‘Well, you’d hardly support it, would you? You’d be opposed to it.’

‘Support the obliteration of it, I mean. AIDS has a red ribbon, breast cancer has pink, bladder cancer has yellow. The cancers have it all sewn up, to be honest, and they haven’t left much room for anything else. Perhaps I should create one.’

‘You could go for something with nasty red splodges on it.’

‘Or spots!’ said Wilkes, feeling he’d had a Eureka moment. ‘You know, as in—’

‘I’m pretty sure that’s leopard,’ said Elizabeth.

‘Oh, right.’

‘But isn’t it all a bit …’

‘A bit what?’

‘A bit gross? Aren’t lepers covered with scars and open, pus-filled wounds? Don’t their arms and legs fall off without any warning?’

‘I don’t think that happens,’ he replied. ‘Although, naturally, we’d have to take precautions so we didn’t contract it ourselves. I still have a bunch of hemp masks left over from last year, so they should help. But you have to admit, if we arrived back in London and stood in the middle of Trafalgar Square ringing bells and shouting “Unclean! Unclean!”, it would really make people sit up and think. I bet your father’s never had a leper on his chat show.’

‘He had Gary Glitter on a few times back in the day.’

‘If he booked us, it would create a media storm.’

‘Yes, but then we’d have leprosy. Is it worth it?’

‘It would be if it stopped people spending all their time on social media and made them actually live their lives instead.’

‘But Wilkes,’ said Elizabeth, reaching across the table to place her hand on his, ‘you’re on social media. You’re very active on it. You practically have carpal tunnel syndrome in your right wrist.’

‘I have to be,’ he replied. ‘I’m educating strangers on how they can live better lives. And making sure that those with the wrong opinions are held to account.’

Elizabeth smiled and realized once again what an incredible person her boyfriend was. His giving nature. His empathy. His indestructible conviction in his own moral superiority. ‘I don’t know why they always give out honours to politicians and movie stars,’ she said. ‘It’s people like you who are the real heroes. You should be Sir Wilkes Maguire.’

‘Naturally, I could never accept any honour that invoked the spirit of the British empire,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘But at the same time, if such a thing came my way, it would be an amazing boost for the homeless. And the lepers.’

‘I’m sure Daddy knows people at Number Ten,’ she said. ‘I’ll have a word.’

‘Well, if you must,’ he said, as if it was neither here nor there. ‘But let’s get back to what we were discussing.’

‘Oh, I thought we had finished talking about that.’

‘We’ve barely even begun!’