“So Lawrence,” I said, “what do you think is going wrong with Britain?”

Lawrence stopped and turned. His face glowed in a soft yellow ray, filtered through colored glass.

“You’re asking the wrong man,” he said. “If I knew the answer to that, I’d fix it.”

“Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do at the Home Office? Fix it?”

“I don’t actually work in any of the departments. They tried me out here and there for a while, but I don’t think my heart was in it. So here I am in the press office.”

“But surely you must have an opinion?”

Lawrence sighed. “Everyone has an opinion, don’t they? Maybe that’s what’s wrong with this country. What? Why are you smiling?”

“I wish you’d tell that to my husband.”

“Ah. He has opinions, does he?”

“On a variety of subjects.”

“Well, maybe he should work here. They love a policy debate around these parts, they really do. Your first interview, for example…” Lawrence looked at his clipboard, searching for a name.

“I’m sorry?” I said. “I thought you were my interview.”

Lawrence looked up. “Ah,” he said. “No, I’m just the warm-up guy. I’m sorry, I should have explained.”

“Oh.”

“Well don’t look so disappointed. I’ve fixed up a good day for you, I really have. You’ve got three heads of department lined up, and a real live permanent undersecretary. I’m sure they’ll give you more than you need for your piece.”

“But I was enjoying talking to you.”

“You’ll get over it.”

“You think?”

Lawrence smiled. He had curly black hair, quite glossy but cut disconcertingly short around the back and sides. His suit, too-it was a good one; Kenzo, I think-and it fitted him well, but there was something arresting about the way he wore it. He held his arms a little away from his body-as if the suit was the pelt of some suaver animal, recently slain and imperfectly cured, so that the bloody rawness of it made his skin crawl.

“They don’t really like me talking to the visitors,” said Lawrence. “I don’t think I’ve quite perfected the Home Office voice.”

I was surprised to find myself laughing. We walked on down the corridor. Somewhere in between the Criminal Records Bureau and the Forensic Science Service, the mood changed. People ran past us down the corridor. A crowd clustered around a television monitor. I noticed the way Lawrence put a protective hand on the small of my back as he steered me through the sudden press of people. It didn’t feel inappropriate. I realized I was slowing down to feel the pressure of his hand on my back.

BREAKING NEWS, said the TV monitor: HOME SECRETARY RESIGNS. There was footage of the man looking haggard and climbing with his guide dog into the backseat of a torment that for the moment still resembled a ministerial car.

Lawrence inclined his head toward the others, who were staring raptly at the monitor. He spoke close to my ear.

“Look at these bastards,” he whispered. “The man’s being crucified and these people are already excited about what it means for their jobs.”

“What about you? Don’t you care?”

Lawrence grinned.

“Oh, it’s bad news for me,” he whispered. “With my brilliant track record, I was next in line to be the man’s guide dog.”

Lawrence took me to his office. He said he had to check his messages. I was nervous, I don’t know why. There wasn’t anything of Lawrence on the walls-just a generic framed photo of Waterloo Bridge, and a laminated card showing the mustering points in the event of fire. I caught myself checking my reflection in the window glass and then thinking, Oh don’t be so silly. I let my eyes change their focus until they rested on the flat gray wall of the neighboring office building. I waited while Lawrence scrolled through his e-mails.

He looked up.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “We’re going to have to reschedule your interviews. It’ll be chaos around here for the next few days.”

The phone went and Lawrence listened for a moment. He said, What? Shouldn’t someone more senior be doing that? Really? Oh, great. How long do I have? He put the phone down on the table and then he put his head down on the desk. In the corridor outside the office there were sounds of laughing, shouting, doors slamming shut.

“Bastards,” said Lawrence.

“What is it?”

“That phone call? Off the record?”

“Of course.”

“I have to write a letter to the outgoing home secretary, expressing our department’s deep regret at his leaving.”

“They don’t sound particularly regretful.”

“And to think that but for your journalistic sensitivity to detail, we’d never have noticed.”

Lawrence rubbed his eyes and turned to his computer screen. He laid his fingers on the keyboard, then hesitated.

“God!” he said. “I mean, what do you write?”

“Don’t ask me. Did you know the man?”

Lawrence shook his head. “I’ve been in rooms he was in, that’s all. He was a twat, really, only you couldn’t say that because he was blind. I suppose that’s how he got so far. He used to lean slightly forward, with his hand on his guide dog’s harness. He used to lean, like this, and his hand would sort of tremble. I think it was an act. He didn’t tremble when he was reading Braille.”

“You don’t sound as if you’ll miss him much either.”

Lawrence shrugged. “I quite admired him. He was weak and he turned that into a strength. A role model for losers like me.”

“Oh,” I said. “You’re doing self-deprecation.”

“So?”

“So, it doesn’t work. Studies have shown. Women only pretend they like it in surveys.”

“Maybe I’m only pretending to do self-deprecation. Maybe I’m a winner. Maybe becoming the Home Office’s press bitch was my own personal Everest.”

He said all this without facial inflection. He stared into my eyes. I didn’t know where to look.

“Let’s bring this back to my article,” I said.

“Yes, let’s,” said Lawrence. “Because otherwise this is going somewhere else, isn’t it?”

I felt adrenaline aching in my chest. This thing that was happening, then, it had apparently slipped quite subtly over some line. It had become something acknowledged, albeit in a relatively controlled form that both of us could still step back from. Here it was, if we wanted it, hanging from a taut umbilicus between us: an affair between adults, minute yet fully formed, with all its forbidden trysts and muffled paroxysms and shattering betrayals already present, like the buds of fingers and toes.

I remember looking down at the carpet tiles in Lawrence’s office. I can still see them now, with hyperreal clarity, every minute gray acrylic fiber of them, gleaming in the fluorescent light, coarse and glossy and tightly curled, lascivious, obscene, the gray pubic fuzz of an aging administrative body. I stared at them as if I had never seen carpet tiles before. I didn’t want to meet Lawrence’s eyes.

“Please,” I said. “Stop it.”

Lawrence blinked and inclined his head, innocently. “Stop what?” he said.

And, just like that, for the moment, it was gone.

I breathed again. Above us, one of the fluorescent tubes was buzzing loudly.

“Why did the home secretary have to resign?” I said.

Lawrence raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you don’t know. I thought you were a journalist.”

“Not a serious one. Nixie does current affairs the way The Economist does shoes. On a need-to-know basis.”

“The home secretary had to resign because he fast-tracked a visa for his lover’s nanny.”

“You believe that?”

“I don’t really care one way or the other. But he never seemed that stupid to me. Oh, listen to them.”

From outside Lawrence’s door there was laughing and shouting. I heard the sound of paper being scrunched into a ball. Feet scuffed on the carpet. A paper ball clanged into a metal waste-paper basket.

“They’re playing corridor football,” said Lawrence. “They’re actually celebrating.”