similar. Perhaps there’s a mole lurking amongst the pellets and we’ll all be quizzed at length? Although it seems disloyal to admit it, that might be quite thrilling. More thrilling, anyway, than my usual daily rigmarole of tending to Rose’s travel bookings and emails, plus the sourcing of birthday presents for her cleaner’s daughter and a man to jet-hose her patio and all the other non-work-related stuff she has me doing for her.

As I ride up in the lift I have already decided that similar-ingredients scenario is what’s happened here, suggesting nothing more sinister than, say, if Izzy used her Turkish tomato filling to stuff a courgette. However, when I cross the vast open-plan space and spot Rose in her glass-walled office in the far corner, sipping her coffee glumly, it’s clear that the situation is altogether more serious.

‘Come in, Viv,’ she says, flapping a hand in my direction. ‘Shut the door. Sit down.’ She indicates the chair opposite and I bob down onto it. Her stability ball has been consigned to a corner with a jacket draped over it.

‘I’ve read the headlines,’ I start. ‘What on earth’s happened? I mean, is it true?’