She’d relinquished the footage from the camping trip after I’d threatened her with the best lawyers in town. She must have thought I was completely stupid, but I’d rumbled her the night of the street party, only I couldn’t quite bear to believe it back then. And frankly I was distracted.

In a special Newsnight interview, Marcus came across as both solemn and moving on the theme of being father to a son with some ‘special educational needs’. ‘He’s doing really well though,’ Marcus had said, ‘and he’s got an IQ of over 150. He had a traumatic birth. Nella did so well – and it’s inspired me to look at UK maternity care. Along with the family scholarships we’ve set up at various schools and universities.’

‘Devoted,’ the Evening Standard said.

‘A man for our times,’ cooed the Mail. ‘The new Cameron?’

And, just like so many of the upper echelons in Britain and America, of course, Marcus had slave trade in his past; it was forgivable, it seemed.

The left-wing papers were less convinced, perhaps, but the women of Britain took him even closer to their hearts, and he was quickly voted ‘Politician Most Women Over 30 Would Like to Shag’ by at least one gossip magazine.

It was exhausting just to think about what I might have to contend with in the future. Women always fell for power, didn’t they?

And the treacherous Rebekah’s motives?

Not money – well, she didn’t need it then, though she might need it now her husband had scarpered. Nor did she do it to assure my friendship. No, she was just motivated by complete envy and malice, it seemed.

How sad, I thought, tidying up the drawing room after the latest journalist had left. Willow, back for the weekend and another family shoot, was next door on FaceTime with her new boyfriend from school: chinless-wonder heir to a British custard empire. So much more suitable, if rather dull. The new au pair was busy with Beau in the kitchen; Marcus had gone for a run.

I opened my desk drawer and took out the envelope G. A. Chattel (aka Sid Wright) had handed me the day after he’d given a similar one to my husband. Sid Wright: an efficient stringer I’d used back at Sky News, more than happy to be paid generously for his part in my duplicity. Marcus received his nasty manila surprise the week after I’d first contacted Sid and explained my idea, offering good money and – the bittersweet kicker that my husband would never know about – letting Marcus be the one to pay for Sid’s services rendered.

Well. Did Marcus really think I hadn’t known he was a member of the awful Cleland clan eons ago? I had friends in high places: I’d gone to school with them, to Durham university with the best. The old boy network worked for women too: I’d known all about Marcus’s family and their slave-trade past since just before our wedding day – as did he, of course. I wasn’t stupid, and nor was I marrying into a family I knew nothing about, love or no.