The contract was still in the second drawer of the desk, under the stapler, where he had left it, and at ten past two in the morning Imran took it out and read it by the light of the kettle.

He had not read it properly the first time. He had read it as a soldier reads a set of orders, for the objective and the timings, and had signed beneath the clause that said he would not fall in love. Now he sat with his boots on the desk and the pages on his knees, in the plasterboard box that smelled of tea bags and fear, and went through it line by line, with the slow, spiteful attention of a man who has been told to trust something and wants to know what exactly he is being asked to lean on.

Bernie had gone home in a taxi, red-eyed and defiant, clutching her phone to her chest. Wim had gone home on his bike with a face like a candle. Clement had let them out through the staff door at eleven fifty-five, and said, mysteriously, as they passed, "I'll tell the brass it was a rat," and none of them had laughed.

The table of contents was on page two. He had skimmed it the first time. Now he traced it with his thumb. *1. Definitions. 2. Term. 3. Public Presentation. 4. Affection. 5. Finance. 6. Family. 7. Digital Media. 8. Confidentiality. 9. Exit. 10. Disclosure of Feelings.* And then, at the bottom, in the same small clean type: *Appendices A–F.*

He turned to the back.

Appendix A was a list of agreed facts. Appendix B was the schedule for public events: Lantern Weekend, the Board interview, a dinner with the Chairman. He turned over a page that was stuck to the next, pulled it free, and found Appendix C. It was headed, in bold: *CONTINGENCIES: HOSTILE THIRD PARTIES.* Underneath were nine numbered sub-clauses, so closely typed that he had to hold the page to the light.

*C1. In the event of pressure on either Party by any institution, relative or person, the Parties shall consult.*

*C2. If consultation is impossible, either Party may feign cooperation with the pressuring party for the purposes of protecting the Provision, the business, or the Party's safety.*

*C3. Feigned cooperation shall not constitute breach. The other Party shall assume, unless and until the cooperating Party states in writing "I withdraw", that the cooperation is feigned.*

*C4. For the avoidance of doubt, the cooperating Party shall try to be convincing.*

He read C4 twice. Then he put his hand over his mouth and laughed, silently, shaking, in the stillness of the office, until his eyes watered.

*C9. Neither Party shall be required to rescue the other. Either Party may do so if it is convenient.*

At the bottom, in the margin, beside the last clause, was a note in blue biro, in the fence-post handwriting: *Seems unlikely. O.*

She had drafted for it. She had sat at her kitchen table, in her flat, with a pen in six colours, and thought it through to the end: the Board, the Chairman, the leaning institutions, the possibility that one day someone with a good voice and a waistcoat would take her aside and tell her to give him up. And she had written it down, so that when it came, he would be able to sit in an office with his boots on a desk and know what to do.

He looked at the clause for a long time. Then he picked up a pen, and in the margin, beneath her note, in block capitals, wrote: *NOT UNLIKELY. I.* And he turned off the kettle, and slept for three hours in the chair, and dreamed of nothing.

Kiera Dlamini sat her second driving test at ten forty on Thursday morning, in Brenda, at the Marley Road centre, under a sky the colour of dishwater.

Imran was not allowed in the car. That was the rule, and the one he hated most. He stood on the pavement among the other instructors, a row of men and women with their hands in their pockets and the faces of parents at a school gate, and watched Brenda pull away from the kerb with a nervous girl at the wheel and a clipboarded man in the passenger seat. The examiner's name was Mr Plunkett. He was fifty, bald, vague, and universally feared. It was said he had once failed a learner for apologising to a pigeon.

"You all right?" said the instructor beside him, a heavy woman called Gwen who ran Lindenfall's other driving school and had known him for two years.

"Fine."

"You're white as a sheet."

"I'm not."

"You've got your hands on your head."

"It's a stress position." He lowered them. "I wasn't sleeping."

"I'd heard." She said it carefully. "That video. That woman. You and the Reaper." She pulled a face. "I don't believe a word, if it helps. I had her in my kitchen two years ago, when I missed a payment, and she sat at my table and wouldn't drink the tea. I thought: poor cow. She's more frightened than I am."

