George was intrigued and flattered despite himself, and agreed to go to the Cadver. As he replaced the receiver he thought Grenville would have seen his resistance as a gesture and was ashamed of his weakness. But when he returned to the kitchen to tell Molly about the summons she said it was probably just as well for them to go out. If Benwell had not phoned by seven-thirty he was unlikely to call that evening and she could not put up with George’s irritation all night. Then she began to panic about what she would wear.

They drove to the Cadver, though George would have preferred to walk. It was bad enough, Molly said, that the only respectable dress she had with her was the old one that she had bought twenty years before to wear when she was accompanying her clients to court. It would be worse to arrive breathless and covered in mud.

Marcus Grenville opened the door to them and showed them into a comfortable room with leather armchairs and a fire. There was no sign of Olivia and he did not mention her.

‘Now,’ he said, standing with his back to the fire, rubbing his hands together nervously. ‘What will you both have to drink?’

Molly sensed that he was frightened. Was it guilt? she wondered, or an ambitious man’s anxiety that his plans for advancement were in danger?

‘There’ll just be the four of us tonight,’ Grenville went on. ‘Jeremy’s out with that girlfriend of his. Probably as well in the circumstances …’

He poured drinks and made polite conversation about the pictures in the room and the weather. Molly thought: I suppose all politicians have the skill to make trivial small talk while their minds are engaged elsewhere.

‘What circumstances?’ George asked and Grenville stopped suddenly and even blushed a little.

‘Let’s talk business later, shall we?’ he said in a tone of faint rebuke. ‘After we’ve eaten.’ George had the impression that he had broken a rule of etiquette.

Then there was an awkward silence broken only by the entrance of Olivia, elegant and stately in a plain black dress. She stood in the doorway, looking them over, then called them in to dinner.

Throughout the meal, which was good in a solid English, rather overcooked way, Marcus Grenville took responsibility for the conversation. He talked first, with admiration, about Joanna.

‘She’s making a real reputation now with her pottery,’ he said. ‘There was an exhibition in London last year – I dragged half the Cabinet to see it. And she’s making a tidy little income. I should know – I invested in her myself.’

He went on to speak in the same glowing terms of Simon Barton’s consultancy. ‘That’s the way conservation should go in the future. There should be more private enterprise to inject some cash and energy into the environmental movement.’