‘Oh Syl, I’m sorry. I thought you’d like it. It’s not about being just a housewife, it’s about how you can have everything. You can work and have a child and be successful at both. Because I know you’re going to be. All you need, according to this,’ she said, flicking to a page in the middle of the book that she’d clearly read before, ‘is a fast and unerring sense of priority’.

Sylvia picked up a bhaji. ‘I just didn’t think I’d be here yet.’ She took a bite and felt the heat of the spices warm her face, prickle her eyes until she felt them fill.

Maggie put a hand on hers. ‘Everything comes to an end. But that doesn’t mean the next new thing won’t be just as exciting. It’ll be different, that’s all.’

She nodded, even though she wasn’t sure she agreed. ‘Onwards then.’

Maggie squeezed Sylvia’s hand. ‘And upwards.’

The phone call came in the afternoon but she nearly didn’t pick up. Clive and Ellis were in a heated discussion about whether the scandalous rumours that had just provoked Jeremy Thorpe’s resignation as leader of the Liberal Party were true or actually a conspiracy by the South African security services. No amount of swearing or balled up paper missiles from their colleagues on the floor seemed likely to get them to take their expletive-filled argument elsewhere. And what with the clatter of typewriters and numerous phones ringing, Sylvia didn’t realise for a moment that this one was hers.

‘You’re in luck, Ms Tallis.’ The female voice on the line was brusque, sharp, business-like. ‘Anne Warburton will see you on the seventeenth of May at the embassy in Copenhagen, four o’clock sharp.’

Sylvia’s stomach leaped. She’d got it. She’d got the damn scoop.

‘That’s fantastic news, thank you so much.’ She lodged the receiver under her chin and reached for her diary. The secretary hadn’t said it as a question and Sylvia didn’t take it as one. This wasn’t something you turned down. She flicked over a page to the seventeenth of May and read the single entry: Guys Hospital, 3pm. Shit. Greenham had said it was important, something about monitoring her blood pressure.

She hesitated, twirling the phone cord around her hand, knowing as she said it, that she shouldn’t. ‘I don’t suppose by any chance Ms Warburton could do the sixteenth of May instead?’

There was a pause on the line and Sylvia could picture the pursed lips and steely gaze of a diplomatic secretary who knows her own importance. Formidable, that’s how she’d heard Warburton described – clearly, her secretary was following her example.