Текст книги "What a cave up!"

Автор книги: Джонатан Коу

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After lunch Uncle and I took tea together in my rooms. I congratulated him on ribbing Gillam so successfully but he assured me that it had all been perfectly serious, and I would do well to remember what he’d said about the Health Service. He asked me what I was planning to do when I left Oxford and I said I hadn’t decided, it was probably either industry or politics. When I said politics he asked which side, and I said I didn’t know, and he said it didn’t make much difference at the moment, they were both too far to the Left, it was a reaction against Hitler. Then he said there were several companies he could find me a position with, if I wanted: there was no point in starting at the bottom, I might as well go straight on to the board. So I thanked him for that and said I would bear it in mind. I’d never cared much for Uncle Lawrence before now, but he really does seem a very decent sort. As he left he gave me eighty pounds in ten pound notes, which should see me through the next few weeks nicely.1

∗

BBC TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE

PROGRAMME TITLE: ‘Matters of Moment’

TX: 18 July 1958

PRESENTER: Alan Beamish2

BEAMISH: … We move on now to a new feature which we have called ‘Backbencher’, and which we hope will soon establish itself as a regular item on the programme. If we want to know the Prime Minister’s views on any particular issue, or – em – the views of the Leader of the Opposition, for instance, then we all know where to look. We can find them in the newspapers, or we can hear them on the wireless. But what of the – em – ordinary, working Member of Parliament, the backbencher, the man you have elected to best represent the interests of your own local community? What does he think of the larger – em – political questions of the day? To help us find out, I have pleasure in welcoming to the studio our first guest in this series, Henry – em – Winshaw, the Labour member for Frithville and Ropsley. Mr Winshaw, good evening.

WINSHAW: Good evening. Now, what this government fails to understand –

BEAMISH: Just a moment, Mr Winshaw. If I might just leap in with a little – em – biographical information, so that our viewers at home might know something of the background …

WINSHAW: Oh, yes, certainly. By all means.

BEAMISH: Now, you were born in Yorkshire, I believe, and took a degree in Mathematics from – em – Oxford University. In the years since leaving university, I understand that you worked in industry and held the post of Executive Chairman on the board of Lambert and Cox at the time when you put yourself forward for candidacy in the Labour Party.

WINSHAW: That’s correct, yes.

BEAMISH: You were elected to Parliament in 1955 but have retained your position with Lambert, and in addition you’ve continued to serve as an active – em – board member with Spraggon Textiles and Daintry Ltd.

WINSHAW: Well, I believe it’s very important to maintain contact with the manufacturing – erm – process, at – erm – at grassroots level, as it were.

BEAMISH: Naturally, with your close interest in – em – matters industrial, you must have strong views on Mr Amory’s1 recent decision to relax the credit squeeze.

WINSHAW: I certainly do. And what this government simply fails to understand is that –

BEAMISH: But before we come on to that topic I thought we should perhaps consider things in a more – em – global perspective, because after all only one issue has been dominating proceedings in the Commons for the last few days, and that of course is the revolution in – em – Iraq.1 You must have been following the debates with interest.

WINSHAW: Ah. Well I haven’t been in the House this week, nearly as much – erm – nearly as much as one would wish. Business commitments have – I mean constituencybusiness, of course – have been very – erm – very pressing …

BEAMISH: But, for instance, what sort of impact do you, personally, think that Brigadier-General Kassem’s uprising will have on the balance of power?

WINSHAW: Well … well, the whole Middle East situation, as you know, is very delicate.

BEAMISH: Absolutely. But I think it’s true to say that this was an especially bloodthirsty coup, even by the standards of the region.

WINSHAW: Quite.

BEAMISH: Do you foresee that Mr Macmillan2 will face any problems in recognizing the new government?

WINSHAW: Oh, I’m sure he’d … know them if he saw them. I gather he’s pretty well acquainted with that part of the world.

BEAMISH: No, my point, Mr Winshaw – my point is that there is concern, in some quarters, about the effect that the violent imposition of a new, left-wing regime will have on our trading prospects with Iraq. And indeed on our relations generally.

WINSHAW: Well, I personally don’t have any relations in Iraq, but anybody who does would be well advised, I would have thought, to get them flown home at once. It sounds absolutely ghastly out there at the moment.

BEAMISH: Let me put it another way. There’s been considerable disquiet in the House over Mr Macmillan’s decision to send British troops into the area. Do you think we could now be faced with another Suez?

