He looked up at the bar. A friendly looking blonde was polishing some glasses, and a couple of business guys were settling into the second or third pint of the evening. In the fold of his pocket, Porter could feel a crisp roll of twenty-pound notes. Bar, he thought to himself. Plus money. For most of the last two decades there had been no doubt about what those two equalled.

A bender.

Nah, he told himself. Just leave it. You know where that road goes.

Sandy was waiting for him at the table. She looked like a million dollars, he thought proudly. It’s good to have the chance to get to know her properly.

He sat back down, poured some more non-alcoholic grape juice, and tucked into the pudding they’d ordered. Porter wasn’t quite sure why he’d chosen the Travel Inn for a pre-Christmas dinner. Christ, it’s hardly the best food in London, he thought. And he knew better than most people that the guys in the kitchen all hated the bloke running the place. Still, there was something satisfying about spending an evening on this side of the rope rather than the other. It was another way of closing the books on his past life. And another way of reminding himself that he had started again.

‘How’s work?’ said Sandy.

Porter shrugged. ‘It’s good. I’m lucky to have it.’

For the last week, he’d been working as a driver for Sky TV, ferrying their studio guests to the west London headquarters. After coming out of the Lebanon with Katie he’d told her that he didn’t want any publicity. Just tell them an SAS guy came in and got you out, and that he didn’t want his name or face to be revealed since it might jeopardise future operations. She stuck to that end of the bargain, as he knew she would: it sounded more exciting when she told and retold the story on air anyway. The Firm had ferried them both back to London, and they’d spent a couple of days in debriefing. They said they hadn’t known about Collinson slipping the tracking device into his tooth. Porter wasn’t sure if he believed them, but there was no point in arguing about it now. The official line was that Collinson had been killed in a separate Hezbollah attack while looking for Katie. Sir Angus had been effusively grateful for bringing Katie back, and offered to find Porter a job in the organisation, but he’d turned him down. There was no way he wanted to go through that again, he told them. He just wanted to do something simple, earn a few quid, and stay sober. He mentioned it to Katie during one of their debriefs, and she fixed him up with the driving job at Sky. It suited him just fine. He’d found a small flat in Stockwell, he had the Sky Mercedes to get around in, and that was all he needed.

‘You get all sorts of people in the back of the car,’ he said.