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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, as each 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.

    ‘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.

    ‘Thanks, they’re doing fine, prime minister. I’m amazed you remember their names.’

    ‘One of my very few gifts. And the famous Kilmartin vegetable garden, which I notice now takes precedence over the problems of Central Asia?’

    Kilmartin smiled but didn’t rise to the bait.

    ‘I hear the new garden is beautiful. You’ve moved in with your sister, haven’t you?’

    ‘That’s right - though in fact it is the other way. She came to live with me.’

    ‘Good, good,’ he said absently and let out a sigh. ‘I expect you’ve read we’ve got a real problem with this blessed toxic red algae in the reservoirs. Our scientists have no idea where it came from or how it’s spreading. People talk about bio-terrorism, migrating waterfowl, global warming. Nobody knows. It’s the sort of thing that can turn an election. Events!’ he said with exasperation and the smile lines moved into perfect parentheses. ‘But that’s not why I asked you to see me.’ He coughed and took a step to the fireplace and rested his hand on the mantelpiece. Temple was over six foot tall but managed to appear much shorter to the public. Kilmartin glanced up at the portrait of William Pitt the Younger above him. He’d read somewhere that on Temple’s order Pitt had replaced the painting of Robert Walpole, the first man to occupy Number Ten as prime minister