‘Didn’t you once tell me he was a much better listener than anyone who had ever worked for him might guess?’

‘Did I?’

Kate smiled. ‘You know you did. So maybe the answer for both of us is to accept that it’s okay to miss part of someone but not the whole.’

Julie gathered a few leaves beneath her shoe and crushed them methodically. ‘I’ll tell you something. If Agent Dante actually exists, it’s not Ian,’ she said.

‘What makes you so sure?’

‘He’s too much of a coward.’

‘Isn’t that what they play on?’

‘Sometimes. But I think he’d just be way too terrified of the consequences of getting caught. He’s smarter and sometimes kinder than people think, but he’s not brave, and he never has been.’

‘He may have had to settle for the lesser of two evils, or been flattered at a time when he felt he was being ignored by his own people – you know how complex these things are. Or maybe the vulnerability you think you saw was just an act.’

Julie threw away her cigarette, as if she’d never wanted it. ‘All right. You won’t want to hear this, but here goes. I don’t think you should do this. Stuart’s freedom isn’t worth risking your health and life for, even for the sake of your children.’

‘I’ve no choice.’

‘Yes, you have. This is just you trying to keep everyone but yourself happy again. You can walk away with Fiona and Gus and leave Stuart to stew in his own juice. He betrayed you, your marriage, your family – everything you hold dear. You don’t owe him a thing. Grove and her puppet-master want to stiff you – that’s blindingly obvious. Every step we take, they’ll be looking to twist it away from the truth, whatever that may be, and into another strand of the noose they’re weaving for you. And by the time we get to the end of this affair, it’ll be too late to turn back,’ Julie said. ‘It won’t be Stuart in prison, it’ll be you. Because they don’t want this to go away quietly, an embarrassing page turned in the Service’s history. They want the full, glaring publicity of a show trial so that everyone is convinced of the prime minister’s innocence.’

Kate watched an old woman dragging a shopping trolley very slowly down the pavement. She tried to shake the sense that Julie might well be right.

‘But you’re about to tell me you’re going to plough ahead regardless, which leads me to the inescapable conclusion that you are still in love with Stuart.’

‘It’s more complicated than that.’

‘You’re telling yourself it is. You don’t want to let down your kids, or destroy their fragile hope of a reunion. But I know you. There are few people in the Service more ruthless when the chips are down, and I think you’re standing here because you don’t want to close the door on the possibility of a future together.’