The couple had no children to their regret and were celebrating their twenty-fifth anniversary. It was to be just the four of us at lunch, and a walk in the Chilterns afterwards. Prue had bought them a quilted Victorian bedspread and got it all wrapped and ready, and some sort of comic chew for their boxer dog. What with the seemingly eternal heatwave and the Saturday traffic, we’d reckoned two hours, so leave at eleven latest.
At ten I was still in bed asleep, so Prue sweetly brought me up a cup of tea. I’d no idea how long she’d been up and about since she’d dressed without waking me. But, knowing her, she’d put in a couple of hours at her desk grappling with Big Pharma. It was therefore all the more gratifying that she had interrupted her labours. I am being pompous with a reason. The ensuing conversation between us begins predictably enough with a ‘whatever hour did you get in last night, Nat?’ to which I reply, God knows, Prue, just bloody late, or whatever. But something in my voice or face gets through to her. Moreover, as I now know, the divergence of our supposedly parallel lives since my homecoming has begun to tell on her. She has a fear, only later confided to me, that her war on Big Pharma, and mine on whatever target the Office in its wisdom has assigned to me, far from complementing each other, are pitching us into opposing camps. And it is this anxiety coupled with my physical appearance that triggers our seemingly humble but momentous exchange.
‘We are going, aren’t we, Nat?’ she asks me, with what I continue to regard as unnerving intuition.
‘Going where?’ I reply evasively, though I know perfectly well.
‘To Larry and Amy’s. For their twenty-fifth. Where else?’
‘Well, not both of us actually, Prue, I’m afraid. I can’t. You’ll have to go alone. Or why not try Phoebe? She’d go with you like a shot.’
Phoebe, our next-door neighbour, not necessarily the brightest of company but perhaps better than an empty seat.
‘Nat, are you ill?’ Prue asks.
‘Not to my knowledge. I’m on standby,’ I reply as stoutly as I can.
‘For what?’
‘For the Office.’
‘Can’t you be on standby and still come?’
‘No. I’ve got to be here. Physically. In the house.’
‘Why? What’s happening in the house?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You can’t be waiting for nothing. Are you in some sort of danger?’
‘It’s not like that. Larry and Amy know I’m a spook. Look, I’ll ring him,’ I suggest gallantly. ‘Larry won’t ask questions’ – with the tacit subtext: unlike you.
‘How about theatre tonight? We’ve got two tickets for Simon Russell Beale, if you remember. Stalls.’
‘I can’t do that either.’
‘Because you’ll be on standby.’
‘I’m getting a call at six. It’s anyone’s guess what happens after that.’
‘So we’re waiting all day for a call at six.’
‘I guess so. Well I am, anyway,’ I say.
‘And before that?’
‘I can’t leave the house. Bryn’s orders. I’m gated.’
‘Bryn’s?’
‘Himself. Direct from Washington.’
‘Then I think it’s better if I ring Amy,’ she says, after a moment’s consideration. ‘Perhaps they’d like the tickets too. I’ll call her from the kitchen.’
At which juncture Prue does what Prue always does, just when I think she has finally run out of patience with me: steps back, takes a second reading of the situation and sets about fixing it. By the time she comes back, she has changed into an old pair of jeans and the silly Edelweiss jacket we bought on our skiing holiday, and she’s smiling.
‘Did you sleep?’ she asks, making me budge over, then sitting down on the bed.
‘Not a lot.’
She feels my brow, testing it for heat.
‘I’m really not ill, Prue,’ I repeat.
‘No. But I am wondering whether by any chance the Office has chucked you out,’ she says, contriving to make the question more a confession of her own concerns than mine.
‘Well, pretty much, yes. I think it probably has,’ I concede.
‘Unfairly?’
‘No. Not really, no.’
‘Did you fuck up, or did they?’
‘Bit of both really. I just got mixed up with the wrong people.’
‘Anyone we know?’
‘No.’
‘They’re not coming to get you in some way?’
‘No. It’s not like that,’ I assure her, realizing as I say this that I am not quite as much in command of myself as I had thought.
‘What’s happened to your Office mobile? You always keep it by the bed.’
‘Must be in my suit,’ I say, still in some kind of deceptive mode.
‘It’s not. I looked. Has the Office confiscated it?’
‘Yes.’
‘As of when?’
‘Last night. This morning. It was an all-night