Neither man noticed the white van that had pulled in a few metres behind them. The Right Honourable Geoffrey Heathcote stepped out of the ministerial car and into the eye of a photographer’s lens.

He staggered backwards, blindsided by the rapid fire of the flash against the dark of the evening, and then a reporter was in front of him, a dictaphone hovering in front of his face.

‘Russell Parker, from the Sun. Do you know an Anna Hadley, Mr Heathcote?’

An ambush.

The minister faltered, his stomach plunging at the mention of her name, but then he remembered his media training. Bridging, they called it, the art of digression and evasion.

‘I’m not sure, young man. I know lots of people.’

‘Let me refresh your memory,’ said the journalist. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a sheaf of images that had been copied and colour-printed onto A5 paper.

Heathcote glanced down at them, but he would not take them from the journalist’s hand. The Westminster corridors and gentlemen’s clubs had always been a safe harbour in an aggressive world, but now the floors were shaking and the walls were crumbling to dust.

It was unmistakeably him. Shirt unbuttoned and trousers around his ankles, sitting in his chair in his office at the House of Commons, Anna Hadley straddled across his lap, an expression of pleasure on his face.

The fucking bitch.

He knew now why she wasn’t answering her mobile phone. She wasn’t in trouble. She was ignoring him. The cold-hearted slag had stitched him up.

Think, Geoffrey. Think.

He turned away from the journalist without speaking and crossed the pavement in contained, angry strides. John, his driver, had witnessed the exchange in the rear-view mirror after he’d pulled away, and now reversed up the one-way street at speed, tyres shrieking against the asphalt. He nipped sharply into the kerb, about twenty metres from the MP. Heathcote picked up his pace.

‘This is going to appear on the front page of tomorrow’s newspaper,’ the journalist said, running alongside him. ‘How long have you been together? Is there anything you’d like to say?’

He paused, giving Heathcote an opportunity to answer. A right to reply, it was called. In the interests of fairness. But Heathcote didn’t have anything to say. This was a disaster. A shitstorm. A fucktonne of a catastrophe, bearing down on him like a truck.

Had Anna been wearing a hidden camera? No, it wasn’t possible. She had removed all her clothes except her skirt and her bra. He would have seen it. And the angle was wrong. Too much distance between him and Anna in the photographs for the camera to have been on her person.