‘Yes, that would be great, thanks,’ Charlie replied. He tried to get a visit in to a school or other community concern as often as he could, both to raise his own profile and to shine a light on their achievements or needs, and he’d particularly enjoyed visiting the primary school; the children were so unguarded in their attitudes towards him, it made a refreshing change. He still couldn’t quite get used to being asked by five-year-olds if he had a girlfriend, but he’d definitely enjoyed seeing what schools were like since the last time he’d been at one himself.

He was also a keen Instagrammer and had already amassed nearly five thousand followers since his election to the Willowbury and Stavenham seat, but he still had yet to get to grips with Twitter, and relied on Helen, who was ten years younger, and far more in tune with social media, to handle that and the official Facebook pages. Social media had its advantages, and its disadvantages, as he knew from being one of the first students to adopt it at university. He was part of a generation that had some of their memories on actual, printed photographs and a lot more stored in the ethereal world of online and digital. Everything he did, now more than ever, would be under scrutiny. If he’d been more reckless in his university days, he felt sure he’d have been more concerned, but he was fairly certain there weren’t going to be any skeletons leaping out of closets at an inconvenient moment.

Certain numbers of his colleagues had not fared so well at the hands of social media, though. He still felt a pang of sympathy for one former party leader, whose apology for a poor policy decision had been memed, autotuned and posted on YouTube for all to see. It was an occupational hazard these days.

Wandering back into his office, he picked up the paper file that Rachel had left him to take a closer look. Leafing through the press cuttings, the leaflets and the copies of letters that she’d sent to Hugo Fitzgerald and other MPs, it was clear she didn’t just have a mother’s knowledge about her son’s condition; she, by necessity, had become a bit of an expert on drug funding, policy and procedure. She could probably teach him a thing or two.