‘We’ll make it a private meeting, shall we, George?’ he said. ‘ I don’t think it’s something we should discuss over the phone. I’ve got to be home this afternoon anyway. Jane’s at some charity do and the nanny’s got the flu. Come at about two, then we can have a couple of hours of civilised conversation before the little buggers come back from school.’

So George had three hours to kill before he needed to set off to see Lomax. He was tempted to look up other colleagues to see if any rumours about Grenville’s improprieties surfaced, but Lomax had sounded worried and he thought it was safer to be discreet. So he sat in the Shaw Library in the Euston Road, reading Dickens, only breaking off once for coffee and a Danish pastry in the basement café. At twelve-thirty he felt stale and stiff so he set off to walk to Lomax’s home, with an A-Z in his pocket for reassurance, but not needing to look at it because he felt he was on old familiar territory.

The house was large and untidy with a view of Hampstead Heath. George had been to social functions there several times before. Lomax and his wife always had a big party on bonfire night and as he walked through the front gate George could remember, quite clearly, the smell of wood smoke and explosive. He had never seen the place in daylight and it was impressively shabby, the garden overgrown, the paint peeling. Lomax was the youngest son of an old and penurious aristocrat and would have considered concern about such matters frightfully bad form, but George wondered what Lomax’s suburban constituents would make of the decay.

The door was opened by the MP himself. He was older, fatter, more careful than George remembered. He had always had the look of a boisterous school boy. George wondered if someone had warned him off.

‘Come in!’ he said cheerfully, and George stepped into a wide hall which contained three bicycles and a piano.

‘Your children must be growing up now,’ George said. He remembered them as violent and exhibitionist toddlers at the firework parties, bruising guests’ shins with pedal cars and peeing on the lawn.

‘Thank God! The youngest is eight. The oldest two are at the comprehensive round the corner. It’s a bloody good school and it’s great propaganda of course to send them there – it shows what faith we Tories have in the State system. And of course it saves us a bloody fortune in school fees.’