I wrote: 'I'll do nothing that could embarrass my father's political career or drag his name in the dust. I'll do my best to keep him safe from any sort of attack.'

I signed my name lightheartedly and gave him the page. 'Will that do?'

He read it, smiling. 'It'll do.'

He folded both pages together, then picked up the wedding photograph and positioned it face down on the glass in its frame. He then put both of the signed pacts on the photo and replaced the back part of the frame, fastening it with its clips.

'There you are,' he said, turning the frame face up. 'Every time you look at your mother and me, you'll remember the promises behind the photo, inside the frame. Couldn't be simpler.'

He stood the picture on the table and without fuss gave me back my birth certificate and passport.

'Keep them safe.'

'Yes.'

'Right. Then let's get on with this election.'

Stopping only briefly to leave my identity in an envelope in the manager's safe, we went to the new headquarters to collect Mervyn, pamphlets, Faith and Lavender, and start a door-to-door morning round three Hoopwestern housing estates. Light-bulb workers, they said.

Mervyn, proud of himself, had found a replacement megaphone. His friendly printer continued to furnish a torrent of JULIARDS JULIARDS. Mervyn for once seemed content in his world, but his day shone even brighter when Orinda arrived, declaring her readiness for the fray.

With Faith and Lavender cool and Mervyn hot, therefore, six of us squeezed into the Range Rover, leaving behind Crystal (chronically anxious) and Marge (dusting and sweeping).

Only eight days after this one, I thought, and it will be over. And what will I do, I wondered, after that? There would be three or four weeks to fill before the Exeter term started. I mentally shrugged. I would be eighteen. I had a bicycle... might get to France...

I drove mechanically, stopping wherever Mervyn dictated.

Orinda had come in neat trousers and jacket, light orange-scarlet in colour. As usual, gold chains. Smooth, perfect make-up.

Babies got kissed. My father came across a clutch of child-minding house-husbands, factory shift workers, and learned about tungsten filaments. I chatted up a coffee-morning of old ladies who weren't satisfied until my parent shook their hands. (Pink smiles. A blossoming of votes.) Orinda met old friends. Mervyn alerted the streets to our presence like a musically tinkling fish-and-chip van, and Faith and Lavender left no door-bell un-rung.

When we drove out of the last of the estates we'd seen one or two TITMUSS TITMUSSes, no WHISTLE WHISTLE, not a BETHUNE BETHUNE to speak of, but many a window now proclaimed to speak of, but many a window now proclaimed JULIARD JULIARD. One could not but hope.

Mervyn and my father decided on one more long street, this time of varied and slightly more prosperous-looking houses. I, by this time, had had enough of door-to-dooring to last me several lifetimes, but as always the others seemed to have an indefatigable appetite. My father's eyes still shone with enthusiasm and people who disagreed with his political theories left him not downcast but stimulated. He never tired, it seemed to me, of trying to convert the heathen.

Without much hope I asked Faith and Lavender if they wouldn't prefer to say they'd done enough; how about lunch? 'No, no,' they insisted with fervour, 'every vote counts.'

Orinda alone seemed uneasy and withdrawn and not her usual positive and extravagant self, and in the end, while she and I waited together on the pavement beside the Range Rover for the others to finish galvanising an old people's home, I asked her what was the matter.

'Nothing,' she said, and I didn't press it, but after a moment or two she said, 'Do you see that white BMW there, along the road?'

'Yes.' I frowned. 'I saw it earlier, in one of the housing estates.'

'He's following us.'

'Who's following us? Is it Usher Rudd?'

'Oh, no.' She found the idea a surprise, which in itself surprised me. 'No, not Usher Rudd. It's Alderney Wyvern.'

It was I, then, who was surprised, and I asked, sounding astonished, 'Why on earth should he follow us?'

Orinda frowned. 'He's still furious with me for supporting your father.'

'Well... I'd noticed. But why, exactly?'

'You're too young to understand.'

'I could try.'

'Dennis used to do everything Alderney said. I mean, Alderney actually was how Dennis got advancement. Alderney would tell him what to say. Alderney is very clever, politically.'

'Why doesn't he find a parliamentary seat for himself?'

'He says he doesn't want to.' She paused. 'To be frank, he isn't easy to understand. But I know he expected me to be selected and to retain the seat as Dennis's widow, and he worked on people like that creepy Leonard Kitchens, with that shudder-making moustache, to make sure I was selected. And then out of the blue the central party in Westminster decided they wanted George Juliard in Parliament, so he came and dazzled the selectors, who always listen to Polly, as a matter of course, and she fell for him like a ton of bricks... Anyway, Alderney got nowhere with your father. I sometimes think that that's the sort of power Alderney really wants, to be able to pull the levers behind the scenes.'

