“I’m on the wagon,” I said.

“Oh, that’s right. Never been off, now I come to remember.”

I knew he wouldn’t say anything more about the other thing so I poured myself some Orangina and tipped his glass by way of apology and said:

“I blotted my copybook, that’s all. They had to get me out of London so fast that that is what I’m doing in Barcelona it was the first available plane to anywhere.”

“Dear, oh dear.” He stared upwards from his chair. “I suppose that’s fairly typical. You tend to leave a suitable uproar behind you when you skip town.”

“This time it’s not quite as funny as that.”

“I wish I could do something,” he said in a helpless tone. “Wouldn’t you like to sit down?”

“You’re doing your bit,” I told him. “You’re my contact here.”

“Be my guest.”

Then I decided to tell him.

“My neck’s on the block, Charlie.”

He swung his chair round so that he was facing me.

“Spell out,” he said.

“I’m being fired.”

He sat perfectly still, looking up at me over his glasses. By the way I’d said it he knew I wasn’t joking.

“Did you say “fired”?”

“Invited to resign. Same thing.”

Very quietly: “What in Christ’s name for?”

“Breach of security.”

His large greying head tilted sideways, and I remembered his good ear was the left one.

“ You?”

My mouth tasted awful and I wished I hadn’t started this: in the course of sixteen missions I’d learned to keep things to myself, and what I was doing now felt like a confession under interrogation and I didn’t like it because I’d experienced interrogation a good few times and they’d never broken me.

But my voice went on. “It wasn’t anything professional. I mean I didn’t make a slip or blow cover or lose information,” I had to turn away from him now. “It was something I did in hot blood.”