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My anticipation of announcing the Natalie Shale exclusive to my news editor, Ken, is put on hold when Vicky spies me as soon as I put foot on carpet inside the hum of the newsroom. Vicky is a news desk deputy, and a kind of half-maiden, half-serpent creature, like something out of Greek mythology.

‘Rachel!’ she barks.

Duly summoned, I pick my way through the desks to her side.

‘Your story about the cripple fraud trial that finally ended,’ she asks, tapping the screen with her pen, employing her usual charming turn of phrase, voice all honey laced with arsenic, ‘limped to the finish line, I should say. Why does Michael Tallack turn into Christopher, five paras down?’

I feel my face grow hot.

‘Does he?’ I say, a light sweat breaking out on my top lip. I’ve recently emerged from a sentencing for manslaughter, this story already a distant memory. ‘Sorry.’

‘Yes. Hopalong Cassidy’s brother was cleared of any involvement, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes, sorry …’ Shit, shit.

‘Try to not to put actionable defamations in your copy, if it’s not too much trouble.’

‘Really sorry, Vicky, I don’t know what I was thinking.’

‘It’s lucky I spotted it,’ Vicky concludes.

‘Yes, thanks.’ I bet she didn’t, and a sub-editor brought it to her. Certain members of news desk are known for dishing out bollockings, not their ferocious work rate. ‘A riding crop in one hand and an éclair in the other’ is how my friend Dougie once put it. He eventually tired of grumping and went off to Scotland to be a successful crime correspondent. Not for the first time, I have the feeling of being a barnacle-clad rock that time has flowed around like water.

Journalism, probably like most jobs, comes with the paradox that the more successful you get, the less you do the stuff that initially appealed: namely, finding stories and writing them. I could apply for news desk positions but I’d answer phones and argue with people all day. And have to sit next to people like Vicky.

‘Is Ken about?’

‘Yeah, somewhere.’ Vicky loses interest in me and picks up on a flashing phone line.

‘What up, Woodford? To what do we owe the honour?’

I turn to see Ken, the news editor, fishing in a bag of Wotsits, a copy of the paper tucked under one arm. He has a thatch of wiry grey hair that looks as if it’s clipped into a cube shape with shears. I’m sure it gets squarer every time I see him. He could wear a box as a hat.

‘I popped by to tell you some good news.’

‘Christ. You’re not pregnant, are you?’

‘No …’ Possibly the least pregnant I’ve ever been, cheers, Ken.

‘Thank God for that.’

Ken Baggaley is known for being ‘firm but fair’, even though he’s more than firm and not particularly fair. In newspaper-speak, it’s because his rages are reactions to actual events, rather than tremors in a psychological fault line.

‘I’ve got an interview with Natalie Shale,’ I conclude.

He looks unmoved. ‘She’s doing a press conference?’

‘No, just us. An exclusive. Her solicitor’s a contact.’

Ken lifts eyebrows, grunts, and I sense I am briefly Number 1 in interest stakes over cheese-flavoured puffed corn.

‘Good stuff. When?’

‘Date’s being finalised but it’ll be in the bag soon, before Lucas Shale’s appeal is heard.’

‘Let me know how it goes. Well done, Woodford.’

Ken drops into a chair and continues his assault on the Wotsits. I walk out of the office with a spring in my step: now that was Ken gushing. Ben’s a lucky charm.

On the way back to court, I decide to make a detour via Marks & Spencer. It was impressed upon me when I unpacked my rancid collection of underwear (from the ‘L’Amour Longtemps’ extra complacency range) that an upgrade is required. At first I thought ‘But who’s gonna see it anytime soon anyway?’, then I mentioned it to Mindy. She explained the feng shui of lingerie: that if I’m in old cotton faded saggy things, a size too small, good things will not come to me, even if I’m not looking. I’m not sure I accept her reasoning.

I don’t feel any degrees more sexually energised once I’m gingerly fiddling with turquoise lace balcony cups. I’m wondering if anyone will ever want to see me naked again, or more to the point, see me naked the first time and then want to see me naked regularly, on a rolling basis, going forward, as Ken would say.

Part of the pact of long-term relationships is that they’re sometimes as much about the things they take out of your life as put in. If it’s no longer a rollercoaster, more of a monorail, that means you avoid the lows as well as the highs. If your loved one barges into the bathroom and catches you bending over with a gut like an apron made of Babybel cheese, they don’t go off you, or expect you to slink about in deep plunge this and Tanga that, waxed into the middle of next Wednesday. They’ve taken you on, bought the product. Singledom, a new relationship: you have to repackage your contents and sell them all over again, body and soul.

These not very inspiring thoughts are rolling round my mind as I twang a violet triangle of something that appears to be made out of fishing net and an elastic band. My phone goes. Ben. Now his number has his name. There’s that shiver.

‘Hi, Rachel! How are you? I wanted to say thanks for helping Simon out with that story.’

I’m blushing. I’m actually standing here, looking at tiny pants, with a burning face because they’re juxtaposed with Ben’s voice. Sex and the City this ain’t.

‘Good thanks. And no, thank you for introducing us. That’s a great story and it’s not done me any harm at work. I owe you.’

‘No worries, it solved a problem for Simon. He didn’t know how to go about contacting your paper. He thinks journalists are feral creatures. He was scared stiff.’

Crazily confident Simon?

‘I’m struggling to imagine Simon being scared stiff.’

‘Imagine him being scared flaccid then.’

‘Nooo, my eyes are bleeding!’ I giggle, aware of the firework of happiness that starts fizzing in my chest at the slightest return of our old rapport.

Ben laughs. ‘He was quite complimentary about you. He said you had “sass”.’

‘He means I was rude.’

‘I told you, he needs a bit of fight. He likes it. Anyway, I have something else to ask of you.’

‘You do?’

‘Yeah, I was wondering if you were free to come to ours on Saturday night. Liv wants to do a “meeting people in Manchester” dinner party. We’re bourgeois bastards nowadays, y’know. Liv particularly wants to meet you.’

‘Right,’ I say, feeling the fear. Why would Olivia particularly want to meet me, unless it was to do a risk assessment? He could tell her she absolutely doesn’t need to worry. MI5 Threat Level: Brew Up, Kick Back. Oh God, oh God – what does she know? Reason tells me she has the official history, and this invite is proof of that. Emotions are telling me to use this thong as a slingshot to fire my mobile into the bargain briefs bin and run for the Peaks.

‘You will come?’ Ben says, into my silence.

‘Sure.’

‘I don’t want to kill your cool single Saturday night stone dead. I know we’re old boring marrieds.’

‘Are you kidding? I’d love to come.’

‘Honestly? That’s great.’

Although I meant love with a substantial dollop of bloody shitting self, Ben sounds so pleased that it almost becomes true.

‘I’m a fan of eating. And I’m in awe of anyone who’s prepared to make food for visitors,’ I say.

‘You’re a good cook, aren’t you?’

‘Nah. I gave up when I moved in with Rhys. He was the cook.’

‘Ah.’ Awkward pause. ‘And Liv asked, do you want to bring anyone? A date?’

This is the moment where I’m supposed to have a wacky idea about hiring an escort for appearances’ sake. I consider it for the maddest of moments, then firmly dismiss it. One of Mindy’s chiselled internet Romeos, it transpired, used to work as an escort. Worse, he wore the ‘Canadian tuxedo/Texas two-piece’ of double denim. With cowboy boots. And awful shirts. Ivor nickname: Bri-Nylon Adams.

‘Er. No.’

After I ring off, I guesstimate my sizes and buy a handful of stuff in safe black. It’s a beginning.