It seemed to me at that moment a wacky notion. (I still had a lot to learn.) 'So now that I've joined your father,' Orinda said, 'I'm not listening to Alderney as much. I used to do everything he suggested. We always did, Dennis and I, because Alderney would tell us such and such a thing would happen on the political scene and mostly he was right, and now I'm out with you and your father so much of the time... You'll laugh, but I almost think he's jealous jealous!'

I didn't laugh. I'd seen my father's powerful effect on every female in Hoopwestern, from acid-tongued Lavender onwards. It wouldn't have surprised me if he'd left a comet-tail of jealousy through the constituency, except that he needed the men to vote for him as well as the women, and I'd watched him keep a tactical distance from their wives.

Alderney Wyvern, along the road, got out of his car and stood aggressively on the pavement, hands on hips, staring at Orinda.

'I'd better go and talk to him,' Orinda said.

I said instinctively, 'No, don't.'

She caught the alarm in my voice and smiled. 'I've known him for years.'

I hadn't yet come across the adult grossly matured variety of jealousy, only the impotent rage of adolescence, but I felt intuitively that a great and disturbing change had taken place in A. L. Wyvern.

He had been by his own choice self-effacing on every occasion I'd seen him: quiet in manner, self-contained, behaving as if he didn't want to be noticed. All that had now gone. The stocky figure seemed heavier, the shoulders hunched, the face, even from a distance, visibly tense with menace. He had the out-of-control anger of a rioter, or of a militant striker.

I said to Orinda, 'Stay here.'

'Don't be silly.'

She walked confidently towards him in her brave orange-red clothes.

I could hear his voice, low and growling, but not what he said. Her reply was light and teasing. She put out a hand as if to stroke his arm affectionately, and he hit her very hard in the face.

She cried out with shock as much as pain. I ran towards her, and although Wyvern saw me coming he hit her again, back-handed, across her nose and mouth.

She squealed, raising her hands to shield her face, trying at the same time to escape from him, but he clutched the shoulder of her jacket to prevent her running, and drew back his fist for a third blow.

She wrenched herself free. She half-overbalanced. She stumbled off the pavement into the roadway.

The prosperous residential street that had been so peaceful and empty suddenly seemed filled with a heavy lorry that bore down towards Orinda, brakes shrieking, horn blowing in banshee bursts.

Orinda tottered blindly as if disoriented, and I sprinted towards her without calculating speed or distance but simply impelled by the need of the moment.

The lorry driver was swerving about, trying to miss her and actually making things worse because his direction was unpredictable. I might easily have shoved her into his path rather than out of it, but I threw myself at Orinda in a sort of twisting rugby-football tackle so that she fell half under me onto the hard surface and rolled, and the screaming black tyres made skid marks an inch from our feet.

Orinda's nose was bleeding and her eyes were overflowing with pain-induced tears, and beyond that she was dazed and bewildered. I knelt beside her, winded myself and fearful that I'd hurt her unnecessarily when the lorry driver might have avoided her anyway.

The lorry had stopped not far beyond us and the driver, jumping down from his cab and running towards us, was already rehearsing aggrieved innocence.

'She ran out straight in front of me, I didn't have a chance. It isn't my fault... I couldn't help it... it isn't my fault she's bleeding all down her front.'

Neither Orinda nor I made any reply. It was irrelevant. It hadn't been his fault, and no one would say it had been. The person at fault stood in shocked rage on the pavement directly across the road from us, glaring and rigid and not coming to our aid.

With breath returning I asked Orinda if she was all right. Silly question, really, when her nose was bleeding and there were other marks of Wyvern's dangerous hands on her face. Her jacket was torn. One black shoe was off. The careful make-up was smeared and there was a slack weakness through all her body. The Orinda lying in the road looked far from the assured sophisticated flirter with cameras that I was used to; she looked a shattered, ordinary, middle-aged and rather nice woman trying to gather her wits and understand what had happened.

I leaned forward and slid an arm under her neck to see if she could sit up, and to my relief she let me help her to do that, until she was sitting in the road with her knees bent and her head and her hands on her knees.

She'd broken no bones, I thought gratefully. The fractures were internal and mental and couldn't be mended.

She said tearfully, trying to wipe blood with her fingers, 'Have you got a tissue?'

I hadn't.

'There's one in my bag.'

Her handbag, I knew, was in the Range Rover.

'I'll get it,' I said.

'No... Benedict... don't leave me!'

'Call an ambulance,' the lorry driver advised bullishly. 'I missed her, I know I did. It's not my fault she's bleeding.'

'No, it's not,' I agreed, standing up. 'But you're a big strong guy and you can help by picking up the lady and carrying her to that goldish Range Rover over there.'

'No fear,' he interrupted. 'I'm not getting her blood on me, it's not my sodding fault, she ran straight out in front of me.'

