‘We got out a map and everything. He’s keen on the Dordogne in France. Far enough south to be a bit warmer – which would be great – but near enough to make it possible to drive, if we wanted to. We looked up flights and Gus and I reckon we can easily get to Bergerac, or maybe Bordeaux.’

‘That’s good news.’

‘He’s not sure what he’s going to do for work. He said he reckons he’ll have to think outside the box about that.’

‘Would it not be easier to go to Paris? Dad is very bright and I am fairly certain he’d find work there.’

‘He likes the idea of somewhere warmer. So do we. He said there’s a lot of English people in the Dordogne and they even play cricket there, so Gus was super-excited about that.’

Kate washed down two sleeping pills with a slug of wine. ‘Roll on the future,’ she said, with as much sincerity as she could muster.

‘Do you take those every night?’ Fiona asked.

‘Erm . . . not every night, no.’

‘Honestly?’

‘All right, too often, yes.’

‘I know you’re worried about me, but it’s yourself you need to be paying attention to.’

Sometimes Fiona was capable of wisdom well beyond her years, Kate thought. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘But I can’t think about it right now.’

She finished her wine, kissed her daughter and left her nursing a cup of tea at the kitchen table as she went up to bed. For once, she was asleep almost the moment her head hit the pillow.

25

25

AS ALMOST EVERYONE who has ever had even mild insomnia will attest, four hours’ pill-induced sleep is not enough. Watching the dawn light creep through the shutters and across the kitchen table several hours after she had risen, Kate had quietly promised herself that, as soon as Mikhail and his father were safely brought into the UK, she would request time off work and make a concerted attempt to sort herself out. She had grasped that her job was breaking her. And that, in turn, might have influenced her decision to keep the morning’s rendezvous with the foreign secretary simple.

With Sir Alan’s wife now hovering between life and death, the meeting took place in the kitchen of his Pimlico home, one floor beneath the bedroom in which Alice was being nursed night and day. That lent the proceedings a surreal and distinctly uncomfortable air, which, it was clear, none of them was immune to. The foreign secretary, Meg Simpson, arrived last and didn’t bother to take off her long, fawn raincoat, as if she were going to run at the first hint of news she didn’t want to hear. She took a seat opposite her permanent secretary, a strikingly young-looking man with wavy blond hair and a bright tie. He must have been forty, but looked twenty-five at most.