I had pushed all thoughts of Danny as far from me as possible, until sometimes it all seemed like a dream. There were many nights when I couldn’t sleep, his face spinning through my head, but I was no longer crippled with yearning as I had been at first. The sickening pain dulled to a monotonous ache. The drug that had filled my veins ebbed away, the fear that this was my one last chance for happiness faded. I accepted my lot, but it was a long and torturous path, considering the brevity of our relationship, and one I struggled to comprehend. Only I could have chosen someone who, rather than rejuvenate my flagging self-worth, actually plunged me deeper into despair. And yet, I started to think now, was it more to do with the place I’d been in, than the man I had chosen?

Whatever the answer, I had fallen too fast, too hard; irrationally, illogically. Now I had to get back up again.

Most frightening though, Lord Higham’s newly formed party, the UK National Party, was being greeted by the British public with an alacrity that was entirely alarming. As charismatic as smooth Robert Kilroy-Silk but not as oily or overly earnest as the new UKIP lot, Higham spoke with such charm and fervour that he whipped the proletariat up into a frenzy of desire to be British, to unite, to see the nation return to its ‘on the beaches’ mentality, accompanied by the trusty bowler hat or knotted headscarf. Occasionally Higham would mention the scourge of Muslim terrorists, the rise of divisive faith schools, immigration gone mad – but he tucked these subjects carefully into his speeches between the other more noble kind.

‘He’s a dangerous fucker,’ Xav sniffed at the television we were watching with the sound down, gorging ourselves on the champagne truffles he’d brought with him.

‘I’ll say.’

I looked at those protuberant glacial eyes and I thought of my friend Dalziel. I remembered the way his father had covered the crisis up; how a fatal situation had been made slick after Higham’s hand carefully smoothed it over.

Who knew what lay beneath?

PART THREE

Chapter Thirty-One
THE TIMES, APRIL 2009

Our pleasures in this world are always to be paid for.

Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen