‘Well, it’s been delightful meeting you again, after all this time.’ He was still holding the girl’s hand. ‘You know, I have such little time now for R & R. So little time for family. Though of course,’ he let her go now, ‘I do what I can to protect them.’

‘I guess everyone has to make sacrifices,’ I said. ‘Sometimes.’

‘Sacrifices,’ Higham said slowly. His eyes were blank now; blank and staring like the dead. ‘Not one of my most favourite words, Rose.’

I thought back to Oxford; to the little boy in the bed. The little boy Charlie. I wondered exactly what he remembered today. Christ, what a family. What a mess.

‘Really?’ I looked back: I held my nerve.

‘Think on the job. You’ve a few days to decide.’

We both knew that I would never work for him. I turned towards the stairs.

‘Oh, and, Rose?’

I turned back.

‘Dear sick Rose. Do send my love to your children. Hadi Kattan told me they were delightful.’

‘Mr Kattan? He never met them,’ I stammered.

‘Oh – didn’t he?’ Higham stood now, brushing imaginary crumbs from his trousers, cigar clamped between his teeth. ‘I must have got him confused with someone else. Easily done.’

‘When did he say that? What’s your link with Kattan?’ I asked. ‘Are you friends?’

‘All these questions, my dear. Anyone would think you were a journalist.’ His tone was mocking.

‘Just answer the question, please.’ I bit the inside of my lip. ‘Please, Lord Higham.’

‘I’m not sure “friends” would be quite right, my dear. We’ve known each other – well, for ever, it seems.’

I thought of Peggy’s cuttings. ‘Because of the oil embargo?’

‘Maybe. I knew his wife, Alia, briefly. A long time ago. And her son, Ash.’ Higham smiled again now, his arm around the young girl who blinked impassively. I hated him at that moment. ‘Actually, Kattan rented my Cotswolds house recently. Perhaps you know it?’

My skin crawling, I paused for a second, looking down the stairs, racking my brain.

‘Do you remember the end of Blake’s rose poem?’ I pulled myself up tall. ‘If my memory serves me right, it’s: And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy. Pretty apt, I’d say.’

Then I ran down the stairs and out of the restaurant. The driver opened the passenger door of the car as I passed.

‘I’ll walk, thanks,’ I said. The evening was clear, the sun a dusky pink orb just dissolving behind the city’s skyline. I knew I was setting off into my own howling storm.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.

Samuel Johnson