WINSHAW: No, I don’t, and I’ll tell you why. The Suez, you see, is a canal: a very large canal, as I understand it, running through Egypt. Now there are no canals in Iraq. Absolutely none at all. This is the essential factor which has been overlooked by people who have tried to make this point. So I really don’t think the comparison stands up to scrutiny.

BEAMISH: Finally, Mr Winshaw, do you see any irony in the fact that this coup – so hostile, potentially, to our national interests – has been carried out by an army trained and equipped by the British? Traditionally, the British and Iraqi governments have cooperated very closely in this area. Do you think their military ties will now be a thing of the past?

WINSHAW: Well, I very much hope not. I’ve always thought that the Iraqi military tie is an extremely attractive one, and I know there are many British officers who wear it with pride. So it would be a sad day for our country if that were to happen.

BEAMISH: Well, I see now that we’re out of time, and all that remains for me to say is – Henry Winshaw, thank you very much for being our guest on the programme. And now over to Alastair for our location report.

WINSHAW: Is there a bar in here?

BEAMISH: We’re still on air, I think.

∗

February 5th 1960

The shock of my life. Not having much to do this morning, wandered into the House at around eleven. The agenda wasn’t promising: second reading of the Public Bodies (Admission of the Press to Meetings) Bill. This was to be the maiden speech of the new Member for Finchley, one Margaret Thatcher: and blow me if she didn’t turn out to be the self-same Margaret Roberts who knocked me for six at the Conservative Association back in Oxford! Fifteen years ago, for Heaven’s sake! She made the most magnificent début – everyone was congratulating her in the most effusive terms – although to my shame I have to say that I only took in about half of it. While she was speaking the years just seemed to slip away, and by the end I was probably staring at her open-mouthed across the benches like some sex-starved pubescent. That hair! Those eyes! That voice!

Afterwards I approached her in the Corridor to see if she remembered me. I think she did: she wasn’t just saying it. She’s married, now, of course (to an entrepreneur of some sort), with children (twins).1 What pride, what wonderful pride that man must feel. She was rushing off to meet him, and we spoke for only a few minutes. Then I dined alone in the Members’ Room, and then back to digs. Telephoned Wendy, but didn’t have much to say. She sounded drunk.

What a millstone she’s become. Even the name – Wendy Winshaw – even that sounds absurd. Daren’t take her out in public with me any more. Now 3 years and 247 days since last coitus. (With her, that is.)

Asked Margaret what she thought about Macmillan and his winds of change.2 She didn’t give much away, but I suspect we think alike. Neither of us can afford to declare our hands at this stage.

I feel, just as I did all those years ago – tho’ perhaps now with more reason – that our destinies are inextricably bound together.

September 20th 1961

Impertinent telephone call this afternoon from the Whip, who has somehow caught wind of our little contretemps up at Winshaw Towers over the weekend.1 Don’t ask me how – the thing was in the local paper, but Lawrence will already have seen to it that it doesn’t get any further. Damn this wretched family of mine! If ever they turn out to be a liability … Well, they can expect no loyalty from me.

Anyway, he wanted to know about Tabitha and her illness and whether we had any other mental cases locked away in the attic at all. I did my best to play it all down, but he didn’t seem entirely convinced. If it gets back to Gaitskell2 (as I’m sure it will) – what will that do to my cabinet prospects?

July 14th 1962

Much righteous indignation in the newspapers over Macmillan’s reshuffle. I must say that sacking seven ministers in one night seems pretty good going to me. For my own part – not that I’m allowed to say this to anyone, of course – I admire (and am pleasantly surprised by) his guts. We could do with the same ruthlessness in our own party, frankly, to get rid of some of the spineless Yes-Men who have allowed the Communists to get a foothold – those ructions at Glasgow merely being the most public example.3 I’d hoped, to be honest, that most of that nonsense would have died with Bevan. What place is there for me if the party drifts further and further to the Left? There’s talk of Wilson becoming the next leader, which would be nothing short of disastrous. The man hates and despises me, for one thing. Never says hello at Conference or in the House. Seven bloody years I’ve sat on these benches and I’m damned if it’s not going to pay off in the end.1

November 8th 1967

Brief but humiliating conversation with Richard Crossman2 in the Tea Room this afternoon. Ostensibly he stopped by to congratulate me on my appointment, but there was an element of mockery there. I could hear it. Bastard. Well, Parliamentary Undersecretary: it’s a step nearer to the front bench, isn’t it? There’s no point in fooling myself, though. The fact is that if I was with the Other Side I’d be near the top of the shadow team by now. I’m batting for the wrong eleven, and it’s getting more and more obvious. Wilson and his pack of cronies don’t have the faintest idea what a man of ability looks like. No vision, any of them.

