I arrange to meet Sandra for breakfast at my hotel to organise the supplementary awards ceremony and say goodnight to her with the air of a job well done, not a common reward in my occupation. The night is brisk, the streets busy with youngsters. I walk the short stretch to the Royal, feeling safer than in central London. I need the walk to calm my mind, but my mind will not be calmed. The siren call is too close. I lie in bed, listening to the fading shouts of late drinkers, willing sleep to come. It takes three Cham. Rads, a valerian and a Nembutal before merciful blackness descends.

Sandra turns up in the breakfast room on the dot of eight a.m. in soft layers of office wear. Grey angora sweater, pleated skirt, small earrings and a trace of pale lipstick. Freed from her evening costume and inner stiffenings, she smells shower-fresh and erotically alive. We shake hands – air-kissing has not caught on in these parts – and as we sit down I catch myself mentally undressing my pliant partner, raising the sweater over her unbouffed hair, dropping the straps of her shiny slip and stopping my imagination just short of unfastening her (undoubtedly sensible) Marks & Spencer bra. We must get down to business. There will be plenty of time later to play with fantasy.

Sandra sits down at table without waiting for me to draw back her chair. She orders the Healthy Breakfast, sighing, ‘It’s a losing battle,’ and patting her waistline with a hint of flirtation.

‘You seem to be putting up a better fight than the Iraqis,’ I quip, and she chuckles.

As we wait for food – mine is plain tea and toast – she produces the morning papers. The Tawburn Gazette has a triumphant Maria Olszewska beaming across its front page and a full report inside. The awards were too late at night and, I thought, too insignificant to merit national attention, but Sandra shows me an inch on page two of The Times and the Telegraph, announcing the Simmonds winner. It appears that the moment I took the microphone, she got on the phone to the late editions of the London broadsheets. Her enterprise is admirable; she is wasted, I decide, on Tawside.

Arrangements for the second round of prize-giving are quickly concluded. As an apparent afterthought, I ask Sandra to organise a private lunch in my hotel with the Simmonds winner and his parents. ‘I’d be delighted if you could join us,’ I tell her, laying a friendly hand on her bare forearm.

‘Can’t, Mr S.’ She smiles. ‘I’m supposed to be working for the finance department and they’re getting stroppy about my absences. It was all that Olly could do to get me this morning off.’

‘How is your husband?’ I ask, over-courteously.