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said, and I wondered if he realized that he said that most days.
    ‘So have I.’ I wondered if he noticed that I said that most days.
    ‘Good night, darling. Hope you are feeling more cheerful in the morning.’
    ‘Good night,’ I said.
    The first words I ever heard Will utter were: ‘No more government waste. No more schools that betray their children, or hospitals that kill their patients. Ladies and gentlemen, I see these wrongs, daily, in my work as a barrister. I know how the trusting, the innocent and the deprived can suffer. I know how much they need a champion.’
    He stopped, thought for a moment. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I consider politics to be a means of building a bridge between what we feel to be just and right in our private lives and putting them into practice in public life…’
    It was a bitter January afternoon and I had nipped into Stanwinton town hall to escape the cold, rather than waiting at the station for the train I was due to catch, and stumbled on the meeting. I read the papers, but I hadonly a vague knowledge of politics and my interests lay elsewhere.
    Will was speaking as the adopted candidate for his party. At the very earliest, a general election was not due until the spring, but he was making himself known in what I later learned was a carefully constructed programme.
    I remember thinking: does he mean what he says? But as I gazed at a tall figure with hair the colour of corn in high summer, and at features which were lit up by humour and passion, I became convinced that he did, and I was possessed by a sudden, intense hunger to find out who he was. I mean, who he really was.
    I remember, too, that after the speech, as I made my way rather boldly towards him to introduce myself, I was stopped by a woman in red.
    ‘Can I help? I’m Will Savage’s sister.’ She looked me up and down. ‘You won’t bother him?’ she asked, anxiously. ‘He has so much on his plate, and he gets so tired.’ Then she smiled, and her delicate face came alive in the same way as her brother’s. ‘I’m here to protect him, you see?’

4
    Half-way up the drive to Ember House, Will slammed on the brakes. ‘Just a minute, Fanny, have I got this wrong?’
    We had known each other for six weeks and I was taking him home to meet my father. He was twenty-eight and I was twenty-three, and both of us knew that this was a moment of great importance in our respective lives – more important than taking off our clothes in front of each other for the first time. This meeting, in effect, would cause us to be naked and exposed in quite another manner.
    ‘You didn’t tell me you lived like this… A stately home?’ Will wound down the window and gestured at the drive, which was flanked by clumps of snowdrops and crocuses and disappeared round a bend. I remember noting that the drive was at its best, before the pushy, blowsy azaleas took over and drowned it in pinks and reds.
    Already I was sensitive to how seriously Will considered his image, his positioning. ‘Don’t worry, it isn’t. The original house must have been, but it was knocked down in the fifties and a new one built. The drive is the only bit left of the grounds. My father bought it at a knock-down price when he set up the business. Nobody wanted it. The house is quite small, in fact, and not at all distinguished.’
    Will relaxed. At one of our meetings – snatched between his commitments in chambers and at court, the photo-calls, sponsored walks and chicken lunches, and my clients,negotiations with suppliers, sessions choosing wines for seasonal tastings – Will had explained he was committed to working for a society where people made their way by merit and not by privilege.
    ‘And what do you think you are?’ I teased. ‘Barristers earn telephone numbers.’
    I touched the long, sensitive-looking fingers that rested on the wheel. Everything was miraculous about Will, including his fingers. ‘You needn’t worry,’ I heard myself gabble