A nail-biting few days were to follow. Charlie knew that the Speaker wouldn’t be announcing debates until Wednesday, which would give him, at worst, twenty-four hours to put the finishing touches on his opening speech, should his Adjournment Debate be the first to be timetabled, literally for the next day. With ten days left until the summer recess, time was unnervingly short. If he wasn’t successful this time around, it would have to wait until September when the House sat again. Charlie wasn’t sure he could take a summer of suspense, and all the time he was aware that, for Harry, literally every day without a decision was a ticking time bomb.

Charlie, who’d decided to spend the time until Wednesday in Willowbury, rather than shooting back to London as he usually did on a Sunday night or Monday morning, had, with Holly’s tacit blessing, virtually moved into her flat while they waited for a decision on the Adjournment Debate. He had a lot of constituency casework to catch up on, and when he wasn’t using Holly’s place as a base, he’d been out and about on constituency visits, which managed to take his mind off the agonising wait for Wednesday’s news, as had spending his spare time with Holly. He’d even managed to catch up, informally, with Mrs Garner, she of the noisy neighbours, and was relieved to discover that the council had acted swiftly and that the situation had been resolved amicably on all sides. He allowed himself a small glow of satisfaction for that particular case. It wouldn’t change the world, but it had made a pretty significant difference to Mrs Garner’s life.

Nevertheless, Charlie was still climbing the walls by the time Wednesday afternoon rolled around. The refresh button on his webmail had been pushed so many times, he was surprised he hadn’t single-handedly crashed the system. Holly kept popping up from the shop floor when she could to offer a word of encouragement or reassurance, but even she was feeling the strain. Tom, knowing the decision was imminent, had brought some work from the office and was also using Holly’s kitchen table as a de-facto hot desk.

Eventually, the much-longed-for email came through, and Charlie’s heart, as well as his stomach, fell through the floor. ‘Oh Christ,’ he breathed.

‘What is it?’ Tom, lost in a world of paperwork of his own, was, nevertheless, instantly alert.

‘You’re not going to believe this, but it’s scheduled for tomorrow.’

‘Christ, indeed,’ Tom replied. ‘You’d better start looking up trains.’

‘Am I going to be ready?’ Charlie looked down at the speech and it seemed to swim before his eyes.