‘Calm down,’ Rachel said. ‘He’s a professional, remember? And you’ve rehearsed that speech with him so many times that he knows it backwards. Even if he only gets to use half of it in the actual debate, it’s enough.’

‘I know,’ Holly sipped her coffee, willing the bitter liquid to take the edge off her nerves but knowing it would, most likely, do the opposite. ‘I just wish I was there with him.’ She kept thinking that she should be the one reassuring Rachel, not the other way round, given that Harry was Rachel’s son, but she couldn’t help it; she was just so nervous, both for Charlie and for Harry.

‘Careful, sis,’ Rachel’s eyes twinkled. ‘That almost sounded soppy.’

‘Whatever,’ Holly muttered, but smiled a little. ‘It’s only because I don’t trust him not to cock it up.’

‘Yeah, right.’

The tones familiar to any regular watcher or listener of parliamentary debates broke into their conversation as the Speaker’s cry of ‘Order, Order!’ came over the pub’s sound system.

Holly sat up a little straighter in her chair. There was no way of knowing how long this debate would take, but she was determined to pay attention to all of it.

The camera switched focus from the Speaker to a long shot of the Commons Chamber, and Holly again caught sight of Charlie, who had sat up in his place on the green government benches and was looking attentively at the Speaker.

‘I give the floor to the Honourable Member for Willowbury and Stavenham.’ Holly’s hands started to shake, and she felt clammy all over. Would Charlie be up to the job? He’d only been in post a few months, after all. Hugo Fitzgerald had had a long career of this, although Hugo hadn’t even made a ripple in the political pond in all his years as the local MP, being content to sit in his very comfortable seat and do virtually nothing to keep it. She watched intently as the camera switched from the long shot of the whole chamber to focusing on Charlie himself, who, looking pale but composed, had risen from his seat.

‘Thank you, Mr Speaker,’ he began. ‘Today we’re here to discuss the provision of next generation drugs for the degenerative condition cystic fibrosis on the National Health Service. It gives me no pleasure to be here, leading this debate, in the knowledge that so much time has been wasted already in making arrangements with the pharmaceutical companies to allow this to happen. Mr Speaker, I am the close friend of a constituent whose three-year-old nephew Harry has this debilitating and isolating condition…’

‘Close friend!’ snorted Rachel. ‘Well, I suppose he couldn’t really say lover, sweetheart, cuddle buddy…’

‘Ssh!’ Holly chided, taking her eyes off the screen briefly to shoot Rachel a warning glance. ‘Tease me later.’