‘Labour leader Johnny Todd is poised to announce that the party would not increase income tax if it forms the next government. Stop. Sources close to Labour’s apostrophe ‘s’ leader have revealed to the FC that a new Labour government would freeze income tax rates, comma, including for high earners. Stop. New paragraph. The symbolic announcement is designed to show how determined Todd is to tackle Labour’s image as a high hyphen tax party. Stop. But the pledge will outrage Labour traditionalists, both in Parliament and among trade union bosses. Stop. New paragraph.’

And so I go on, as relentlessly as the fingers on the keyboard that I hear clacking down the line: 40-odd words per paragraph, 16 paragraphs, 4 columns, leaving enough space for a picture in what I assume will be an above-the-fold splash. The subeditors will go through it later, but the FC could run it straight as I delivered it.

By the time I’ve finished I’m almost myself again. No longer shaking.

Time to get home, clean up and maybe grab an hour or two of sleep before Clare comes out of surgery.

And then the Nokia trills. It must be the copydesk, wanting to double check something. No. It’s Mum again. Except it isn’t.

‘Gil?’

Something’s not right. ‘Hi, Dad.’

‘The hospital rang. It’s bad news.’

‘What do you mean?’

Stupidest question I’ve ever asked. The answer is in the silence. The ground disappears and I start to fall.

‘Clare died.’

*

I walk in a daze back to the hospital, pushing my bike, to meet my parents. Charles has still not landed. So it is down to me, Mum and Dad to hear the meaningless explanations from the doctors and start the numbing administration of formalising a death. I don’t feel present. I am a ghostly observer, not taking anything in. By two o’clock Clare has been processed and we can leave.

‘Come to the house at four,’ says Mum. An order, not a suggestion. ‘We need to talk things through.’

*

It’s actually gone five by the time I’m in Mecklenburgh Square, banging the knocker on their glossy black front door. Thomas Carlyle, Virginia Woolf, R. H. Tawney and Emanuel Litvinoff all lived round here, so obviously it’s where my mum and dad would feel at home.

My father answers the door. Bernard Peck, world-renowned Professor of Sociology and Politics at the London School of Economics, fellow of the British Academy, adviser to successive (and now dead) Labour leaders, and Nobel prizewinner in the category reserved for arrested emotional development. His face is creased, like a semi-deflated balloon. His broad shoulders seem shrunken, hunched inside a white cable-knit jumper that looks two sizes too big. His eyes are puffy. From tears? That would be remarkable. I’ve never seen him cry, not even when his mum, my grandma, died.

‘Gilbert. I thought you’d come sooner.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Well, you’re here now.’