Labour has booked the terrace outside the National Theatre by the Thames for its post-election party. Choosing a location with such cultural significance is the first time Todd has flirted with hubris, though I assume he banned all references to a ‘victory’ party. I have an invitation, from Marilyn. She said she assumed I wouldn’t be able to make it, because I’d be beavering away filing and revising copy all night long, as we hit a rolling series of edition deadlines. She’s wrong. I will be there.

I can’t suppress the hideous idea that Marilyn must have known all along, that her boss was fucking and deceiving my sister while she was fucking me. The betrayal inflames me. ‘Where are you now, Jess?’

‘Burma Road.’

‘I’ll be with you in half an hour or so.’

At the station I show my travel card and take the lift down to the platform. Or rather two Gils will take the train. There’s Gil on his way to put in an all-night stint covering one of the most important stories of the year, maybe of the decade: the end of one party’s long reign and the start of another’s. With him is the Gil who has just entered his dead sister’s nightmare. I know that my reporting will be exemplary tonight, because my hyper-focus is switched on in a crisis. Unless you have my kind of addiction to work, unless work is your drug of choice, you won’t understand how I can carry on having just fallen into Clare’s hell. The thought of asking for time out doesn’t occur.

By 9.30 p.m., the Burma Road is buzzing. We’re like the crowd at Wembley before the Cup Final. Or maybe a better analogy is with the teams in their respective dressing rooms. Because in just half an hour we’ll all be frantically bashing away on our keyboards, playing what for us is the match of the year, trying to interpret first the exit poll just after ten – the preliminary estimate of the outcome – and then from midnight onwards the steady stream of constituency results. Every room is full, every television turned to BBC1, or ITV or Sky News. From the Globe’s room I hear Wilkinson barking instructions to his junior colleagues, to start preparing portraits of the winners and losers. Cunt. Before I reach our desks, I see Scott in the corridor. We look at each other, I mutter hello, he nods, and we walk past each other. We have a shared secret, not a bond.