Nothing but gloom on the financial front, too. Under this blinkered administration it’s becoming impossible for businesses to forge ahead – like trying to run through treacle. Profits down 16% at Amalgamated, 38% at Evergreen. Dorothy seems to be doing well, however, so her offer of a non-executive position starts to look more and more attractive. Should I resign at the next election and get out of this rat race altogether?

Of course, there’s no guarantee that I’d get back in, in any case. Very much a moot point at the moment. Wendy’s little appearance in the local rag won’t have helped at all. Stupid bitch: with that much inside her, she was lucky not to have crashed the thing. Could have been killed.

(Dangerous line of thinking, Winshaw. Very dangerous.)

June 19th 1970

Well, we deserved to lose.1 Now the country will get the most hardline government it will have known since the war, and a good thing too. People need shaking out of their swinish complacency.

Margaret has her cabinet post at last: Education. She will be wonderful, I just know she will.

Keith Joseph2 in charge of Health. He’s a bit of an unknown quantity to me. Hasn’t made a big impression. All I’ve noticed is a slightly manic gleam in his eye, which I find a trifle disconcerting.

My majority down to 1,500. Amazes me that it’s as big as that, frankly – but these people would probably vote for a tailor’s dummy if it wore a badge with ‘Labour’ written on it. What a dismal farce it all is.

March 27th 1973

Debate on Joseph’s NHS reforms3 dragged on for another day. The usual people making the usual footling objections. Our Man making a poor job of his speech. Didn’t stay to hear the whole thing – dropped in and out during the course of the day. The Bill isn’t all it should be, but a step in the right direction: more efficient management structure, more externals (or ‘generalists’ as he calls them) on the various boards – business people, I assume that means. I think this may be it – the beginning of the asset-stripping process. So I must start looking for ways to make my move.

Voting, finally, at about 10.15. Did my duty, as per usual. But will try to buttonhole Sir Keith some time over the next few days and let him know where my allegiances really lie. He looks the sort of chap who can keep a secret.

July 3rd 1974

Forgot to mention it at the time, but Wendy died last week. Came as no surprise to anyone, really – least of all me. 20 aspirin and a big tumbler-full of Scotch. Never did anything by halves, that woman.

Funeral this morning, so whizzed up the motorway and made it just in time. Fairly low-key affair – no family, thank God. Back to London in time to hear Castle’s statement on the nurses’ strike.1Confirmed my worst fears – she wants to phase private beds out of the Health Service altogether. Lunacy. Am beginning to see our election victory (if you can call it that) for what it was: a national disaster. This cannot go on. Wilson can’t govern for long without a majority and when he announces the next polling date, I shall stand down. Please God let it be soon.

October 7th–10th 1975

Attended the Conservative Conference in my new capacity as journalist. The editor wants 8–900 words a day, my brief being to decide whether Margaret’s election2 means a break with old-style Conservatism once and for all. He thought it would be interesting to have someone write about it from a Left perspective, although he may get a surprise when he reads what I have to say.1

Everyone here is remarking on the contrast with last week’s Labour bash in Blackpool. Apparently it was a shambles – the party is tearing itself apart and Wilson has been warning of extremists in the constituency parties, although I could have told him about that ages ago. The Marxists have been worming their way inside for years. It was there for anyone with eyes to see.

The highlight of this week has been Joseph’s magnificent speech. He said there was no such thing as the ‘middle ground’ and the only possible consensus had to be based upon the market economy. Some of the delegates looked a bit stunned, but give them a few years and they’ll see how right he is.

It’s just beginning. I can feel it. Can it really have taken so long to get this far?

November 18th 1977

The Party held me down and kept me back for twenty years. Twenty wasted years. Nothing could give me greater pleasure than to see it unravelling before my eyes. The leadership election was a joke, and now we have a new tenant at Number Ten who can only be described as a political dwarf, with no idea how to govern, and no mandate from the people.2 Every vote has to be fought to the death, and he will have to spend most of his time trying to appease the Liberals.

