The seasons have turned. The night air is warm and London is alive with car horns being tooted to celebrate Labour’s success. Todd’s triumph. As I hurry over Westminster Bridge, lights shimmer off the Thames. Behind me on the right are the Houses of Parliament, about to be seized in a bloodless coup by a new generation of MPs and a party that has at last escaped the wilderness. Immediately opposite is St Thomas’s Hospital, and I can now put a face to that voice I heard asking after Clare when I was there. But why did he go to the hospital?

I stop in the middle of the bridge and look east. Carried on the wind a few hundred yards from downriver are the chants of ecstatic Labour activists, singing along to the anthem of the age, Blur’s ‘Song 2’. ‘Woo-hoo,’ they shout. ‘Woo-hoo.’

Woo-fucking-hoo. Maybe Todd really cared about Clare. Maybe. Was he planning to make it up to her in some way after the election? But if so, why was she so bitter? It doesn’t make sense.

I walk on. As I leave the bridge I skirt disused County Hall, a municipal palace before Thatcher abolished the Greater London Council, now vacant and searching for a new purpose in Todd’s Britain. I turn left and walk towards the noise. On my right now is a symbol of the renewal of Britain planned by an earlier Labour government, the Royal Festival Hall, with its revolutionary mixture of concrete and glass. And there in front of me is the ecstatic mob, hundreds of shouting, laughing and singing Labour supporters. On the electronic screen at the top of the National Theatre’s Duplo-Box buildings, it reads ‘Modern Labour, a new start for Britain.’ Music is pumping from loudspeakers, segueing from Blur, to Oasis, to Suede. Huge swivelling spotlights are making patterns in the night sky. This is not the traditional British politics of men in badly cut suits shaking each other’s hands and offering congratulations over a glass of warm beer. Something has changed. It is a euphoric rave.

A sea of happy people is between me and the National Theatre. I ring Marilyn. She’s shrieking above a din of drunk colleagues. ‘I can’t believe it, Gil! It’s better than I dared to hope. We’ve done it. We’ve done it!’

‘Where are you?’ I also have to shout to be heard.

‘I’m inside the National. Are you still in the Commons?’

‘I’m just by the Royal Festival Hall. How do I find you?’

‘Go to the left side of the National, stage door. I’ll tell security to let you in.’

By the time I’ve managed to push my way through the crowds and shown my press card to security, Marilyn is waiting on the other side of the glass door. She throws her arms around me and I inhale her intoxicating smell of cigarettes and perfume. She whispers in my ear, ‘We did it Gil! We fucked the Tories.’ The warmth of her body and her unalloyed joy at having vanquished her opponents are an irresistible aphrodisiac. But I can’t be distracted. Not now.