C had promised a car would be waiting for her at Paddington. Kate got into it and closed her eyes for much of the journey down to Chevening, the foreign secretary’s country residence. She was only interrupted by a text from the education secretary, Imogen Conrad. Crazy times again, hon. You about?

Kate had once enjoyed an artificial friendship with Imogen of the only kind one can with a husband’s boss. But the education secretary did not appear to think that being filmed having sex with Stuart and breaking up their marriage should be any kind of barrier to her future relationship with Kate. Using the pretext of having been appointed a governor at the children’s school, she had bombarded Kate with texts ever since the scandal broke.

Kate mostly ignored her in what she hoped was a dignified way, but Imogen was insanely persistent and had a skin as thick as that of a rhinoceros. Can we chat? Imogen messaged, when she did not immediately reply. About bloody what? Kate was tempted to ask, but so far she’d held her tongue and was determined to continue to do so. Her dignity demanded she treat Imogen with the amoral vacuity she deserved.

Hun? Imogen texted again. She had once been so annoyed with one of Stuart’s deputies in the Department of Education that she had suggested it would be easier to send around a message in a bottle. When he had been slow to respond to a subsequent text, Imogen had actually sent a message in a bottle. Stuart had thought that clever, sassy and really quite funny. Perhaps it was.

Kate stared at her phone. Am in Cornwall with Rose and the kids, she lied.

Assume you’ll be home tonight for school tomorrow. So can I pop around at 10 p.m., say?

Kate didn’t answer. What was the point?

She stared out of the window for the rest of the journey, trying to think about how she would manage the next two or three days. Rose could step in and look after the kids. She herself would take a sleeping pill tonight to make sure she finally got some rest. It was manageable. Of course it was.

Before long, the car crunched across the smooth gravel and swept past a tinkling fountain to the front of the red-brick Palladian Inigo Jones mansion that was the weekend home of serving foreign secretaries.

A uniformed member of staff ushered her into the grand hallway and showed her through to a small anteroom. She was surprised to find her new deputy waiting for her. ‘Suzy?’ she said.

‘The foreign secretary asked me to come along.’

Kate was tempted to enquire as to how Meg Simpson had even known of Suzy’s existence, but she made a mental note instead to keep an even closer eye on her deputy. ‘Where is Sir Alan?’

‘I believe he’s in a meeting here already.’

Kate sat down on a stiff-backed cream chair by the door. The Sunday newspapers were carefully laid out on a coffee-table in front of an empty fireplace. She picked up The Sunday Times and glanced over the front-page story. She’d intended to catch up on the train, but the tiny shop on Bodmin Parkway station had not yet stretched to newspapers. ‘Any read-out on the NATO summit beyond the headlines?’ she asked Suzy.