Reg Prentice3 has announced his defection to the Tories. Fool. Real power lies in the media, and in backroom policy-making: if he hasn’t worked that out after all those years in Parliament, he’s more of a sap than I thought he was. It’s perfectly obvious that Margaret is going to be PM in a year or two, and the important thing now is to start getting the legislation in place. They will have to move fast once they get there.

Work on an NHS bill is progressing. I’ve managed to convince them that the first thing to do is reverse the policy of phasing out private beds. More radical measures will have to wait, but not for long. We need to get a few business types in, to do a major report and show that the present system is nothing but a shambles. If someone from a supermarket chain, for instance, were to come in and see how it operates at the moment … he’d probably have a fit.

Here’s a thought: why not suggest Lawrence? I think he’s still got his wits about him (just about), and he could certainly be relied upon to come to the right conclusions. Worth a try, anyway.

I see her now, and talk to her, more than ever before. Such happy days.

June 23rd 1982

Very agreeable lunch with Thomas in the private dining room at Stewards.1 Extremely fine port – must encourage the Club to buy some, to replace the raspberry syrup they serve at the moment. Pheasant a little overcooked. Nearly lost a tooth on the gunshot.

Thomas has agreed to help us out with the flogging-off of Telecom.2 Took a little persuading at first, but I convinced him that if he and the bank were going to prosper under Margaret’s government then they were going to have to be a little more robust in their business practices. It helped, of course, when I told him the kind of fees he could expect to collect. Also predicted that there was going to be any number of these sell-offs over the next few years, and if Stewards wanted a good slice of the action they should get in early. He asked me what else was going to come up in the near future and I told him that it was basically the lot: steel, gas, BP, BR, electricity, water, you name it. Not sure that he believed me about the last two. Just wait and see, I said.

This was the longest chat we’ve had, I think, for about thirty years. Stayed till about 5, talking about this and that. He showed off his new toy, a machine that plays back films on what looks like a silver gramophone record, with which he seemed inordinately pleased. I couldn’t really see it catching on, but didn’t say so. He’d seen my latest appearance on the box, and told me that I’d done very well. Asked him if he’d noticed I hadn’t answered any of the questions, and he said no, not really. Must tell this to the PR people: they’ll be very pleased. They’ve been training us all quite intensively over the last few weeks and I must say it seems to be paying off. I timed the interview on playback last night and was impressed to find that only 23 seconds after being asked about theBelgrano, I was already talking about Militant infiltration of the Labour Party. Sometimes I surprise even myself.

June 18th 1984

Reforms progressing, although not as speedily as I’d hoped. Everybody on the committee seems to have a full calendar, and today was only the second time we’d managed to get together since the review was announced. Still, the Griffiths1 report gives us plenty to go on, and is a firm nudge in the right direction, since it deals something of a death blow to the whole idea of ‘consensus’ management. One lady committee member (of pinkish hue, I suspect) queried this but I shut her up by quoting Margaret’s definition of consensus as ‘the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies’ and ‘something in which no one believes and to which no one objects’. Point made, I think.

What we’ll now end up recommending – if I have anything to do with it – is the introduction of general managers at every level onperformance-related pay. That’s the crucial thing. We’ve got to squash this dewy-eyed belief that people can be motivated by anything other than money. If I’m going to end up running this show, after all, I need people underneath me who I can be sure are going to give of their best.

Went upstairs to the TV room at the Club for the Nine O’Clock News this evening and saw extraordinary scenes at some pit or other.1 A whole gang of thuggish-looking miners were mounting a murderous, unprovoked assault – throwing stones, some of them – on policemen who were armed only with truncheons and riot gear. When the police tried to ride through, some of these hooligans blatantly obstructed them, actually trying to trip up the horses by getting in the way. What will Kinnock2 have to say about that, I wonder?

