‘I have a good nose,’ he said, smiling as he tapped the proboscis in question. ‘Arturetto Landi once gave me a tour of his studio and said that I could have had a career in it.’

‘Being a nose?’

‘Being a nose.’

‘It’s good to have options. Hello,’ she said, turning to Angela.

‘Hello,’ replied Angela, standing up and shaking her hand.

‘This is a friend of mine,’ said George, looking a little rattled. He would have preferred if Angela had pretended to be a deaf-mute and kept to her seat. ‘Angela Gosebourne. Angela is a milliner.’

‘A milliner?’

‘Yes, a milliner.’

The Shadow Home Secretary considered this for a moment, as if she was not entirely sure that she understood the word. ‘Do you mean hats?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ replied George. ‘Hats. And, you know, fascinators. And what have you …’ he added, trailing off.

‘How interesting. I don’t wear hats very often. I don’t think I have a head for them.’

‘Everyone does,’ said Angela. ‘You just have to find the right hat for you, that’s all.’

‘No, you’re quite wrong,’ replied the Shadow Home Secretary, who had been concerned about the size of her head since childhood, when the children in her school suggested that she had been immortalized on Easter Island. ‘But I wish you well in your endeavours all the same.’

‘Thank you,’ replied Angela, sitting down again.

Some more conversation was exchanged between the principals before George resumed his seat too.

‘That was very odd,’ said Angela. ‘Why did you tell her that?’

‘Tell her what?’

‘That I’m a milliner.’

‘I momentarily forgot that you’re a therapist, that’s all.’

‘What nonsense.’

‘All right, I didn’t want to say anything incriminating. She knows Beverley. It wouldn’t do if news of this lunch got back to her.’

‘And why is being a milliner any less incriminating than being a psychotherapist?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, throwing his hands in the air. ‘I panicked, that’s all. Sometimes, I find myself at a loss to explain my actions.’

‘The milliner and the nose,’ said Angela, considering the careers they might have had in the alternate universe he had created. ‘It sounds rather like a children’s fairy tale, don’t you think?’

‘Children’s fairy tales are notoriously dark,’ he replied, ordering another drink and wondering whether it would betray his emotions too much if he ordered a double. ‘Full of gruesome murders and anthropomorphism.’

‘And cannibalism,’ she added. ‘Think of Hansel and Gretel locked away in a cage above the witch’s fire. Being fattened up for the slaughter.’

‘I’ll avoid that one when I’m reading our son to sleep.’

‘So that’s something that you can see happening?’ she asked, looking up hopefully.

‘Well, possibly. We’ll see.’

‘But you’ll give me an answer at some point, though? About whether you want to be involved?’