‘It seems a long time ago.’

‘I can’t even remember.’

‘I don’t expect much time for sightseeing,’ said Charlie quickly. ‘I’ll only be away for two or three days.’

‘No need to hurry back,’ said Willoughby.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Check the protection of some jewellery.’

‘I’d forgotten,’ said Clarissa, pushing her plate away practically untouched. ‘That’s what you did with Rupert’s father, didn’t you?’

‘Not really,’ said Charlie, side-stepping. ‘I was more in administration: a clerk.’

She disregarded the qualification. ‘ Was it like all the books?’

Charlie considered the question. No, he decided. In the books he’d read there was a beginning and a middle and a neat tidy end. Charlie couldn’t remember many occasions when all the questions were answered and the uncertainties resolved, with the good guys winning and the bad guys losing. He’d always found it difficult deciding who were good and bad anyway. ‘From where I was it seemed all paperwork and records and bureaucracy,’ he said.

‘Sounds dull.’

‘It was.’ He’d never thought it so. Trap or be trapped, trick or be tricked: the normal shitty chess game with too many sacrificial pawns.

‘Charlie must still be governed by the Official Secrets Act,’ warned Willoughby.

And liable under it for what he’d done to a maximum of fourteen years in jail, thought Charlie. He knew he couldn’t be prosecuted under the Treason Act, because it had happened more than three years ago. Charlie had checked that in the reference section of Chelsea public library, between three o’clock pub closing and six o’clock opening.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ demanded Clarissa.

‘That we shouldn’t embarrass him by asking questions.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Rupert!’

They were talking as if he weren’t there, thought Charlie. The nobody man again; it didn’t upset him. Another course was changed and with it the wine. Charlie sipped appreciatively: it had been decanted like the first but he wasn’t good enough to identify it.