Charlie dug into his jacket pocket and handed over his season ticket to the attendant. Her name was Lydia, and she was a regular on this service. Always cheerful and a welcome reminder of home, she often shared a word or two with him on the way by.

‘Good week?’ she asked as she looked over his ticket.

‘Not bad,’ Charlie replied, although his heart wasn’t in it. He forced a smile, remembering he was, to a certain extent, facing the public as much as she was.

‘Thank you, sir; have a good weekend,’ she replied.

‘Thank you,’ he said automatically. ‘You too.’

Unable to focus on anything other than the whirling of his own thoughts, Charlie put his head back against the seat and tried to keep his gaze on the landscape passing the train’s window. As it changed from the urban to the rural, the closer he came to his destination, he felt the sickness churning in his stomach. He still had absolutely no idea what he was going to say to Holly. How could he possibly explain? How could he unpick the complicated strands of a Westminster warning to an outsider without sounding like a callous bastard?

Far too soon, he was boarding the connecting train from Bristol Temple Meads to the branch line that served Willowbury. It took thirty-five minutes on a good day; Charlie needed every last second. Realising that the absolute last place he wanted to be was the pub when he broke the news to Holly, he disembarked the train and headed straight for her place.

Willowbury High Street held no dawdling charms for him this evening; he just wanted to get to Holly, to explain, calmly, what had happened. And then wait for the inevitable explosion she had every right to have.

As he approached ComIncense, he could see the lights were out and the shop sign was turned to ‘Closed’. That wasn’t surprising; it was just after six thirty in the evening, after all. How he wished he could just carry on as though nothing had happened; but that wasn’t an option. Lying didn’t come naturally, which, potentially, was a disadvantage in his job, but Charlie definitely preferred to play things straight.

Taking one last fortifying deep breath, he cut through the walkway that separated Holly’s building from the other shop on one side of ComIncense and knocked at her wooden door.

‘Hey,’ Holly’s face was so happy, she seemed so surprised and delighted to see him on her doorstep that Charlie’s heart bled. ‘I thought we were meeting at the pub.’

‘I need to talk to you,’ Charlie said. Not even stopping to kiss her, because he highly doubted that when he’d finished telling her about the meeting with the Secretary of State she’d want to be anywhere near him anyway, he wandered in through her door.