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days at the Savoy?’
    It didn’t take any further persuasion. I had been in London only once before. It was during the eighties, prior to my foreign postings – and it was one of those dumb two-week dashes through assorted European capitals, which included four days in London. But I liked what I saw. Mind you, all I saw was assorted monuments and museums and a couple of interesting plays, and a glimpse of the sort of upscale residential life that was lived by those who could afford a Chelsea town house. In other words, my vision of London was selective, to say the least.
    Then again, a room at the Savoy doesn’t exactly give you a down and dirty vision of London either. On the contrary, I was just a little impressed by the suite we were given overlooking the Thames, and the bottle of champagne waiting for us in an ice bucket.
    ‘Is this how the Chronicle usually treats its foreign correspondents?’ I asked.
    ‘You must be joking,’ he said. ‘But the manager’s an old friend. We became chummy when he was running the Intercontinental in Tokyo, so he always fixes me up whenever I’m in town.’
    ‘Well, that’s a relief,’ I said.
    ‘What?’
    ‘The fact that you didn’t violate one of the cardinal rules of journalism – never pay for anything yourself.’
    He laughed and pulled me into bed. He poured me a glass of champagne.
    ‘No can do,’ I said. ‘On antibiotics.’
    ‘Since when?’
    ‘Since yesterday, when I saw the embassy doctor for a strep throat.’
    ‘You’ve got a strep throat?’
    I opened my mouth wide. ‘Go on, peep inside.’
    ‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘Is that why you weren’t drinking on the plane?’
    ‘Booze and antibiotics don’t mix.’
    ‘You should have told me.’
    ‘Why? It’s just a strep throat.’
    ‘God, you are Ms Toughie.’
    ‘That’s me, all right.’
    ‘Well, I have to say I am disappointed. Because who the hell am I going to drink with over the next few days?’
    Actually, that was something of a rhetorical question, as Tony had plenty of people to drink with over the three days we spent in London. He’d arranged for us to go out every night with assorted journalistic colleagues and friends. Without exception, I liked his choice of cronies. There was Kate Medford – a long-time colleague from the Chronicle who now presented the big late afternoon news programme on BBC Radio 4, and who hosted a little dinner for us (with her oncologist husband, Roger) at her house in a leafy inner suburb called Chiswick. There was an extremely boozy night out (for Tony anyway) with a fellow journo named Dermot Fahy, who was a diarist on the Independent and a great talker. He was also an all-purpose rake who spent much of the evening leering at me, much to Tony’s amusement (as he told me afterwards, ‘Dermot does that with every woman,’ to which I just had to reply, ‘Well, thanks a lot’). Then there was a former Telegraph journo named Robert Matthews who’d made quite a bit of money on his first Robert Ludlum-style thriller. He insisted on taking us for a ridiculously expensive meal at the Ivy, and ordering £60 bottles of wine, and drinking far too much, and briefly regaling us with darkly funny stories about his recent divorce – stories which he told in a brilliant, deadpan, self-mocking style, but which hinted at a terrible private pain.
    All of Tony’s friends were first-rate conversationalists who liked staying up late and having three glasses of wine too many, and (this impressed the hell out of me) never really talking about themselves. Even though Tony hadn’t seen these people in around a year, work was only lightly mentioned (‘Haven’t been shot by Islamic Jihad yet, Tony?’, that sort of thing), and never at great length. If personal matters did arise – like Robert’s divorce – a certain sardonic spin was put on things. Even when Tony gently enquired about Kate’s teenage daughter (who, as it turned out, was getting over a near-fatal