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thank God,” Laura said. “Just my father making one of his flying visits. He’ll stay at the Clarendon.”
    â€œGood,” Thackeray said, pulling her back onto the sofa. “I’m not in the mood to share you.”

Chapter Three
    To her surprise, Laura found herself summoned, along with all the rest of the more senior journalists on the Gazette, into the dusty, seldom-used “conference room” by a flustered looking Ted Grant almost as soon as she arrived at the office next morning.
    â€œThe chief executive has arranged for us to have a briefing from Frank Earnshaw himself about the troubles at t’mill,” he said, with enough self-awareness to appreciate at least some of the ironies of such a meeting with a grim smile.
    â€œYou don’t need me then, do you?” Laura asked, irritated both by the compromising situation the offer put the Gazette in and the unlikelihood of her being asked to write anything about what looked like becoming a major confrontation as the mill’s unions worked themselves up for a strike ballot. However hard the workers fought, she thought, they were unlikely to save this struggling remnant of a once great industry.
    â€œWe might need a backup feature,” Ted said grudgingly. “You’d best hang on.” Laura shrugged and doodled idly on the pad of paper in front of her. She let her mind wander back to the previous evening when she had found herself facing a Thackeray distracted by thoughts of work and his divorce and at his most morose. She had eventually persuaded him early to bed where they had made love with a passion which seemed unaffected by their anxieties. Her mouth still felt bruised and the echo of her response lingered and she hoped none of her colleagues could guess what she was looking so pleased about. Like the cat who got the cream, she thought, and struggled to suppress a broad grin. But she
straightened her face quickly as the conference room door opened to admit Richard Babbage, the expensively suited and optionally bald local executive and representative of the media company which owned the Gazette and scores of newspapers like it around the country. He was followed by an older man, smartly dressed but with a face creased by anxiety beneath the thinning grey hair.
    â€œG’morning guys,” Babbage said briskly. “You’re lucky this morning to get a word with Frank Earnshaw, chairman of a company which I’m sure you all know. He’s anxious to have the opportunity to tell you a little about what’s going on with Earnshaws, which has been a world textile leader for a hundred years or more, and is hoping to continue — in some form at least — for another century to come.”
    He chivvied Earnshaw into the waiting seat next to Ted Grant and then bustled back to the door.
    â€œSorry I can’t stop myself, people. I’ve a meeting in five minutes — but Frank, do drop by when you’ve finished here. I’ve a nice malt in the drinks cupboard you might appreciate.” And with that he was gone leaving an unusually awkward Grant to introduce his “top staff” around the table and then give his guest the floor.
    â€œWe don’t go in for posh public relations advisers at Eamshaws,” Frank Earnshaw began with an unexpected glare at the assembled journalists. “As you probably know, we’re a private company with most of the shares still in family hands and the quality of what we produce has always been able to speak for itself — till now, apparently.” Earnshaw shuffled the papers he had placed on the table in front of him. “Well,” he resumed, with slightly less bravado. “Now we’ve run into a few little difficulties, but I’d rather deal with the media myself than hand the firm over to some flash company from Leeds who wouldn’t know a wool mill from a bloody call centre.”

    Laura smiled faintly. The old