‘The point,’ I say, ‘is that I never did acid again. And, with Clare’s support, I even knuckled down and passed my exams. I’ve never really spoken about this to anyone. Clare wasn’t just a sister. She looked out for me. And in a way she took the place of Mum and Dad by looking after me. She was the most important person in my life. When you turned up, it was hard. I was no longer the most important person in her life . . . I felt betrayed.’

Charles takes his hands out of the sink. They are red from hot water. ‘You should have spoken to her about all of this,’ he says. ‘You never had any reason to be jealous of me. I knew almost from the first time I met her that her relationship with you was special. Nothing like mine with my sister. Honest truth: I was jealous of you.’

And then we’re both crying and looking at each other helplessly.

‘Fuck the dishes,’ says Charles. ‘We need a drink.’

In the sitting room, the surface of the piano is covered with family photographs. It was always like that, but now it feels like a shrine to Clare.

‘Give me a minute,’ he says, ‘I am just going to check on the boys.’

I plonk myself down on the tan leather sofa and check the rest of the messages on my pager. There is a week of them and I scroll through. Mostly they’re stale breadcrumbs left by PR flacks, MPs and City contacts: none look enticing or important. Then I reach the last – oldest – message. Monday, 3 March, 5.45 p.m., from a number I recognise as coming from inside Whitehall.

I need your help.

The little screen only shows the first four words. I have to twiddle and the blocky letters jerk sideways to the sender’s name.

Clare.

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Wednesday, 12 March

THE BURMA ROAD IS SEVEN hundred miles of hard road, built at tremendous human cost, through the mountains of southern China. It is also what Lobby hacks call the corridor of journalists’ offices on the top floor of the Palace of Westminster. How the two became twinned is lost to memory, though it might have been the invention of a legendary Press Gallery secretary who had a habit of attributing military ranks to all of us.