It was another six months before she was taken on properly, in her first official role – fast-streamed – enabling her to do a year in two different departments, one policy-based, one most likely corporate, before taking her first foreign posting.

‘Bugger me, Gabs, you’re in the Foreign Office!’ Tom had enthused, lifting her off her feet when she got home that night, having rung on her way to share the news, too excited to wait.

‘I’d rather not, if you don’t mind,’ she pulled a face before continuing. ‘I mean, it’s not official yet. There’s some security clearance checks that have to be made first, which will take a couple of weeks. But if that’s all good, and bloody hell it should be, then …’

‘This deserves champagne,’ he said, popping open a bottle of Cava. ‘I mean obviously we don’t have any, but if we did …’ He handed her a glass. ‘Seriously, though, I’m so bloody proud of you. This is massive.’

‘I know,’ she said, taking a sip of her drink, ignoring the whispers telling her, even then, that it was too good to be true; voices that grew louder in her mind as she fell asleep that night, so that in her dreams they were shouting, begging her to run and not look back.

Her first year proper at King Charles Street was spent working under Emsworth in Counter-Terrorism, still mostly trawling the internet for signs of suspicious activity, which she would deliver to him along with an analysis of how she believed the information she’d found fitted in with what they already knew of existing organisations – analysis she was desperate for him to give more credence to than appeared to be the case. Nevertheless, she was there, and she was on course to making herself indispensable, of that much she was sure.

Emsworth had stationed her at a desk near his on the basis that he could delegate when necessary – really help lift her up through the organisation.

‘To give him a better vantage point from which to ogle your tits, more like.’ Madeleine kissed her teeth when she saw her friend there, and Gabriela was pissed off that she didn’t believe she’d earned his interest by virtue of her obvious talents.

She felt her cheeks pinken when Emsworth’s email came through the following day.

Let’s go for lunch, talk through any ideas you have for strategy? GE.

‘I know it’s a bit of a walk away,’ Emsworth said as they reached the Italian bistro on Crown Passage that he referred to as his unofficial office. ‘But wait until you try the lasagne – you’ll understand why it’s worth the stroll.’