Lindsay shook her head. “I can’t believe grown-ups think this is a reasonable way to spend their time,” she muttered. “It’s like an Oxford tutorial without the relevance to real life.” She tried to concentrate on the obscure negotiation that continued like some quaint ritual dance whose meaning was lost in the sands of time. But it was no use. There wasn’t enough meat in the argument to occupy her mind, and her grief kept butting in like an anarchist at the trooping the color. After another half hour, she leaned towards Ian and muttered, “I’m going to get some air.”

She emerged into the foyer of the Winter Gardens with a sense of relief. The large committee room had begun to feel unreasonably oppressive. Oblivious to her surroundings, she wandered down towards the stands of the assorted pressure groups who had rented space for the conference. She didn’t notice the chipped tiling on the walls, the scruffy paintwork or the garish posters for the forthcoming summer attractions. She paused long enough to buy an enamelled metal badge proclaiming “Lesbians and Gay Men Support the Miners” before walking back into the stuffy hall to rejoin her colleagues.

No one glanced at her as she slipped into her seat. Only five others of the twelve-strong delegation from her branch were at the table. One of them was fast asleep, head pillowed on his arms. Another two were reading the morning papers. That left two who actually seemed to be following the debate. Lindsay shook her head. For weeks, every chapel meeting had been dominated by the impending annual conference. They had discussed their attitudes to motions, the importance of driving through certain policies, the crucial impact of decisions taken here in Blackpool. She’d spent the first morning taking notes on the debates and the results of the votes, until she had realized that she couldn’t see another soul in the hall doing anything with a pen except the Telegraph crossword. She could only assume that the real politicking was going on elsewhere, perhaps in those tight huddles that seemed to spring up all over the place every quarter of an hour or so. As she looked around, Lindsay spotted one of her own delegation coming away from a group clustered around the platform.

Lindsay watched Siobhan Carter, a feature writer on the Sunday Trumpet, weave through the delegation tables and wondered how long it would be before she understood what the hell was going on around her. Siobhan seemed to fit in perfectly, yet it was only her second time at conference. She flopped into the seat next to Lindsay and fanned herself with an order-paper.

“Whew! It might only be the second day of conference, but there’s already enough scandal going the rounds to keep a clutch of gossip columnists going for a month.”

“Is that what you’ve been doing? Gossiping?” Lindsay asked.