They exited the large closet and rejoined their wives, who had moved on from complementing each other’s outfits to discussing the children. Marilyn had never had any of her own, but she had been stepmother to Melanie and Roger for long enough to have earned her spurs. Jed pursed his lips at the incongruity of it all, the banality of everyday life within the insanely pressurised environment of supreme executive power. Even if that power was a dim shadow of its former greatness.

A soft knock at the door, and the protocol chief, Allan Horbach, admitted himself after a greeting from Barbara.

‘Time for cocktails,’ he announced.

‘Well, at least there’s that,’ said Kipper in a funereal tone. But in fact, there wasn’t, not for him.

The four of them walked the short distance to the reception room, where the buzz of conversation grew noticeably louder with their arrival. Jed nodded in satisfaction. All of the big chequebooks were here: Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon, Costco, Cesky Enterprises, T-Mobile, the biotechs. All manoeuvring for access to the President, who would need to keep his head straight while he talked to them. After being announced to the room by Horbach, both Jed and Kip were handed champagne flutes by the White House head of protocol. On Culver’s instructions, both contained sparkling apple juice.

‘But I don’t even like champagne,’ Kipper muttered out of the side of his mouth.

‘Then you’ll be fine,’ replied his Chief of Staff, without sympathy. ‘Because you’re not getting any.’ He could’ve murdered a whiskey sour himself, but he had learned as a baby lawyer that drinking was best done after work, not during, and this was definitely work.

‘Mr President!’

Really. Hard. Work.

Henry Cesky, all bulk and bravado, had elbowed his way through the crowd to claim pole position in the race for Kipper’s attention. His shoulders moved around under the expensive fabric of his dinner jacket like barrels loose on the deck of a schooner.

‘Hey, Henry,’ said Kip, pleasantly enough, while Culver went into a full-throttle, double-grip handshake, with shoulder punching and a bit of locker-room rough-housing thrown in. He could pull it off, having been a college wrestler. Kip couldn’t. And Cesky was one of those guys who didn’t just like to cultivate a rough-handed, working-stiff-made-good image. He was the real thing. Even if he hadn’t always done good to make good, and even if that roughness of character sometimes made him a risky choice at events like this. He was entirely capable of getting liquored up and throwing a punch at someone, perhaps a business rival or somebody who looked askance at his wife. Even the Secretary of the Treasury, if he was in a bad mood after filing his taxes. Rough, unkempt black hair and a twice-broken nose added to the impression that Henry had spent decades in a boxing ring, never knowing when to give up.