Kate faced Grove again. ‘You’re not as nice as you look, you know that?’

‘I certainly have a job to do, Mrs Henderson. But you’re wrong to identify me as the enemy, and I think you’re smart enough to know that.’

‘You want me to spend the next month making a rope so that you and the prime minister can publicly hang me with it?’

‘I want you to spend the next month working out who orchestrated this monstrous assault on the probity and integrity of British public life so we can expose him or her and move on. Since I think we both assume it wasn’t you, I don’t see the issue.’

The door to the back room had been opened and Julie stood there, with young Callum towering over her. ‘Shall we go?’ she asked.

Kate’s every instinct told her to get out now. But she bit her lip, narrowed her eyes and focused hard on the floor. ‘For Fiona and Gus …’ she whispered to herself. When she looked up again, she was wearing her best game face. ‘Let’s take a walk,’ she said.

‘Good thinking,’ Julie replied.

Early falling leaves and a few spots of rain swirled in the fresh breeze as they stepped outside. The streets in the heart of Pimlico were quiet at this time of the day, the sky grey, the air close.

‘Well, that was the shortest investigation we’ve ever conducted,’ Julie said, once they were well away from the house.

‘I have to go on with it,’ Kate said.

‘Because of Stuart?’

Kate didn’t answer.

‘No one can fault your devotion to those kids.’ Julie’s eyes were still on her. ‘Ah … not just the kids, then?’

‘Give me a cigarette.’

‘Only when you’ve spilt the beans.’

‘I honestly don’t know whether I’m really responding to their desperation that we get back together. Or—’

‘You shagged him?’

Kate fished a cigarette out of Julie’s packet and lit it without breaking stride. ‘I’m not sure I’d put it quite like that,’ she said.

‘I knew you would. You’re an idiot.’

‘And you, have you got back together with Ian?’

‘God, no.’ Julie shook her head vigorously. ‘I mean, he wants to, obviously. He actually sent me a poem the other day, though I know for a fact he’s still with Suzy. A poem!’

‘Was it any good?’

‘It was, quite. But that’s hardly the point. He’s the head of SIS, and he’s sending a junior officer lovelorn poetry. I still can’t knit those two things together in my head.’

‘It’s all right to admit you’re upset, you know.’

Kate had spoken softly and Julie drew to a halt and faced her. She didn’t often allow anyone a window on her soul, still less the vulnerabilities that lay within it. ‘I don’t know what I feel,’ she said. ‘That’s the truth. I’m not sure if I’m upset. And that really troubles me. I mean, what if I’ve lost the ability to feel anything?’