He wracked his brains, his ego unwilling to let him believe his lover could have humiliated him in so public a way. Perhaps one of his political enemies had bugged his office. Now that made sense. This was the handiwork of a devious mind.

But Anna had a devious mind. A scene, as piercing as betrayal, replayed in his memory. Anna walking into his office and putting her handbag on his desk. A handbag large enough to discreetly house a camera placed opposite his chair. A classic sting.

It was over.

His affair. His marriage. His political career.

He was almost at the car, desperate to sink into the leather seats and put some distance between himself and the press. Not far to go. Keep looking forward and don’t react.

The journalist was matching him stride for stride. ‘One of my newspaper colleagues is at your Cotswolds farmhouse with a copy of these photographs. He’s knocking on the door right now.’

A pincer movement. Hit us both at the same time. Poor Barbara.

‘Do you have a message for your wife? An apology, perhaps?’ The journalist, coated in that greasy sheen of youth and arrogance, smirked. ‘Thirty years married. How do you think she’ll react to your affair with Anna Hadley?’

Heathcote stopped walking. Another car drove up the narrow street. The lights of the restaurants were beacons in the darkness. A couple, arm in arm, were lost in conversation. In each other. He envied the simplicity of their lives.

The media interest in him had been dying, but the revelation of his affair would be like pouring petrol on its embers.

The coldness inside him hardened until every sensation was lost and all that remained was a flat, numb feeling. The world about him slowed. He turned, lifted his arm and pulled it back. He heard John call his name. He saw the mouth of the journalist open and widen. He was conscious of the photographer raising his camera and the repeating fire of the flash. But he didn’t care.

His fist connected with the journalist’s nose and broke it.

The world sped up again. John was tugging at his jacket, pulling him away, the photographer was still taking pictures, and Russell Parker from the Sun was covering the lower half of his face, swearing and making threats about police and assault charges.

Heathcote, in a daze, allowed John to steer him back to the car and the journalist disappeared into the van, talking to someone on his mobile phone in a thickened voice, his nose at an odd angle.

Russell Parker had a bright stain on the front of his shirt. Geoffrey Heathcote’s cuffs and trousers were spattered with dozens of carmine specks.

Both of them had blood on their hands.