Zac stared at the floor. Kate glanced around the room again. Rav’s absence here was quietly devastating, as if he had been airbrushed from existence. Zac looked up and seemed to divine the direction of her thoughts. ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I just can’t. She’d kill me.’

‘I understand.’

‘I used to have a picture of him on my desk, but it upset my eldest son and . . .’ He stared at his hands. ‘I’m sorry . . . My God . . .’

He started, very quietly, to sob. Kate didn’t know what to do. She stood and moved to comfort him but he raised a hand to prevent her. She watched as he brusquely wiped the tears from his cheeks. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

‘There’s nothing to be sorry about. Look, there isn’t much to say. I did see him. He was very angry with me when I got back to the apartment on that Friday night, as he had every right to be. We argued. I came here. The next morning he was waiting when I went out to get a newspaper. He was regretful, tearful. He begged me to have a coffee with him. We went to a café just up there on Fulham Broadway.’

‘What did you discuss?’

‘He said he understood that I was conflicted, uncertain. I told him I didn’t know what to think. I was confused. I loved him. I told him I always would, but I didn’t want to abandon and let down my family, not just Emily but the kids . . . I was all over the place. He was actually incredibly thoughtful and kind, as you would expect. He kept saying he understood and would support me – be my friend – whatever I decided . . .’

Zac was still wrestling to hold back the tears. Kate waited until he had regained control of himself. ‘Do you know what he did for the rest of the day?’

He seemed confused. ‘No. We hugged in the door of the café. I said I needed some time, space. He said he’d always love me and then he was gone. That was the last I saw or heard of him.’

‘He didn’t say what he was planning to do?’

‘He said he was driving to the West Country. He’d been trying to track down a former school master there.’

‘At Sherborne?’

‘I don’t know. It was the place the prime minister went to school.’

‘He was still investigating him?’

‘Not him. The other one, your boss, Sir Alan whatever his name is.’ Kate gasped. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘What?’

‘It’s just . . . How can you be so sure that it was Sir Alan he was investigating?’

‘He was a bit obsessed with him. I told him it wasn’t a very good career-development strategy.’

‘What do you mean he was obsessed with him?’

‘He was always asking me about public-school friendship.’

‘In what way?’