October 29th 1985

Over to Shepherd’s Bush this evening to appear on Newsnight, where it turned out that the guest presenter was none other than my old enemy Beamish. Contemplated walking off at that point, since it’s well known that the man is practically a Communist and has no business chairing a supposedly impartial discussion programme. Anyway, I managed to come off very well from the whole thing. To present the ‘other point of view’ they wheeled out some pig-ugly female doctor with NHS specs and a bleeding heart, who whined and moaned a lot about ‘goodwill’ and ‘chronic underfunding’ before I put her in her place by quoting a few simple facts. Thought I’d heard the last of her, after that, but she came up to me afterwards in hospitality and claimed that her father had known me at Oxford. Gillam was the name, apparently. Meant nothing to me, I must say – in fact this sounded suspiciously like a chat-up line, and since she didn’t look quite such a Gorgon away from the studio lights, I asked if she fancied a quick one to show there were no hard feelings. Nothing doing, needless to say. She took the hump and stormed off. (Did look a bit dyke-ish, now I come to think of it. Just my luck.)1

∗

From A Pox on the Box: Memoirs of a Disillusioned Broadcaster,by Alan Beamish (Cape, 1993)

… I can even pinpoint the incident which first convinced me that the quality of public debate in this country had entered into precipitous decline. It was in October 1985, during one of my occasional stints as presenter of Newsnight: the guest was Henry Winshaw (or Lord Winshaw, as we all had to get used to calling him for a year or two prior to his death) and the subject was the NHS.

This, you will recall, was at the high tide of Thatcherism, and the last few months had seen a series of aggressive measures which had left the more liberal wing of the electorate feeling punch-drunk and disoriented: a radical cutting-back of the Welfare State announced in June, the GLC abolished in July, the BBC forced to abandon a documentary featuring interviews with Sinn Fein leaders, and, most recently, Mrs Thatcher’s implacable opposition to sanctions against South Africa, which left her isolated at the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ conference. At the same time, the question of the Health Service continued to bubble away in the background. A fundamental policy review had been set in motion, and there was mounting unrest within the medical profession about dwindling resources and ‘privatization by the back door’. We decided it would be instructive to invite one of the architects of the NHS reforms on to the programme and confront him with someone working at the front line of medical practice in a London hospital.

For this purpose we brought in a junior doctor called Jane Gillam, who had recently taken part in a Radio 4 phone-in and impressed everyone with her commitment and grasp of detail. I remember her as a tall woman, whose jet-black hair was cut in a bob and whose small, gold-rimmed glasses framed a pair of striking and combative brown eyes: and yet it was obvious from the beginning that she was going to be no match for Winshaw. Long gone were the days when I had interviewed him for the old ‘Backbencher’ slot and inadvertently exposed his hazy grasp of foreign policy. It was impossible, now, to connect that nervous, fresh-faced MP with the puffy, glowering old firebrand who stared at me across the table, thumping it with his fist and barking like a rabid dog as he answered Dr Gillam’s questions. Or rather, failed to answer them: for Winshaw’s mode of political debate, by this stage in his career, had long since parted company with rational discourse and tended to consist entirely of statistics diluted with the occasional gobbet of scattergun abuse. And so, consulting a transcript of that discussion, I find that when Dr Gillam first raised the subject of deliberate underfunding as a prelude to privatization, his answer was:

‘17,000,000 over 5 years 12.3% of GDP 4% more than the EEC 35% up on the USSR 34,000 GPs for every HAS × 19.24 in real terms 9,586 for every FHSA seasonally adjusted 12,900,000 + 54.67 @ 19% incl VAT rising to 47% depending on IPR by the IHSM £4.52p NHS safe in our hands.’

In response to which, Dr Gillam said:

‘I don’t dispute the truth of your figures, but neither do I dispute the truth of what I see every day with my own eyes. And the problem is that these two truths contradict each other. Every day I see staff working longer hours, under greater stress, for less reward, and I see patients waiting a longer time, for worse treatment, under worse conditions. These are facts, I’m afraid. They can’t be argued away.’

And Winshaw’s second answer to Dr Gillam was:

‘16%! 16.5%! Rising to 17.5% under a DMU with 54,000 extra for PAYE and SERPS! 64% PRP as promised in the CIPs and £38,000 = $45,000 + ¥93,000,000 divided by ✓451 to the power of 68.7 recurring! 45% IPR, 73% NUT, 85.999% CFC and 9½ weeks more than under the last Labour government.’

In response to which, Dr Gillam said:

‘My point really is that you can’t make the NHS more efficient by making it more geared to costs. If you do that, you’re effectively trimming its resources, because the NHS runs on goodwill, on the goodwill of its staff, and under the right conditions, this goodwill is potentially infinite. But if you continue to erode it, as you’re doing at the moment, and replace it with a finite range of financial incentives, then eventually you will end up with a more expensive NHS, a less efficient NHS, an NHS which is always going to be a millstone round the government’s neck.’

