‘Well, maybe,’ Julie said. ‘Whatever happened in there, you’re an absolute fool to keep it to yourself.’

‘We go back to London with one clear message, as I have outlined. Agreed?’

Julie gazed right back at her, those big green eyes full of doubt, fear, possibly even suspicion. But, eventually, she nodded. ‘Agreed, boss. For better or for worse.’

They spoke little for the rest of the journey to Helsinki airport. After turning in the hire car, Kate suggested Julie contact Sir Alan and Ian to give them the basic agreed outline of what had happened and to arrange the necessary meeting with the foreign secretary so she could sneak home on their return to London.

She found Fi and Gus eating dinner with Rose at the kitchen table. They all seemed very pleased to see her.

They chatted idly for a few moments before Rose said she needed to get back to Simon and quietly slipped out. ‘We missed you,’ Fiona said, as soon as she’d gone. ‘I mean, Rose is lovely, but we’ve been really looking forward to you coming home.’

It was enough to have Kate reflecting once again on the strange shifting currents of teenage emotions, but the warmth of her own response perhaps explained her spontaneous decision to share more than she’d intended. ‘I saw Dad,’ she said.

‘My God, where?’ Fiona asked.

Kate had her son’s rapt attention now, too, and their evident devotion to their father touched another chord within her. ‘In Moscow.’

‘What were you doing there?’ Gus asked.

‘I had to go into Russia for work. Things didn’t go quite the way I’d planned, so I had some time on my hands. I called Dad and we agreed to meet up.’

‘Where?’ Fi asked.

‘I went to his flat in Moscow, which is, in all honesty, a very depressing place. It’s tiny, cramped, soulless and on the umpteenth floor of a grim Soviet apartment block.’

Gus was staring at the table, as if he was about to burst into tears. But Fiona could sense her mother had more to impart.

‘I don’t want you to get your hopes up unduly, but it was clear to me that this was not a reasonable way to go on for any of us.’

‘What do you mean?’ Gus asked.

‘You miss him. If I’m completely honest, I miss him, too. And he’s miserable.’

There was a stunned silence as the pair absorbed the implications of this. ‘So what are you saying?’ Fiona asked eventually.

‘That, in the first instance, I want to get him out of that terrible place to somewhere he can be much happier and you – we – can visit him.’

‘Like where?’

‘He suggested France.’