A Delicate Truth A Novel

Lady Mayor to his right and the Lady Alderman to his left with set pieces about the life and travails of a Queen’s representative in a Caribbean paradise:
    ‘My accolade? Absolute fluke! Nothing whatever to do with merit. Parade-horse job. Her Maj was in the region and took it into her head to drop in on our local premier. It was my parish, so bingo, I get a K for being in the right place at the right time. And you , darling’ – grabbing his water glass by mistake and raising it to Suzanna down the line of the commander’s Paul Storr candlesticks – ‘became the lovely Lady P, which is how I’ve always thought of you anyway.’
    But even while he makes this desperate protestation, it’s Suzanna’s voice, not his own, that he is hearing:
    All I want to know is, Kit: did an innocent woman and child die, and were we packed off to the Caribbean to shut you up, and is that poor soldier right?
    And sure enough, no sooner has Mrs Marlow gone home and the last of the Chain Gang’s cars departed, there Suzanna is, standing stock-still in the hall waiting for his answer.
    And Kit must have been unconsciously composing it all through dinner, because out it pours like a Foreign Office spokesman’s official statement – and probably, to Suzanna’s ear, about as believable:
    ‘Here is my final word on the subject, Suki. It’s as much as I’m allowed to tell you, and probably a great deal more.’ Has he used this line before? ‘The top-secret operation in which I was privileged to be involved was afterwards described to me by its planners – at the highest level – as a certified, bloodless victory over some very bad men .’ A note of misplaced irony enters his voice which he tries in vain to stop: ‘And for all I know, yes , maybe my modest role in the operation was what secured our posting, since the same people were kind enough to say I had done a pretty decent job, but unfortunately a medal would be too conspicuous. However , that was not the reason given to me by Personnel when the posting was offered to me – a reward for lifelong service was how they sold it to me, not that I neededmuch selling – any more than you did, as I recall’ – pardonable dig. ‘ Were the Personnel people – or Human Resources or whatever the hell they call themselves these days – aware of my role in a certain enormously delicate operation? I very much doubt it. My guess is, they didn’t even know the very little you know.’
    Has he persuaded her? When Suzanna looks like this, anything can be going on. He becomes strident – always a mistake:
    ‘Look, darling, at the end of the day, who are you actually going to believe ? Me and the top brass at the Foreign Office? Or some very sad ex-soldier down on his luck?’
    She takes his question seriously. Weighs it. Her face locked against him, yes; but also blotchy, resolute, breaking his heart with its unbending rectitude, the face of a woman who got the best law degree of her year and never used it, but is using it now; the face of a woman who has looked death in the eye through a string of medical ordeals, and her only outward concern: how will Kit manage without her?
    ‘Did you ask them – these planners – whether it was bloodless?’
    ‘Of course I didn’t.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Because with people like that you don’t challenge their integrity.’
    ‘So they volunteered it. In as many words? “The operation was bloodless” – just like that?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘To reassure me, I assume.’
    ‘Or to deceive you.’
    ‘Suzanna, that is not worthy of you!’
    Or not worthy of me? he wonders abjectly, first storming off to his dressing room in a huff, then sneaking unnoticed into his side of the bed where hour after hour he peers miserably intothe half-darkness while Suzanna sleeps her motionless, medicated sleep: until at some point in the interminable dawn, he discovers that an unconscious mental process has delivered him a seemingly spontaneous decision.
     
    *
     
    Rolling silently off the bed and creeping across the corridor, Kit threw on a pair of flannels and a sports jacket, detached his cellphone from its charger and dropped it into his jacket pocket. Pausing at the door to Emily’s bedroom for sounds of waking, and hearing none, he tiptoed down the back staircase to the kitchen to make himself a pot of coffee, an essential prerequisite for putting his master plan into effect: only to hear his daughter’s voice addressing him from