'Billiards,' I said. 'Mostly billiards.'

The D-G gave a little smile and said, 'Yes, that sounds more like Silas.' He turned away to look at Bret's desk top. 'I've mislaid my spectacles,' he said. 'Did I leave them in here?'

'No, sir. You haven't been in here this morning,' said Bret. 'But I seem to remember that you keep spare reading glasses in the top drawer of your secretary's desk. Shall I get them for you?'

'Of course, you're right,' said the D-G. 'The top drawer, I remember now. My secretary's off sick this morning. I'm afraid I simply can't manage when she's away.' He smiled at Bret, and then at me, to make it perfectly clear that this was a joke born out of his natural humility and goodwill.

'The old man's got a lot on his plate right now,' said Bret loyally after Sir Henry had ambled off along the corridor muttering apologies about interrupting our 'conference'.

'Does anyone know who'll take over when he goes?' I asked Bret. Goes ga-ga, I almost said.

'There's no date fixed. But could be the old man will get back into his stride again, and go on for the full three years.' I looked at Bret and he looked back at me, and finally he said, 'Better the devil you know than the devil you don't know, Bernard.'

The two sisters were not much alike. My wife, Fiona, was dark with a wide face and a mouth that smiled easily. Tessa, the younger one, was light-haired, almost blonde, with blue eyes and a serious expression that made her look like a small child. Her hair was straight and long enough to touch her shoulders, and she sometimes flicked it back behind her, or let it fall forward across her face so that she looked through it.

It was no surprise to find Tessa in my drawing room when I got back from the office. The two of them were very close – the result perhaps of having suffered together the childhood miseries that their pompous autocratic father thought 'character forming' – and Fiona had been working hard over the past year to patch together Tessa's marriage to George, a wealthy car dealer.

There was an open bottle of champagne in the ice bucket, and already the level was down as far as the label. 'Are we celebrating something?' I asked as I took off my coat and hung it in the hall.

'Don't be so bloody bourgeois,' said Tessa, handing me a champagne flute filled right to the brim. That was one of the problems of marrying into wealth; there were no luxuries.

'Dinner at eight-thirty,' said Fiona, embracing me decorously, her champagne held aloft so that she would spill none of it while giving me a kiss. 'Mrs Dias has kindly stayed late.'

Mrs Dias, our Portuguese cook, housekeeper and general factotum, was always staying late to cook the dinner. I wondered how much her labour was costing us. The cost, like so many other household expenses, would end up buried somewhere deep in the accounts and paid for out of Fiona's trust-fund income. She knew I didn't like it, but I suppose she disliked cooking even more than arguing with me about it. I sat down on the sofa and tasted the champagne. 'Delicious,' I said.

'Tess brought it with her,' explained Fiona.

'A gift from an admirer,' said Tessa archly.

'Am I permitted to ask his name?' I said. I saw Fiona glaring at me but I pretended not to be aware of it.

'All in good time, darling,' said Tessa. 'For the moment he remains incognito.'

'In flagrante delicto, did you say?'

'You sod!' she said, and laughed.

'And how's George?' I said.

'We live our own lives,' said Tessa.

'Don't upset Tessa,' Fiona told me.

'He's not upsetting me,' Tessa said, tossing her hair back with her bejewelled white hand. 'I like George and I always will like him. We're simply not able to live together without quarrelling.'

'Does that mean you're getting a divorce?' I asked, drinking a little more of the champagne.

'George doesn't want a divorce,' she explained. 'It suits him to use the house like a hotel during the week, and he has the cottage to take his fancy ladies to.'

'Does George have fancy ladies?' I said with no more than perfunctory interest.

'It has been known,' said Tessa. 'But he's making so much money these days, I don't think he has much time for anything but his business.'

'Lucky man,' I said. 'Everyone else I know is going broke.'

'Well, that's where George is so clever,' Tessa explained. 'He got the dealerships for smaller, cheaper cars years ago when no one seemed to want them.' She said it proudly. Even wives who quarrel with their husbands take pride in their achievements.

Fiona reached for the champagne. She wrapped it in a cloth and poured the rest of it into our glasses with the dexterity of a sommelier. She took care not to touch the bottle on the glass, and the cloth was crossed so as to leave the label still visible as she served. Such professional niceties came naturally to someone who'd grown up in a house with domestic servants. As she poured mine, she said, Tess wants me to help her find a flat.'

'And furnish it and do it up,' said Tessa. 'I'm no earthly good at anything like that. Look at the mess I made of the place I'm living in now. George never liked it there. Sometimes I think that was where our marriage began to go all wrong.'

'But it's a lovely house,' said Fiona loyally. 'It's just too big for the two of you.'

'It's old and dark,' said Tessa. 'It's a bit of a dump, really. I can understand why George hates it. He only agreed to buying it because he wanted to have an address in Hampstead. It was a step up from Islington. But now he says we can afford Mayfair.'

'And this new place,' I inquired. 'Is George going to like that?'

'Give over!' said Tessa, employing the jocular cockney accent that she thought particularly apt when talking to me. 'I haven't found a place yet – that's what I want help with. I go and see places but I can never make up my mind on my own. I listen to what these sharp estate agents tell me and I believe it – that's my trouble.'

Whatever kind of trouble Tessa had suffered in her life, it was not on account of her believing anything any man told her, but I did not contradict her. I nodded and finished my drink. It was almost time for dinner. The ever-cheerful Mrs Dias was an adequate cook but I wasn't sure I could face another plate of her feijoada.

'You wouldn't mind, darling, would you?' said Fiona.

'Mind what?' I said. 'Oh, you helping Tessa find a flat. No, of course not.'

'You're a sweetie,' Tessa told me, and to Fiona she said, 'You're lucky to have got your hands on Bernard before I saw him. I've always said he was a wonderful husband.'

I said nothing. Only Tessa could make being a wonderful husband sound like a carrier of pestilence.

Tessa leaned back on the sofa. She was wearing a smoky grey silk button-through dress that was shiny on the curves. One hand held her champagne and the other was toying with a real pearl necklace. Nervously she crossed and recrossed her legs and twisted the pearls tight against her white neck.

'Tessa wants to tell you something,' Fiona said.

'Any more of that champagne, darling?' I said.

'Tessa's Dom Pérignon is all finished,' said Fiona. 'You'll have to have Sainsbury's from the fridge.'

'Sainsbury's from the fridge sounds delicious,' I said, passing my empty glass to her. 'What do you want to ask me, Tessa?'

'Do you know a man named Giles Trent?' she said.

'Works for the FO. Tall man, grey wavy hair, low voice, upper-crust accent. Older than me, and not nearly so handsome.'

'Not exactly for the Foreign Office,' said Tessa archly. 'His office is in the FO, but he's a part of your organization.'

'Did he tell you that?' I said.

'Yes,' said Tessa.

'He shouldn't have,' I said.