"A bit," said Rachel.

"Not really," said Gerald.

Catherine was still gazing out of the window, indulging her dream of not being connected to her family. "I really don't see why he has to go to jail," she said.

"He's not going to jail, you daft old puss," Gerald said. "Unless you know something I don't. He was only caught with his trousers down." By some half-conscious association he looked to Nick for confirmation of this.

"As far as I know," said Nick, trying to make the five little words sound both casual and judicious. It was horrible to imagine Hector Maltby with his trousers down; and the disgraced MP didn't seem after all to merit much in the way of solidarity. Nick's taste was for aesthetically radiant images of gay activity, gathering in a golden future for him, like swimmers on a sunlit bank.

"Well, I don't see why he had to resign," Catherine said. "Who cares if he likes a blow-job now and then?"

Gerald smoothed this over but he was clearly shocked. "No, no, he had to go. There was really no alternative." His tone was ruffled but responsible, and the sense of his own voice submitting to the common line and formula of politics was vaguely disturbing, though Catherine laughed at it.

"It may all do him good," she said. "Help him to find out who he really is.

Gerald frowned, and pulled a bottle from the cardboard crate. "You have the oddest idea of what might do people good," he said, musingly but indignantly. "Now I thought we might have the Podier St-Eustache with dinner."

"Mm, lovely," Rachel murmured. "The thing is, darling, quite simply, that it's vulgar and unsafe," she said, in one of her sudden hard formulations.

Gerald said, "You'll dine with us tonight, Nick?"

Nick smiled and looked away because the generous question raised a new uncertainty about his status on subsequent nights. How much and how often would he be sharing with them? They had mentioned he might sometimes be called on to make up numbers. "I'm terribly sorry, but I can't tonight," he said.