was the worst time of year for people throwing themselves on the track. Nobody knew why. Perhaps the approaching festivity brought back memories of family or friends who'd died, without whom the turkey and the streamers seemed a gloomy echo of a world that had once been full. Or maybe the advertisements for digital cameras, aftershave and computer games reminded people how much they were in debt, how few of 'this year's must-have' presents they could afford. Guilt, thought Jenni: a sense of having failed in the competition for resources - for DVDs and body lotions - could drive them to the rails.
Books were what she was hoping to find beneath her own tree. Her favourite authors were Agatha Christie and Edith Wharton, but she read with undifferentiated glee - philosophy or airport novels. Her mother, who had come from County Cork, had barely owned a book and had been suspicious of Jenni's reading habits as a teenager. She urged her to get out and find a boyfriend, but Jenni seemed happier in her room with 600-page novels with titles in embossed gold lettering that told how a Russian pogrom had led, two generations later and after much suffering and sex, to the founding of a cosmetics dynasty in New York. Her father, who was from Trinidad, had left 'home' when Jenni was eight months old.
After her shift she would return to the novel that had won the big literary prize, the 2005 Cafe Bravo, which she was finding a bit thin. Then, after making something to eat for herself and her half-brother Tony, if he was there, she would log on to Parallax, the newest and most advanced of alternative-reality games, where she would continue to create the life of her stand-in, or 'maquette' as the game had it, Miranda Star.
Two years before, when she was still new to the job, Jenni had had a jumper. She was coming into Monument when a sudden flash of white, like a giant seagull fluttering from the platform edge, had made her brake hard. But it was too late to prevent her hitting a twenty-year-old man, whose leap had cleared the so-called suicide pit but not taken him as far as the positive rail on the far side. Don't look at their faces was the drivers' wisdom, and after three months' counselling and rehabilitation, Jenni had resumed her driving. The man, though seriously injured, had survived. Two months later, his parents brought a civil action against Jenni's employers, claiming negligence, because their lack of safety precautions had been responsible for the son's injuries. They lost the case, but had been granted leave to appeal, and the thought of the imminent second hearing - tomorrow there would be another meeting with the lawyer, Mr Northwood - darkened the edges of Jenni Fortune's days.
At that moment in the wealthy inner suburb of North Park, 'located', as the estate agent had it, 'between the natural advantages of Heath and Green', Sophie Topping had just made a cup of tea for herself and her husband Lance, who was working in his study. He had done this every Sunday afternoon since becoming an MP in the recent by-election. Sophie wasn't sure how he could concentrate on constituency paperwork with the football blasting out from the television in the corner and she suspected that he sometimes nodded off to the excited yet soporific commentary. For fear of discovering him slumped with his mouth open, she always knocked before taking in his tea.
'I'm just finalising the places for Saturday,' she said, handing him a blue china cup with what he called 'builders' tea' in it.
'What?' he said.
'The big dinner.'
'God, yes. I'd quite forgotten,' said Lance. 'All under control?'
'Yes, I think it'll be a night to remember.'
Sophie retired to her desk and looked at the list of names she had printed out from her computer. At first, she'd meant to have an intimate evening with a few powerful people, just so that Richard Wilbraham, the party leader, could see the sort of company Lance moved in. But when she got down to it, there seemed no end to the number of important people she and Lance knew - and wanted the leader to know they knew.
Looking down the names, Sophie began to sketch a table plan.
Lance and Sophie Topping. The party's newest MP and his wife. It was still good to say those words.
Richard and Janie Wilbraham. Richard, the dynamic PM-in-waiting, would be on her own right hand. He was