Cara clenches her hands between her knees. Philip: loyal, kind, faithful. How can she manage without him? They were a great team and their parties were legendary amongst their colleagues in the FCO. He collapsed with an aortic aneurysm and died instantly. Gone between one moment and the next. Each morning when she wakes, there is a split second before reality strikes, a split second in which she thinks, something terrible has happened. What is it?

When she told him that she was pregnant with Joe’s child, he put his arms around her and held her close.

‘What shall I do?’ she asked him, unable to stop weeping with the shock and fear of it all.

‘Marry me,’ he said, his face hidden in her hair. ‘Marry me and we’ll bring the baby up together. It will be my child.’

She clung to him, dear, familiar Philip, always there in a crisis. She’d always loved him; why shouldn’t she marry him? It seemed impossible that she would ever marry anyone else. He was still holding her tightly, and saying she must consider his offer carefully, and then he was explaining that he was gay, that he wanted to be in a stable relationship so as to pursue his career. She’d never suspected that he was gay. He’d had several girlfriends, though never a serious, long-term relationship, and he was very popular with women. But after that first moment of shock her instinct was to hold him even more tightly. They would protect each other, keep each other’s secrets. Later, as she saw their friends being unfaithful to their partners, getting divorced, or living in a kind of permanent unspoken truce of indifference, she knew that she and Philip were happier than most.

The front door opens, she hears voices, Oscar barks, and instinctively she gets to her feet. She stands for a moment, listening, wondering when she should emerge. Then she hears Max call her name and she opens the bedroom door and goes out to greet Judith.