‘You could’ve at least given me enough warning to let me get changed out of my shit-kickers,’ she scolded him.

Bret looked sheepish but basically unapologetic. ‘Lego Star Wars buys a lot of silence.’

They finished the bottle of red wine before serving dinner, and another one with it. The children took themselves off to bed with dire warnings that their new toys would Disappear if they weren’t asleep within ten minutes, while the men finished off all the osso buco, which Caitlin had hoped would last for a couple of days. She returned from tucking in Harry and Monique to find the three of them gathered around a newly opened bottle of Highland Park, courtesy of Dalby, discussing the prospects for the US with Kipper’s second term drawing to an end, and Sandra Harvey and Sarah Palin looking like the front runners to punch it out in the big vote.

By the time they’d accounted for most of the whiskey, sitting by the fireplace in the lounge room after dinner, Caitlin had decreed that the visitors would have to stay the night.

‘Be just like you two to survive a lifetime of fucking villainy only to do yourselves in driving pissed at night. You’d probably get lost and end up back on one of the live firing ranges on the Plain.’

It was well after midnight before Bret and Dalby crashed out, leaving Caitlin curled up in a lounge chair in front of the hearth talking to Wales.

‘We would have you back in a New York minute, you know,’ he told her. ‘I wouldn’t want you to die wondering about that.’

‘Wales, I was in New York for a minute or two in April ’07, you might recall,’ she said. ‘I don’t feel the need to go back. I’m out of it, Wales. I push a shopping trolley around the local supermarket now and my idea of adventure is when Harry wets himself in that trolley and he’s not wearing a nappy.’ She shook her head at that unpleasant memory.

Wales Larrison, these days the global director of Echelon, didn’t smile. He sized her up as though she were a challenging puzzle.

‘Do you remember the young girl you brought to us, just before you left and came home, here?’ he asked, waving a hand to take in the lounge room and the farm beyond it.

‘Sofia,’ said Caitlin. ‘Of course I do. How’d she work out? She’d have been in the field for a few years by now.’

Larrison took his time again.

‘As always,’ he said eventually, ‘you’ve done well for us, Caitlin. She was a good find. We haven’t had an asset as good as her since . . . well, since you left, to be truthful.’

‘That’s very flattering, Wales. But I left. And I’m not coming back.’