Gordon didn’t know how to respond to this. He was tempted, like his mother, to pick up on the most trivial sidebar and express a polite sentiment, to say, ‘I’m sure you will still have access to the letterhead, no need to hit the panic button just yet,’ when he realised that Frontal had no doubt about getting his job back. Frontal was a winner. Daniel was a winner. Daniel would win today, Frontal would win tomorrow, they would toast themselves in their champions’ lounge, and Frontal would be reunited with his letterhead.

‘I lost it,’ Gordon said.

‘You lost it?’ Frontal’s face fell, expressing not outrage but a passing cloud of disappointment, as if this was all his long career in public service had come to: victory without satisfaction.

Gordon thought: I lost your letter, and my brother slipped and fell off the cliff while we were playing. Or …

‘No. I burnt it,’ he said.

That felt better.

Recovering, Frontal laughed, apparently with genuine humour. ‘Well, you’ll deserve all the costs that are about to hit you. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

A caw from the cricket pitch interrupted them. The last Cobcroft batsman was out, and Daniel, having spent the morning sulking and swearing, had ended up with three wickets and was being clapped off. He raised his hat in acknowledgement. Only now did his father notice the game.

‘Good job, Danny boy!’ Frontal clapped above his head. ‘Go get ’em!’

Daniel ignored him. Ben trailed into the pavilion last, talking with Zane Dwyer, the cricket team’s bits left over.

Frontal said, ‘That boy is an out-and-out champion.’

‘Hundred percent,’ Gordon said, feeling as articulate as Japan Ned on the subject of cricket. ‘I heard the investigation over the surfboat thing is going away?’ The Capri rower had been discharged from hospital with minor injuries. Funny how justice works, Gordon thought: Daniel could have killed that boy, but it’s the consequences, not the act, that determine the punishment.

‘He’s a fraud,’ spluttered a voice from behind Gordon.

‘Hello, Ronald,’ Frontal said complacently. ‘How are your plans to move into The Lodge?’ He smirked at Gordon, as if their interests were aligned and Frontal, with his punitive wave of costly demands, had come to Gordon’s rescue. ‘If you end up out on the street, you won’t have to worry about the old man moving in. Glass half full!’

Gordon felt his insides coil, uncoil, recoil. At that moment, he hated Frontal. Or maybe the daily effort not to hate Frontal became too much, and what he was feeling was not hate but the absence of restraint.

‘You threatening my son?’ Ron said. ‘You of all people ought to know not to play that game.’

Gordon, watching Frontal, did not immediately understand the change that came over him. The smug pleasure dissolved, and was replaced by, if Gordon was not mistaken, bug-eyed terror.