But no. He placed his napkin on the table, and in a moment he would get up and go upstairs, put on his coat and leave the house. The moment, if this was a moment, would pass. Eleanor felt a quickening of her breathing, a pressure in her chest. She looked down at her lap.

He was angry with her.

How had she not realised it before now? It was not a recent anger. She raised her head and looked at him. Really, it should be she who was angry at him.

She had brought the note downstairs with her. The one that someone had gone to the trouble of sending her three days earlier. Had removed it from the desk drawer, still in its cream-coloured envelope, and closed her fingers around it, had walked downstairs with it in her hand. She sat at the table now with the sharp corners of the envelope cutting into her palm.

It appeared that, occasionally, one acted without knowing exactly why. The note was courage, she saw now. A prop. A thing that was tangible when all else seemed insubstantial, inconclusive.

But what she said was: ‘What appointments do you have this morning, Alasdair? Is it the referendum?’

She saw him pause. The frown returned then was gone. His face was blank, expressionless.

‘Naturally. A party meeting, a bill to redraft, a report to write and another to comment on. A meeting with a delegation of councillors from Tamworth, or Singleton—I cannot recall which. Luncheon with a man from the Advocate and one from the Sunday Times. Correspondence to deal with, preparations for this evening’s meeting, a speech to write.’

On and on it went. As he spoke Alasdair looked at the newspaper before him on the table, at his coffee cup, at the door as though expecting it to open. He did not look at her.

‘Alasdair, the man last night—were you frightened?’ she asked him. She had meant to ask him something else entirely, about his day or last night’s meeting at Newtown, but instead she asked him this.

He waited before answering. Thoughts passed across his brow; what husband desires to be asked such a question by his wife? Finally he said, ‘Yes, I believe I was,’ and at last his body settled into a posture of relief, for it is a great strain to be forever wary and untruthful. She saw it in his face, heard it in his voice, his relief.