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I had a moment of doubt. Could I have got it wrong after all?
    ‘Are you saying it wasn’t you?’
    ‘Hand on heart.’
    ‘So the intern is . . .’
    ‘A genuine fan of yours? It would certainly look that way.’
    With the sound of Walshy’s laughter echoing in my ears I returned shamefaced to the spot where I’d so rudely abandoned the intern and apologised.
    ‘You must think I’m insane,’ I began.
    ‘I’m just confused, that’s all,’ she replied. ‘Did I do something wrong?’
    ‘It’s just that, well, I thought that . . . actually, you know what, it doesn’t matter what I thought. I was an arsehole to you and I shouldn’t have been. Look, I feel terrible about this. Why don’t you let me take you out for coffee this afternoon? I’ll sign your book and we can talk about working on the paper and I can give you the benefit of the obviously minuscule amount of wisdom that I have.’
    ‘I’d love to.’ She smiled as though this was the most exciting prospect that she’d ever heard and then opened her mouth as if she had something else to add but before she could say a word my boss Camilla appeared in my eye line.
    ‘Joe,’ she asked. ‘Have you got a minute?’
    I made my excuses to Bella and followed Camilla into her office. She told me to take a seat and handed me an espresso from the little machine in the corner. It had all the makings of someone about to deliver bad news.
    ‘It’s about the editorship of Sunday ,’ she said as if reading my thoughts. ‘You didn’t get it.’
    So that was that. After three rounds of interviews, two presentations to upper management and numerous sleepless nights I hadn’t got the job.
    ‘Who have they given it to?’ I asked.
    ‘Hannah Bainbridge from the Sunday Reporter . She really dazzled them from day one.’
    I’d met Hannah a few times over the years. She was just one of those people who were naturally adept at promoting themselves and everyone seemed to buy into it without question. It didn’t help that she was pretty damn good at her job too. Even I would’ve struggled not to appoint her over me.
    Camilla offered me a commiserative smile. ‘For what it’s worth you were my first choice but I just couldn’t get anyone else to see you as anything other than a safe pair of hands.’
    ‘That’s me in a nutshell, isn’t it?’ I replied. ‘That’s everything I amount to: a pair of hands, not even a whole body.’

3
    In the course of the past year alone I’d applied for at least a dozen senior positions on various newspapers and magazines and while I’d come close to getting them a few times luck never seemed to be on my side. Getting rejected by my own paper in favour of Hannah Bainbridge of all people, however, felt like a real slap in the face. Where could I go from here? Without me bringing in more money Penny couldn’t give up work and we’d be forced to carry on at this manic pace that rendered us virtual strangers to each other. And while I knew it wouldn’t always be so tough it was hard to imagine that day. Penny and I were stuck in the middle years in more ways than one. We were halfway through our lives, halfway through bringing up the kids and as far away from the beginning as we were from the end. It was like hitting the wall in the middle of a marathon and knowing that the only way out was to give up on everything or somehow find the strength to carry on.
    That afternoon, still feeling beaten down by the disappointment of not getting the promotion, I reluctantly took Bella the intern to Allegro’s, a cheap and cheerful Italian café favoured by journalists from my own paper and others round about. On our way to the only free table in the place I took care to acknowledge Faye Bonner from the Correspondent ’s crime desk , waved hello to Simone Patterson, senior features writer at the Post , and nodded a greeting to David Owen, arts editor of the Sunday Reporter .
    ‘I’m feeling a bit star-struck,’ said Bella as we