Crowther frowns. He has the build of a rugby front row gone to seed, an ageing bull with a stone or two of too-many-lunches flab. After a glass or six, his face is red and swollen. ‘Fisher. I was talking to him about arranging a briefing on Labour’s economic plans and he told me. I passed it to the Lobby guys. And they stood it up.’

Cameron Fisher was not the name I anticipated. He is Todd’s press secretary, an abrasive former tabloid hack whose self-appointed mission is to search out, humiliate and destroy any journalist who somehow fails to acclaim Todd as the messiah. ‘Cameron Fisher? How on earth did he know about Clare?’

‘Search me.’ Crowther has not given it a moment’s thought. He is the sort of journalist who City PRs adore, men whose self-love is so complete that they can’t be arsed to ask fairly basic questions such as ‘Why am I being told this?’ They take dictation from an Elliott or Fisher, and so long as what they are being told is a splash or even a page lead, they’ll write it up and not bother to think about the source’s ulterior motive.

‘You didn’t think it was odd that Labour’s flack-in-chief told you about the death of a Treasury director?’

‘He mentioned her dad – sorry, your dad – was some kind of grandee from Labour’s past. Jurassic Labour, as Todd and his gang put it.’ Crowther works out that even by his standards he is being insensitive. ‘Sorry. No offence intended. I assume Fisher knew because you’re all part of the Labour family. Aren’t you?’

Crowther is not the first or last posh boy to accuse me of being incestuously close to Labour. It offends against my sense of who I am. I pride myself that everything I’ve achieved has been despite Dad, not because of him. So the idea that I might have better relations with Labour because the great Bernard Peck was an adviser to an ancient Labour government horrifies and upsets me. In fact, I’ve spent quite a lot of my working life trying to dig up dirt on Labour, just to prove how impartial I am.

More relevantly, it’s impossible that my proud dad would have said anything about Clare to anyone close to the party’s current leadership team. Dad regards Todd as an untrustworthy right-wing entryist who has hijacked the party he thinks he owns.

If I want to find out how Fisher knew, Frankie Crowther is probably not the man with the answer. I change tack. ‘You were a cunt for not telling me you were running it.’

‘I wasn’t sure you would want me to bother you at a difficult time.’

‘Hang on. You knew it was a difficult time, but you still ran the story? Jesus. It’s shit Frankie, you hurt my family.’