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the Marie Stopes website, and his mind grew still darker. Before 12 weeks pregnancy . . . That would be about it. Melanie wouldn’t have left it any
longer, she wasn’t one for harbouring doubts. At this stage gentle suction is used to remove the pregnancy from the uterus . ‘The pregnancy’? Didn’t they mean the
baby, his baby? This is a very quick and simple procedure, taking less than five minutes to perform . It made it seem like an ingrown toenail or treatment for a head cold; the moral
equivalent of sweeping out a blocked gutter. The clinic offered lavish promises about the physical treatment and mental welfare of the mother, yet there wasn’t a word about the father. It
is completely your decision who you tell about your treatment . . . Didn’t the father have rights? Couldn’t he feel pain, too? He had obligations aplenty, the law laid them
down in meticulous detail and all costed to the last penny, but there wasn’t a sniff of what those obligations bought.
    Friday afternoon, she had told him. Little more than fifty hours, and then . . . He had to change her mind. Harry felt sick, as if an animal was tearing at him inside. It shocked him, how
passionately he felt about it. He couldn’t remember if he had ever been as distressed in his life, or as powerless. He threw his towel into a corner and lay back on his pillow, his wet hair
sending trickles of dampness down his cheeks. His cheeks were still damp, long after the hair had dried.
    9.30 a.m.
    As the peal of bells alongside Big Ben struck the half-hour, the security net tightened. Not all the preparations went smoothly. A peer came bowling along Parliament Street on
his bicycle, anxious that he was a little late, only to run into a roadblock. Although he had his red-and-white Lords’ pass he was denied access. ‘Can’t take the bike in,
m’lud,’ a policeman told him. ‘You don’t have the right pass for it. And you can’t leave it here, neither. Otherwise we’ll have to take it away and blow it
up.’ The peer retired hurt.
    Two of the earliest arrivals, clutching proper passes, were in wheelchairs. Their passes were little more than a piece of printed pale green card with a number and a name written on it, and the
two men were required to provide some additional form of photographic identity to match the names on the cards. They both produced well-worn British passports. With the courtesy and smooth
efficiency that characterised the occasion, they were then conducted to a spot reserved for them in the Royal Gallery, a special place for wheelchairs where they would be directly beside the
processional route and only a few feet away from Her Majesty as she passed. The two men expressed their thanks and, somewhat to the relief of the over stretched attendants, declined the use of the
disabled toilet facilities.
    On another part of the processional route, the Norman Porch, where the Queen would mount its steps, a BBC technician was reprimanded for failing to display his pass clearly. ‘If you
don’t mind, sir,’ a doorkeeper remarked, ‘we need our medals on parade.’ They couldn’t take anything for granted, least of all the BBC. Some standards had to be
maintained. Sadly, there were many other miscreants. Peers frequently forgot to wear their passes, and many Members of the House of Commons simply refused; they liked to assume everyone knew who
they were, even if they hadn’t made it all the way to the front page of the News of the World .
    In the nearby Moses Room, Ede and Ravenscroft were dispensing the robes of scarlet wool trimmed in ermine that their Lordships were required to wear, yet even here, standards were slipping. In
some cases, at the insistence of the peer, the ermine was in fact rabbit, and, in one or two cases, artificial fur. The robes covered many sins. Beneath their robes the peers were instructed to
wear full dress uniform, morning dress or lounge suit, but Archie Wakefield had no right to wear uniform