'Yes. OK,' I said. 'It wasn't your fault. But you did at least stop, so if you'd help and take her along to that vehicle, and if I just jot down your name and the firm you work for, that owns the lorry, then I'm sure you can carry on with whatever you were doing.'

'No police,' he said.

'You don't have to call the police to an accident unless someone's been injured, and you didn't injure this lady, as you said.'

'Straight up? How do you know that? You're only a boy.'

I'd learned it in the course of reading for my driving licence, but I couldn't be bothered to explain. I bent down and tried to get Orinda to her feet, and she stood up shakily, clutching me to stop herself from falling.

I put my arms round her awkwardly. She was trembling all over. My father would simply have scooped her up and carried her to the Range Rover, but apart from my doubt of having adequate strength, I was embarrassed by the difference in our ages. Ridiculous, really. I felt protective, but unsure.

A couple of cars went by, the passengers craning their necks with curiosity.

'Oh, come on, missus,' the driver said suddenly, picking up her scattered shoe and putting it on for her, 'hold onto my arm.'

He offered her a rock-like support, and between the two of us Orinda walked unsteadily, setting her feet down gingerly as if not sure where the ground lay. In that fashion we reached the Range Rover and installed Orinda in the front passenger seat, where she relaxed weakly and thanked the driver.

'Hey!' he said suddenly, surveying the highly noticeable vehicle. 'Doesn't this motor belong to that politician? Some funny name?'

'Juliard.'

'Yeah.'

'I'm his son,' I said. 'This lady, that you cleverly missed hitting, and that you've helped just now, is a Mrs Orinda Nagle, whose husband was the MP here before he died.'

'Cor!' Surprise at least stopped the whine of self-justification. I reckoned he was already rehearsing a revised tale to his masters. 'I live in Quindle,' he said. 'They say your father's got no chance, the way things are, but maybe I'll vote for him now anyway. Can't say fairer than that!'

I wrote down his name, which he gave willingly, and the name of the furniture firm he worked for, and the telephone number, and he positively beamed at Orinda and told her not to worry, and drove off in his lorry giving us a smile a smile smile and a wave. and a wave.

Alderney Wyvern, all this time, had remained as if the soles of his shoes were glued to the ground.

A few people had come out of the houses because of the noise of horn and brakes, but as there'd been no actual crash, and as Orinda had stood up and walked away, their curiosity had died quickly.

For once, with a real story to record, Usher Rudd and his lens had been missing.

My father, Mervyn, Faith and Lavender came out from a triumphant conversion of the old people's home and exclaimed in horror at Orinda's blood and distress. The tissue from her handbag had proved inadequate. Her tears by now were of uncomplicated misery, rolling half-mopped down her cheeks.

'What happened?' my father demanded of me fiercely. 'What have you done?'

'Nothing!' I said. 'I mean... nothing.'

Orinda came to my defence. 'George, Benedict helped helped me... I can't believe it...' Her voice wailed. 'Alderney... me... I can't believe it...' Her voice wailed. 'Alderney... Alderney Alderney... h-h-hit me.'

'He what what?'

We all looked along the road to where Wyvern still pugnaciously stood his ground, and if I had needed an explanation of the emotions involved, my father didn't. He strode off with purposeful anger towards the visibly unrepentant ex-best friend and challenged him loudly, though we couldn't hear the actual words. Wyvern answered with equal vigour, arms waving.

'Benedict...' Orinda begged me, increasingly upset, 'go and stop them.'

It was easy enough for her to say it, but they were both grown men where as I... Well, I went along there fast and caught my father's arm as he drew back his fist for an infuriated swipe at Wyvern who was, incredibly, sneering.

My father swung round and shouted at me, raging, 'Get out of my bloody way.'

'The pact,' I yelled at him. 'Remember the pact.'

'What?'

'The pact pact,' I insisted. 'Don't hit him. Father... Dad... don't hit him.'

The scorching fury went out of his eyes as suddenly as if he were waking up.

'He wants wants you to hit him,' I said. I didn't know how I knew or why I was so certain. It had something to do with the fact that Wyvern had remained on the spot instead of driving off, but it was mostly intuition derived from his body language. He was looking for trouble. He meant all sorts of harm to my father, not least adverse publicity before polling day. you to hit him,' I said. I didn't know how I knew or why I was so certain. It had something to do with the fact that Wyvern had remained on the spot instead of driving off, but it was mostly intuition derived from his body language. He was looking for trouble. He meant all sorts of harm to my father, not least adverse publicity before polling day.

My father gave me a blank look, then walked past me to go back to the Range Rover. I half turned to follow him but was grabbed and spun round by Wyvern, whose always unsmiling face was now set fast with brutal malice. If he couldn't get what he wanted from the father, he would take it out on the son.