And Winshaw’s third and final answer to Dr Gillam was:

‘60 CMOs, 47 DHAs, 32 TQMs, 947 NAHATs, 96% over 4 years, 37.2. in 11 months, 78.224 × 295 ÷ 13¼ + 63.5374628374, leaving £89,000,000 for the DTI, the DMU, the DSS, the KLF, the ERM and the AEGWU’s NHSTA. 43% up, 64% down, 23.6% way over the top and 100–1 bar. And that’s all I have to say on the matter.’

After that, he left the studio with the victorious air of a man who has finally conquered the medium. And I suppose, in a way, that he had.

∗

October 6th 1987

At long last, another full meeting of the Review Board – the first since Margaret’s victory in June.1 The first White Paper2 is finished and work will be starting on a second and third.3

The next reforms will be much further-reaching. We’re getting to the heart of the matter, at last. To remind everyone where our priorities lie, I’ve had a large notice pinned to the wall: it says

FREEDOM

COMPETITION

CHOICE

I’ve also decided to take a strong line with the word ‘hospital’. This word is no longer permitted at discussions: from now on, we call them ‘provider units’. This is because their sole purpose, in future, will be to provide services which will be purchased from them by Health Authorities and fundholding GPs throughnegotiated contracts. The hospital becomes a shop, the operation becomes a piece of merchandise, and normal business practices prevail: pile ’em high and sell ’em cheap. The beautiful simplicity of this idea astounds me.

Also on the agenda today was income generation. I see no reason at all why provider units shouldn’t impose car-parking charges, for instance, on visitors. Also, they should be encouraged to rent out their premises for retail developments. There’s no point in all those closed wards standing empty when they could be turned into shops selling flowers, or grapes, or all those other things people feel like buying when visiting a sick relative. Hamburgers, and so on. Little knick-knacks and souvenirs.

Towards the end of the meeting somebody brought up the subject of Quality Adjusted Life Years. This is one of my own personal favourites, I must say. The idea is that you take the cost of an operation and then calculate not just how many years’ life it saves, but what the quality of the life is. You simply put a figure on it. Then you can work out the cost-effectiveness of each operation: and so something basic like a hip replacement will come out at around £700 per QALY, while a heart transplant is more like £5,000 and a full hospital haemodialysis will cost a cool £14,000 per QALY.

I’ve been arguing it all my life: quality is quantifiable!

Most of the Board, nevertheless, don’t think the public is ready for this concept just yet, and they may be right. But it can’t be long now. We’re all feeling tremendously buoyant after the election result. The sell-offs have been proceeding at an amazing rate – Aerospace, Sealink, Vickers shipyards, British Gas last year, British Airways in May. Surely the day for the NHS can’t be far off.

Such a shame Lawrence never lived to see it happen. But I shall do his memory proud.

We must never forget that we owe it all to Margaret. If ambition turns to reality, it will be thanks to her, and her alone. She is magnificent, unstoppable. I’ve never known such resolution in a woman, such backbone. She cuts her opponents down as if they were so many weeds blocking her path. Knocks them aside with a flick of her finger. She looked so beautiful in victory. How can I ever repay her – how can any of us even begin to repay her – for all that she’s done?

November 18th 1990

The call came through at about 9 p.m. Nothing had been decided yet, but they were starting to canvass opinion among the faithful. I was one of the first to be asked. The poll findings are grim: she gets more and more unpopular. In fact it’s gone beyond unpopularity, now. The plain truth of the matter is that with Margaret as leader, the party is unelectable.

‘Dump the bitch,’ I said. ‘And fast.’

Nothing must be allowed to stop us

October 1990

1

‘The fact is,’ said Fiona, ‘that I don’t really trust my GP. From what I can see, most of his energy these days goes into balancing his budget and trying to keep his costs down. I didn’t get the sense that I was being taken very seriously.’

I did my best to concentrate while she was telling me this, but couldn’t help keeping a watchful eye on the other diners as the restaurant started to fill up. It was beginning to dawn on me that I was underdressed. Hardly any of the men were wearing ties, but everything about their clothes looked expensive, and Fiona herself seemed to have been much more successful in judging the mood: she wore a collarless, herringbone-patterned jacket over a black cotton T-shirt, and cream linen trousers, cut a little bit short to show off her ankles. I hoped she hadn’t noticed the worn patches on my jeans, or the chocolate stains which had been ingrained on my jumper for longer than I cared to remember.