‘Me?’ Madeleine scoffed. ‘Oh, you know, make up numbers. Here’s a fun fact: did you know until the late Sixties a woman had to leave when she got married? I shit you not. We all move around rather a lot, often completely arbitrarily, which I can talk you through in a bit more detail once you’ve been through clearance. As for you, the thing with the FCO, as you will learn, is that it equates Young People – that’s you, and even me, would you believe – with “the internet”.’ She made fingers around the words. ‘So as far as what you will be expected to do, it will mainly be monitoring online forums for now. I’m afraid there is a risk that you will die of boredom before you manage to finish your placement …’

When they arrived at the foot of a gilded sweeping staircase, quite a way inside the building, Madeleine pointed upwards. ‘This is probably more what you were imagining, no?’

Gabriela took in the portraits that lined the walls with watchful eyes.

‘Perhaps we can take a proper look another day … That’s the Foreign Secretary’s office at the top of those stairs.’

Madeleine paused for a moment and then fixed her seriously with her gaze, as if considering something before deciding to go ahead, lowering her voice. ‘The only other thing you need to know at this stage is that the Director, Guy Emsworth …’ Her words drifted off. ‘Just, if you have any questions, any concerns, you come to me. OK?’

Gabriela felt a sudden chill run down her back and Madeleine, noticing her shiver, started to walk back into the bowels of the building.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Just you wait. It gets colder in here than you’d ever expect.’

She spent most of her first week, as per Madeleine’s prediction, scouring online message-boards for ‘suspicious activity’, whatever that was supposed to mean. It was a few days before Guy Emsworth appeared beside her chair. She wasn’t sure whether to stand up, but when he stooped over the corner of her desk, it was as if he was fixing her to her seat.

‘Guy Emsworth.’ He held out a hand, his palm clammy against hers. ‘You’re our new recruit, am I right?’

From the hours she’d spent poring over the FCO website in preparation for this moment, she knew Emsworth was a director of the Joint International Counter-Terrorism Unit, the department to which she was to be attached – singled out, according to the feedback from her application, as a result of speaking Arabic, French, Spanish and Russian.

She smiled. ‘Well, I’m here for the next month, hopefully longer – I’m Gabriela.’

He considered her for a moment, his eyes moving briskly over her body before he stood straight. ‘Gabriela … Very good. Well, you seem like the sort who could stick around.’