Charles relaxed. Sarah, a lawyer who was not in the Office herself, was unique in having married successive chiefs and so had long experience of the kind of social chit-chat required. Also, she had a rather better memory than Charles for names and people, many of whom she knew through her late husband. She knew too that they would all have a simplified version of her and Charles’s history – youthful lovers at Oxford, rivalry with the man she later married, a child sent for adoption, decades of estrangement from Charles followed by reconciliation after the disgrace and death of her husband; and Charles’s role in his downfall. Knowing that this was what they would all be thinking of while talking to her, she had felt awkward and self-conscious for months after she and Charles had married but the gradual realisation that most people were more interested in themselves than others had made things easier. Now, she knew that if she didn’t let the past become a problem for her, everyone else would ignore it, even if they didn’t quite forget. After a few minutes she said, ‘Robin, much as you two would like to continue your Office gossip I’m afraid I have to grab Charles and force him to bid our farewells. He has to go back to work.’

Robin raised his eyebrows in mock, or perhaps genuine, dismay. ‘What, working at weekends? Surely as chief you could get other people to do that for you?’

‘Thank God you came,’ Charles whispered as they walked arm in arm towards the marquee. ‘I thought I was trapped there for the duration. How’s it been for you?’

‘I think I’ve got away with it so far. Just hope we can leave before I put a foot wrong. What time’s this thing you’re doing?’

His phone was vibrating in his pocket. He acknowledged the text. ‘Okay if we leave in the next ten minutes.’

‘I can’t do that. I must stay a bit longer. You go off and I’ll get a cab back.’