He stood up, unable to remain stationary any longer. He walked about the room.

But was it not almost exactly a year since Eleanor had lost the child?

This pulled him up short. He thought back. Realised the anniversary had come and gone nine days ago, unnoticed. By himself, at least. And three days later the vote had been lost.

He took up his pacing again, but slower now. It was not a time he wished to recall. Eleanor had been bedridden for some weeks afterwards and he had been a little afraid of her, he realised, during that time. His wife facing an enemy he could not defeat—her own body, God’s will, call it what you may.

After a time she had rallied and one evening—weeks later, for it had been late October by then—they had attended a reception at Parliament House. Eleanor’s first engagement since the loss of the child, though neither of them had spoken of it in those terms. And he had understood—of course he had!—that it would be arduous for her. Women felt these things more keenly than men. He would be at her side to guide her through it. But in the end he was delayed, a meeting had gone on longer than anticipated, and he arrived at the Assembly lobby some minutes after the hour they had arranged to meet.

After some little time, when he felt at first concerned by his wife’s non-appearance and then foolish, thinking she had changed her mind and fled home, he saw her emerge from the ladies’ lounge. He started forward. But then he checked himself. For Eleanor had a curious flush on her face and her eyes were quite strange to him. A moment later George Drummond-Smith emerged from the same room, pulling on his gloves and walking with a kind of swagger, as was his wont, but that evening the swagger was accentuated. And any number of others witnessed it, the lobby filling up with parliamentarians and their wives. The looks they exchanged …

Alasdair felt himself shrink and become quite still. That curious, almost feverish look in his wife’s eyes as she came to him and placed her hand on his arm, turned him utterly cold.

‘What were you doing, alone, in a room with that man?’ he asked her, and she stared past him as though she had not heard. Her first engagement since the loss of the child. He had thought to make himself particularly solicitous of her needs, to guide her through it. Now, he wondered. Now, he felt himself a fool.

How much of a fool? Had his wife merely been careless? Indiscreet? It was contemptible of him to imagine anything more—she had just lost the child, had been bedridden!—but yet he had thought. He had wondered. Had felt an ice-cold seed of doubt take root deep within him.