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protecting their own interests. Nothing, in the end, was alarming or impenetrable. Indeed, most of the time, committee work was a statement of the blindingly obvious.
    She smiled to herself, leafing through a long report on the future of the city’s museums. She’d been Chairperson of the Heritage Committee for just six months. She’d been voted into the position because she belonged to the ruling group – a coalition of Labour and the Lib-Dems – and because it was generally accepted that she’d do the job well. She was young. She was bright. She was committed. And, most important of all, she’d already made her mark by winning a number of battles over local issues, some of them dauntingly complex. That, she now saw, had given her enormous clout. She’d been out there at the grass-roots. She’d done her research. She’d taken on the experts and trounced them with their own statistics. Before she’d cast a single vote, she’d acquired the aura of the veteran.
    She leaned back against the pillow, stretching her arms wide, arching her back. Tomorrow, as usual, each party would hold pre-meetings before the committee formallyconvened. Behind closed doors, her own Labour group would thrash out a line, and the Tories would separately rehearse their objections, and half an hour later, around the committee table, they’d all go through the motions again. Any member of the public who took the trouble to attend might – first time round – be impressed by the workings of democracy, but anyone with any knowledge knew that the whole thing was a stitch-up. The real business of committee work was about scoring as many political points as you could. The decisions that mattered had already been taken.
    Kate tossed the museums report onto the growing pile by the bed, then she reached for the remote control and turned on the television. The local ITV company was running the edited highlights of the day’s events on the Common and she watched for a moment or two, regretting that her dad hadn’t survived to be there. Unlike Kate, he’d loved occasions like these: the bands, the uniforms, the ceremony. She supposed that it must have had something to do with his war service, that unconditional loyalty to King and Country. She didn’t share those feelings herself – indeed she viewed the monarchy as just another excuse to keep power out of the hands of the people – but she’d never once presumed to question her father’s allegiance. It had suited him. It had made him happy. Enough said.
    She leaned back against the pillows, trying to picture him. Above the bookshelf across the room hung the single framed photo that had survived the clear-out after his death. It showed him as a young able seaman on a quayside in Liverpool. In the background, on the flat grey water, rode the small corvette on which he’d spent the first two years of his war service. The boat, HMS
Kingston,
had finally hit a mine in the Western Approaches and Arthur Frankham had been one of a bare handful of survivors. He’d rarelytalked about the incident but Kate was convinced that the loss of his shipmates like that had shaped the rest of his life and, looking at the big toothy grin in the photograph, it seemed obvious why he’d later become such a committed trade union official. In the end, as he’d so often told her, it’s down to your pals: looking after them, treasuring them, making sure they always got the best.
    Kate’s eyes went back to the television. The service was over. The limousines were being readied for the fourteen heads of state and the commentator was saying something portentous about the importance of treasuring images like these. Kate thought suddenly of Hayden Barnaby, wondering whether he, too, was watching. Like her dad, he’d always been a sucker for state occasions. They seemed to appeal to something primitive in him though not, she suspected, in the same way as they had to her father. Barnaby’s interest had always been