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people exist?”
    “Apparently. Chad Lawrence, for a start.”
    “Really? Well, I’d vote for him. Most gorgeous man in Westminster. According to
Cosmo
anyway.”
    “Which won’t do him any harm—women voters by the dozen. And then they have a couple more quite senior and high-profile people in the party onside. Most notably Jack Kirkland.”
    Jack Kirkland had risen from extraordinarily unpromising beginnings—and indeed unlikely for a Tory—from a South London working-class family, to a position as minister for education in the Tory party; his journey from grammar school to an Oxford first was extremely well charted in the media.
    “So where is this leading, Nick?”
    “A new party. A party just left of centre, but still recognisably Tory, headed up by a pretty charismatic lot, which will appeal to both disillusioned Blair and Tory voters.”
    “That’s what every politician since time began has said.”
    “I know. But there’s a growing disaffection with Blair, and there are a lot of instinctive Tory voters out there, longing for change. If they could look at someone new and strong and say, ‘Yes, that’s more like it, I could go for that,’ Kirkland and his merry men could do rather well.”
    “And what does this Frean superwoman want you to do?”
    “Get the editor onside. Get the paper to support them. When the time comes. I think maybe he would. He’s a Tory at heart and the whole thing will appeal to his romantic nature.”
    “Romantic! Chris Pollock!”
    “Jocasta, he’s terribly romantic. Not in your women’s fiction sense, but David and Goliath, triumph of the underdog, that sort of thing. And our readers are precisely the sorts of people Frean is talking about. They’ve got to get some funds together and more people onside. There’ll be a lot of plotting—which’ll be fun. I would say by conference time it’ll all be boiling up nicely.”
    His large brown eyes were brilliant as he looked at her; she smiled. “Is this another exclusive?”
    “At the moment. Obviously they chose the finest political editor of the lot.”
    “Yes, I suppose so.” She looked at him. “Maybe,” she said thoughtfully, “maybe this could give me my big break. Be my first proper story. You never know.”
    “Jocasta, I adore you, but this is not a human-interest story.”
    “It might be. I bet Chad Lawrence has an intriguing private life for a start.” She looked at him and took a deep breath. “Nick, there’s something I really want to discuss with you. Speaking of human interest…”
    But he dodged the issue, as he always did, told her he was tired and he just wanted to take her home and curl up with her and think how lucky he was. Feebly, she gave in.

    Martha looked out of her office window and saw the first streaks of dawn in the sky. She had worked all night. Of course it was July, and dawn came pretty early: it was only—she glanced at the three-faced clock on her desk, showing London, New York, and Singapore time—only just after four. It seemed much harder in the winter, when the nights were long and the streetlights were still on at seven thirty in the morning. People always said how exhausting it must be, which irritated her. She enjoyed the all-night sessions, found them exciting; and perversely she never felt remotely tired. Adrenaline boosted her all through the following day, she seemed to become high on her own nervous energy, only collapsing as she closed her front door on the day and the deal, poured herself a drink, and sank into the hottest bath she could bear—often to fall asleep and wake an hour later to find it cooling rapidly. People warned her it was dangerous, that she could drown in it or have a heart attack, but Martha pooh-poohed this. It was what she did, she said, how she ran her life, it suited her, and as in so many other tenets of hers—like only eating once a day, or never taking more than one week’s holiday at a time—it had always worked very well. Martha