Casey waited until Hessa was out of the room.

‘You’re not coming to DC?’

‘You can do it without me, Casey. Take Hessa.’

Why? Casey didn’t need to ask.

Two weeks earlier, Miranda had found messages on her husband’s mobile.

What sort of an idiot thinks about cheating on an investigative journalist? Miranda had spat in their little office the next day, trying to laugh. Casey had put an awkward arm around her shoulders, not knowing what to say.

‘There’s nothing too incriminating on his phone,’ Miranda had said. ‘Nothing conclusive. I don’t even know if anything has happened.’

Not yet.

‘Who is she?’

‘He met her at work.’ Tom was a corporate lawyer. In-house now: better hours, less stress. ‘Some girl in business development. Whatever the fuck that is.’

‘Do you want me to find out about her?’

‘No. Yes. I don’t know.’

And it was so unlike Miranda, that uncertainty.

Tom and Miranda had met at university. Back when everything was possible. They laughed their way into marriage, soon after, too early. And realised, too late, that their dreams were so very different.

They had moved to a pretty house in Queen’s Park, all the same. With patterned tiles cold underfoot in the hallway, and roses round the door. Surrounded by prams, and smiles, and school fetes.

This is what I want, he whispered.

I know, she said. I know.

And he’d waited, a kind man, as she fled to Nigeria and Russia, Libya and Iraq.

When will you be home? he would ask, calling from a back garden just right for a Wendy house. Again and again, until the pretty house became a prison.

I wish your dreams were enough.

‘Rebecca, she’s called.’ Miranda snarled the name. ‘Becky.’

‘And what do you want?’ Casey bit a fingernail.

‘I don’t know. I think Tom might have finally had enough. And I don’t know that I can blame him.’

Miranda turned away.

I’m going to save my marriage, Miranda had said to Casey a few days later, knowing the words were ridiculous. As if her marriage were a drowning damsel, caught in a rip tide.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’ A pause. ‘No. Let’s talk about something else.’

Casey looked across the bustling restaurant. Le Diplomate, appropriately enough; Washington’s interpretation of a French bistro. Casey stared at the mosaic-tiled floors disapprovingly, as the noise rose around them. Tiles were the worst for undercover work.

They were in the heart of America’s capital, just off the thoroughly gentrified Logan Circle. All around them, gossip ebbed and flowed. The lobbyists, the politicians, the journalists: they all came here.

Hessa was sitting across the table from Casey, awkward in a big wicker chair.

‘Relax,’ said Casey. ‘You’ve got to look like you belong here.’

‘Sorry.’ Hessa tried to adjust.

‘And never apologise.’