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on which High Castle – complete with Norman fortress, square and church – stands like an Italian hill town. It was a fine and private place to do her grieving for David Eyam.

4
The Prime Minister’s Spy
    Peter Kilmartin was certainly surprised. He arrived at Number Ten at nine forty-five p.m. on Monday evening, having been summoned five hours before, and was shown into the Cabinet Room by a brisk young woman who introduced herself as Jean. Temple was sitting at the prime minister’s place on the curved table in front of the fireplace, reading with his hand clutching his forehead. The cabinet secretary, Gus Herbert, stood back holding a red leather folder to his chest, while his free hand toyed with a signet ring. Temple looked up and removed the glasses that were so rarely seen in public. ‘Ah, Peter, good of you to come so quickly. I’ll be with you in a second.’
    Kilmartin and Herbert exchanged nods then both looked out through the two uncurtained windows at the end of the room. The dense drizzle of the last few days seemed to hang in the glare of the security lights. Some way off in the building there was a muffled whine of drilling, which Jean had explained to Kilmartin was caused by cabling work that could only been done at night.
    He looked down at Temple and not for the first time wondered at his extraordinary rise. They’d met a dozen years before when Temple was a junior minister in the foreign office, at a time in his career when he was patronised by officials and had the reputation as a lightweight – a shameless flatterer and seeker of advice. They hit it off because Temple possessed that rare ability in government to listen properly. For his part Kilmartin, who was by no means a natural politician, found that he could influence policy decisions without using his elbows. The combination of his knowledge of foreign affairs and the Secret Intelligence Service and Temple’s patience proved very successful for a while and, aseach Cabinet reshuffle came along and Temple kept climbing through the ranks, eventually to head two of the great ministries of state, they kept in touch with Christmas cards and the occasional lunch. Temple’s manner and his eerie calm never changed and to anyone who listened he would confess his astonishment that he and his worn armchair had travelled so far. Not many did listen. His colleagues still saw him as a quaint and amiable nobody, a bit of an oddball. No threat. But when he was invited to form a government he displayed a rare political savagery, sacking several allies and bringing about an iron discipline in the ranks of his party. He was likened to President Harry Truman. One commentator reminded her readers that the haberdasher from Lamar, Missouri, had dropped two atomic bombs just five months into his presidency. After Temple’s narrow win at the polls, a victory fraught with allegations of ballot rigging, recounts and general dismay with the performance of a new electronic voting system, that same writer suggested that the only doubtful part of the phrase ‘elected dictatorship’ was the word elected. But Temple stammered his apologies and produced a famous display of nervous blinking when the matter was raised in a TV interview, and somehow people forgave him, or at any rate forgot. In the long slump there were other things to worry about.
    Temple pushed his chair back with a little cough, handed the file to the cabinet secretary and said, ‘Yes, that should do the trick.’ Herbert picked up the file and left the room with an opaque Mandarin nod in Kilmartin’s direction.
    â€˜How good of you to come up from the country, Peter. How are you and the boys coping – Jay and Ralph, isn’t it?’
    It was a year and half since Helen’s death and the boys, though grown up and with jobs, had suffered dreadfully. They were just about over the worst.
    â€˜Thanks, they’re doing fine, prime minister.