‘No comment,’ said Ash Kattan icily, outside the House of Commons, pushing past the TV crew.

‘He is betraying himself,’ she said, back in the studio, and she seemed almost regal, and silently I cheered her. ‘Just like his father too.’

I began to accept the facts would never add up neatly. Life didn’t work that way. Not mine, anyway. I told James that I was leaving him; he wasn’t surprised. I rented a small cottage outside Stow-on-the-Wold. Alicia wouldn’t have to move school, and the twins would join her there in the autumn. James was going back to London, to stay with Liam until he’d sorted himself out. He’d keep a flat in Oxford, he said, and he’d see them in the week, after school; he paid half the rent on the cottage and that was fine by me. The children seemed largely accepting. They’d got so used to him not being around, and we’d managed to separate without the acrimony that could have ruined us all.

One Monday morning in September, Mrs McCready arrived early, looking terribly pink, clutching the Daily Mirror. She hovered by the kettle for a moment, finally thrusting the paper almost violently into her shopping trolley. For the first half-hour she puffed around the small kitchen, tidying things that didn’t need tidying. Eventually, after she had wiped the counter for the fourth time, I looked up from the computer.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I’m – I really don’t think it’s my place to say,’ she mumbled, her mouth setting in that familiar line.

‘What isn’t?’

Reluctantly she retrieved the newspaper from the trolley. A broad and rather repellent face stared from the front page, cheeks angry with something red like acne rosacea. Hair like a brush, head like a bullet.

‘My life in the den of devils: Sex, drugs and Lord Higham’s son.’

For a moment I just gazed at the headline, at Brian’s ugly face, and then slowly I grinned. ‘Brilliant.’

‘It’s all about sex!’ McCready stared at me like I was mad.

‘Are you horrified, McCready?’ I stood and put my arm round her, scanning the front page. A small mention of James and me – but no new scandal involving us. And since the trial, it was all out there already, as far as we were concerned.

‘Please don’t abandon me now,’ I murmured, scanning the page. ‘Not after everything we’ve been through together.’

‘As if,’ she sniffed. ‘Rotten little liar, I expect. All that stuff about opium. It’s Chinese, that poison. And such horrible skin.’

‘I expect that’s true.’

She gazed at me, soft cheeks trembling. ‘What?’

‘That it’s Chinese.’