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The breeze woke her.

Then the wind rose and the cold snuck through the patio door left open last evening when Corina sat to watch the light fade. She turned, waited for the noise of the day to creep in. But there was silence except for the low hum of the waves rising then breaking softly against the rocks at Fallmore.

Corina slept on without intending to and when she woke again it was to the soft knocking of Ana, her PA.

Ana unlocked the bedroom door and let herself in. She was a small lean woman with soft brown hair and calculating eyes. Her feet hardly made a dint as she crossed the deep pile carpet in Corina’s suite.

Outside, on the patio that separated Corina’s room from the shore, Tony, her bodyguard, moved into view. He stepped inside, his wide shoulders swinging round to survey the room. He nodded to Ana but did not turn to where Corina had begun to rise from beneath the bedsheet. And by the time Corina reached the sliding door, Tony had stepped back onto the patio with its garden seats and green luxuriant plants that framed her view of the sea. Corina stood in the door and watched his back, allowing the rain that has started up quickly to catch on her shoulders and dribble down between her breasts.

‘This door should be closed, Mam,’ Ana said, appearing by her side and shutting it tight.

George had insisted on Mam for her, Sir when addressing him; one of the many affectations of his forties, now part of their political lives.

As if the thought summoned him, along the hallway leading to her suite boomed George’s voice.

‘In here?’ he called.

Corina moved away from the door and into the lounge where a breakfast table has been set with fine China, a miniature vase of roses at its centre.

She took a seat and thought of the heat from Tony’s skin, the swell of their bodies. Through the window, she watched as two more bodyguards moved into view, their black sunglasses and baseball caps giving them the appearance of oversized beetles on the pale sand. A waiter appeared by her side and Corina nodded as a croissant was set down gently on her breakfast plate. Coffee was poured, the waiter’s eyes dutifully averted from Corina’s bare shoulders.

‘Something to wear, Man,’ Ana said, laying a blue silk robe across her shoulders, trusting the belt into Corina’s lap as the door to her suite was pushed open and George stepped inside.

‘Ah, the first lady awaits,’ he said, smiling broadly to the room.

‘Hardly,’ Corina said, tying the robe around her waist, arranging her limbs beneath the breakfast table for maximum privacy.

George inclined his head slightly, conceded in that one small movement that this might not yet be true.

‘Coffee,’ Corina said, raising her cup politely then, knowing as she did that, she must play to the audience, the milieu of campaign staff ever present.

But George had already turned away, surveying the room with military efficiency. Looking for the satchel, Corina thought, glancing to the head of her bed where it lay on the carpet next to her purse.

George’s eyes followed hers, his face relaxing, his head starting to move in a series of appreciative nods as he stepped closer to the breakfast table.

‘All is in order then?’ Corina nodded, knowing he referred to the papers concealed in the satchel and entrusted to her care last evening: his original birth certificate, obtained finally from the orphanage and amended to erase his past.