I note the time on the alarm clock. Nine fifteen. Shit. I’ve missed the Today programme, and all the morning press conferences. Shit shit shit. Cat pads up to my side and purrs in expectation. ‘I don’t suppose you listened to the Today programme, did you?’ I ask. The Chancellor was scheduled to do the headline 8.10 interview and I want to know if he said anything I need to know. Cat looks at me with a condescension that says: if I had the information, I wouldn’t share it with you.

I reach for my Filofax on the bedside table and turn to the notes section at the back. Another memory jogged of Clare. Ever since secondary school, in the era before Filofax, her diary was her most precious possession – ‘my memoir’, she pretentiously called it. Between the woven brown covers of her Letts, her whole existence was scheduled, catalogued and recorded in colour-coded pen: homework, after-school clubs, music lessons, dates, first snog. When I was twelve, she took me to Smiths to buy my own. More surrogate parenting. She would always joke that she wished she could teach me to shave.

We were both early adopters of the Filofax in the 1980s. Buying the accessories was an easy stocking-filler present – though I never understood the point of the bendy ruler with punched holes for the ring binder clips. At the back I write long comprehensive lists of all the things I have to do. It’s a way of assuaging my permanent anxiety that I’ve forgotten something important. Every night I cross off completed tasks and add anything new. The list regularly grows out of control; some reminders never get crossed off. But the act of writing it calms me.

There are various projects outstanding on the list this morning: stories I need to follow up, contacts to warm over, bills to pay. And in block letters, underscored three times. WHAT’S THE REAL KENDALL STORY??? I added it after my meeting with Todd.

I turn to the diary section for today. Bob Ringer, 1.15 Harry’s Bar.

Proper fun. Ringer is the best-connected PR man in London. Typically, I’ll suggest we meet and he’ll choose the venue – one which he knows neither I nor the FC can afford, so he’ll end up putting the egregious bill through his business. We arranged this meeting before Clare died, but it is serendipitous. If there is someone who knows what might be in Kendall’s dark closet, it will be Ringer. When I think of the champagne, al dente linguine, exquisite olive oil and scandalous gossip that awaits, the day ahead doesn’t feel too bad.

Barefoot, I pad through the living room to the kitchen to give Cat his breakfast. There’s a chilly draught blowing through the flat, and I register the loud burst of a motorbike passing. Did I leave a window open?