‘I only worked out afterwards you must be at the funeral. Are you OK?’

‘Not really. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house after Clare’s kids told us how much they miss Mummy.’

She gives a short laugh. ‘God, Gil, are you jealous? Did the little nephews upstage you?’

‘Be nice.’

‘You really ought to spend more time with human beings.’

‘Do you know any?’

‘Ha ha, very funny.’ Her voice is deep, the St Paul’s drawl still discernible under the practised Mockney. ‘Why don’t you come over to mine?’

I think – briefly – about how deeply pissed off my entire family will be if I miss the wake. Even by my standards, that would be a new low.

‘I’ll be there in half an hour.’

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

AN HOUR AND A QUARTER later I am on my back. Marilyn Krol is naked beside me, smoking. The room is a tip: underwear and clothes everywhere, an unemptied ashtray on a broken chair. Worse than a student room.

‘Thank you,’ I say.

‘What for? I wasn’t doing you a favour.’ Somewhere in the tangle of sheets she finds a greying white T-shirt, with a fading Labour red rose on the front, and pulls it on.

‘I only meant it was nice.’

‘You are a bad distraction. I should be focused on the election.’

Marilyn sits up. She has a boyish face, hair that is long in front, short at the back. Her gamine look disguises the political instincts of a veteran. She has few inhibitions. Or at least with me. She lies down again, arches her back and wriggles into her silk culotte knickers.

‘Are you sure the plaster isn’t going to fall on our heads?’ I ask, staring up at the unnerving bulges in the ceiling. ‘It looks dodgy.’

‘It’s been like that since I moved in.’

‘Looks to me like it could come crashing down at any moment. I wouldn’t want to sleep under that.’

‘Well, you’re not. So stop being such an old woman.’

It’s a relief to escape from the claustrophobic family sadness if only for a couple of hours. Marilyn is incapable of being maudlin. She is thirty-one and has one objective, to install Johnny Todd in Number 10. A couple of years ago he plucked her as a policy adviser from a left-of-centre think tank, where she acquired a reputation for understanding the UK’s Byzantine welfare system better than paunchy men twice her age. She quickly established herself as one of his most important aides, part policy adviser, part gatekeeper. She is competitive, tough, funny, cynical. And I’ve never been with anyone who shouts louder at orgasm.

‘Do you think anyone knows about us?’ I ask.

‘There is no “us”.’

‘Stop it. You know what I mean.’

‘I haven’t told anyone. Are you getting worried someone will find out about your deep-throat source?’