"She's not frightened."

"Everyone's frightened, love. It's just a question of what." She took out a packet of mints and offered him one. He took it, and held it, and didn't eat it, and watched the road.

Brenda came back at eleven nineteen. It came back slowly, and perfectly, and parked in the bay with a care that made his heart turn over. Mr Plunkett sat motionless for a long moment, writing. Kiera, behind the wheel, was staring dead ahead, her hands gripping ten and two, as still as a figurehead. Then the examiner opened his door, climbed out, shut it, and walked up the pavement toward the group, with the clipboard against his chest, past Gwen, past the other instructors, to stop in front of Imran.

"Mr Haddad."

"Mr Plunkett."

"A very nice girl." The man cleared his throat, vague as smoke. "She stopped at a green light on the Harrow Road."

Imran's stomach went down a lift shaft.

"Briefly. Thirty yards before the junction. A woman with a pram was about to cross." Plunkett paused, looking at the clipboard as though it had said something rude. "The light was green. She stopped. The pram did not cross. The woman waved her on. At that point Miss Dlamini told me, and I quote, *sorry, I thought it looked tired.*"

"Mr Plunkett..."

"It's not a fault," said Plunkett. "Under the Code. It's not a fault at all." He looked up, and the vague blue eyes met Imran's with unexpected humanity. "It's quite the opposite. I've been examining for twenty-six years and she is the first person I've seen who stopped to see if the pram was moving. She passed with no major faults and three minors. I wanted to say so in person."

For a moment Imran couldn't speak. Behind him, Gwen made a sound like a dropped kettle. In the car, Kiera, who had seen the examiner's face from the windscreen, put both hands over her mouth and began to cry in a manner that rocked the whole vehicle.

"Thank you," he managed.

"Don't thank me, thank her." Plunkett tucked the clipboard under his arm. "Oh, and Mr Haddad? The wife and I are fond of the dancing."

It was nearly four before he got back to the unit. The yard was washed and bright with a late, thin sun. Kiera's mother had danced on the pavement. Kiera had hugged him so hard that the watch left a mark on her sleeve. Wim had cried, again, on the bonnet of the Colonel. It had been, in every way that mattered, the best day of the month, and Imran had held on to it through the long, glossy hours the way a man holds on to a rail in a swaying train.

He found the orange van parked across the entrance.

The side was down, its awning dripping. The shelves were bare. In the open back, sitting on a crate with his elbows on his knees and a tartan biscuit tin beside him, was Rory Castellanos-Finch. He had no scarf today. Without it, his neck looked thin, and his face older. He had not shaved. His moustache, for the first time since they met, was real, a dark smudge beneath the nose, and made him look like a boy trying to age himself for a grown-up photograph.

"Sergeant," he said, without looking up.

"Rory."

"I heard about the girl. Gwen's daughter works at the bakery. Congratulations." He turned the tin a quarter turn on the crate. "I think that's the first time in my life I've been glad for someone I wanted to hate."

"What are you doing here?"

"Reading." Rory lifted the lid. Inside lay a stack of papers wrapped in a tea towel, a small cloth bag, and, on top, a folded sheet of Society notepaper with the green leaf at the head and a few lines of looping handwriting in green ink. "I've read it nine times. I read it first in the dark, in my kitchen, with my hands shaking, after you and your lady left. I read it again at dawn. And then I went and sat outside Sunrise Court for an hour and a half, and watched the Chairman's car park." He put the lid back on. His voice cracked. "And I thought: I've been aiming at the wrong people."

"Rory..."

"I don't want to do this alone." The words came out of him flat and astonished, like a man reading aloud from a letter he had not known he'd written. "I thought I did. I've thought so for three years. It's a very nice fantasy, one man and a note and the Cathedral Green, and everyone in tears. But I'm an idiot, Sergeant. I'm a baker. I can't read a land register. I don't know what a holding company is. And I think," he said, and finally raised his eyes, "that the note I found isn't the whole of it. I think it says there's another one."