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together for two years and could easily have drifted on for another two. Until one of them met somebody who really excited them. But Sarah was too busy to meet new people and Dan quite enjoyed having an MP as his partner. He didn’t seem to mind theirs being a weekend-only relationship. Nor did he object vociferously when Sarah suggested that he move out. Indeed, he’d managed the whole thing in less than a month.
    ‘At least they called you “a rising star”,’ Steve Carter told Sarah, six days later. Steve Carter was the closest friend Sarah had on the Labour benches. They were having a late lunch in Sarah’s favourite small Italian restaurant, at a table well away from the window. The purpose of the lunch was to discuss damage limitation after the Jasper March story had been splashed all over the Tory tabloids. Sarah often acted as a soundboard for Steve and he, less often, did the same for her. ‘And the serious Sundays didn’t touch it,’ he went on. ‘They could tell that the story was a crock.’
    ‘The Mail On Sunday had a nasty paragraph,’ Sarah said. She had glanced at the papers on Sunday but not really taken them in.
    ‘People who vote for you don’t read the Mail On Sunday .’
    ‘If I had some of their readers, I might have a chance of winning. “How did they know we were going to be there?” I asked him. “Somebody at the restaurant must have called them,” he said. No fucking way. You should have seen him grab me as we went through the door – he knew they were outside. What I don’t know is why he needed to do it.’
    ‘His divorce is about to hit the papers,’ Steve said. ‘He’s doing what we do every time we announce a watered-down policy – getting his betrayal in first .’
    ‘You mean he’d rather be exposed as an adulterer than a cuckold?’
    ‘My guess is he’s hardly a cuckold. It was always a marriage of convenience, but she’s fallen for someone else.’
    ‘You mean. Oh shit, I mean, I knew about . . .’ Sarah named the three most prominent gay Tory MPs, ‘but March . . .’
    ‘I’m pretty sure that’s it. He escaped my gaydar for a while. But here’s how I guessed: during my first few weeks here, he was quite friendly. When I came out, he became perceptibly cooler. He’s too slick to be a homophobe. Ergo . . .’
    ‘He didn’t want to be gay by association. Fuck me.’
    ‘You’re asking the wrong man, sweetie.’
    Steve had got in at the last election, after nine years working for the Low Pay Unit. He had come out shortly after being elected, and survived a lot of stick in his constituency as a consequence. Shortly after Steve came out, the former party leader, John Smith, showing his tolerance, made him an education spokesman. More recently, Tony Blair had made Steve shadow second in Transport. As Steve’s career prospered, the local prejudice had quietened down.
    ‘Excuse me.’ Sarah looked round to see that she and Steve weren’t the only MPs in the restaurant. ‘I just wanted to say, treat it like water off a duck’s back. It’s the only way.’ The speaker was Gill Temperley, a Home Office minister who had prospered under the current Prime Minister. ‘Gossip’s the engine oil of politics,’ she went on. ‘If you can, best to be flattered by it, to use it.’
    ‘Like Jasper used me?’ Sarah asked.
    ‘I’m sure you’ll find a way to use him back.’ Gill gave her a wink which was almost dirty before gliding out of the room, followed at a discreet distance by a tall young man with a mop of blonde hair.
    ‘Didn’t know you two were friendly,’ Steve said when they’d gone.
    ‘That’s the first time we’ve spoken.’
    ‘A Compassionate Conservative. I thought they were a media myth.’
    Sarah tried to work out how to phrase a delicate question. Steve was better at collecting gossip than she was. Pushing fifty, Gill was attractive, but not overwhelmingly so. In Parliament, as Sarah had found, a reasonable figure and a pretty face