I managed to keep the panic out of my voice. Thanked her for her time and hung up. I leaned forward, my head against the telephone. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have a friendly face back at HQ who might be able to tell me something useful without betraying me. I couldn’t help but think that the sensible thing to do would be to call Cranham, but my stomach lurched at the very thought of asking my husband for help. Our arrangement just about worked. We’d always been admirably civil to one another and each were more than aware of what we owed the other, but whatever I had tripped into could have consequences for him if I brought it to his door. He wasn’t the father of our children but they called him Dad whenever they saw him or spent the occasional night at what we jokingly referred to as the ‘family home’. They were at school most of the time. I called most days and we wrote constantly and I did my best to be all I could be, even as I tried to climb the career ladder. Cranham could have made it all much easier for me if I had only asked. He was decent enough and knew me well enough not to proffer advancement without me first asking him for help. If anything, my marriage to one of our most senior civil servants had hampered my ascent. To now come running to him and demand answers over who was chasing me – it felt repugnant.

I stayed where I was for a full minute, just breathing and thinking, listening to the sounds of the cars race by.

With a weary sense of inevitability, I retrieved the recording device from my pocket and held the little earphones up to my throbbing ear. I listened to myself again. Felt nauseous as I heard myself eviscerate the direction of MI6 and our increasingly inhuman, self-serving approach to international affairs. Good God, the recording alone was enough to have me thrown out.

I was about to click off the recording when I realized that the tape was only halfway through. I let it run. Heard the crackle of a wiretap and the distinct ker-klunk of one recording stitched over another.