The woman brought in a small parcel and put it on a table on the other side of the door. The table already had a number of envelopes and packages waiting to be perused. By the time the protection officer had left the apartment, Tobey was off the phone. But almost immediately it started to ring again.

‘I’ll let it go through to the answering machine,’ he told me. ‘Or we’ll be here all day.’

How on earth did he do it? The world of party politics was like wrestling with crocodiles in a sewer. How did those who entered the vat spotless and full of good intentions stay clean in that environment? I shook my head. Rather Tobey than me.

Across the room, his laptop screen was still visible. The emails kept on coming.

‘Jesus, take the wheel!’ I exclaimed, staring at the non-stop emails. ‘I hope you have good people watching your back. Who’s looking out for you? Don’t you get any peace from all this? It must feel like being pecked to pieces.’

Unexpected sympathy filled me as I looked round the room. But why? Wasn’t this what Tobey had always wanted? I became aware of him standing like a sentinel less than a metre away, watching me.

‘What?’ I asked when Tobey’s unblinking stare started to burn.

‘Callie, is there any chance, when all this is over, that you and I could start again?’ he asked quietly.

‘We’re already friends, Tobey. Nothing will ever change that.’

‘I’m hoping we can be more than that.’

Blinking in confusion, I opened my mouth to reply, but Tobey got in first. ‘I know this isn’t the time or place, but I need to put it out there. I want to be with you. The two of us. Together.’

I gawped at him. Closing my lips, I endeavoured to come up with an appropriate response. Strangely disappointed, I said, ‘Tobey, what on earth makes you think that I’d be interested in being your side chick?’

‘Callie, I’m not asking you to be my side chick,’ said Tobey. ‘I’m asking you to be my wife.’

Shit! What? Wife?

The shocks just kept on coming. I stumbled to the closest sofa to sit before I fell down.

Start again by getting married? Was he for real?

‘You … you want to marry me?’

Tobey came over to sit next to me. ‘Yes.’

A weighty silence pressed down hard upon both of us as we looked at each other. Tobey’s gaze never wavered from mine.

‘Why?’

‘We’d be good together.’

Frustration flared within me. His proposal had unexpectedly lit a flame of something close to joy inside me, only for it to be almost immediately snuffed out by his reply and common sense. Is that what our relationship had been reduced to, the politically convenient?