On a warm summers day some three months later, section D and a few stragglers from Section B assembled in the meeting room to welcome the Home Secretary on one of infrequent briefing sessions. The sessions were compulsory and it would be safe to say that the excitement generated by this event was second only to that of being sent on the department's extended health and safety in the workplace seminar.
The Home Secretary paused to survey his audience before beginning.
Harry was sitting attentively at the far end of the table. It had to be said that that man could wear a suit. Unbeknownst to the Home Secretary, Harry had made a special effort to present himself particularly well today, given that he was hoping to win the support of the Home Secretary during next week's Cabinet budget bids.
Ros Myers was seated on Harry's left looking fashionably bored already. That techie was there too – an MI5 old timer – Marcus was he? He recognized some others too from Section B – Sam Williams, Elizabeth Johanson and Davie Turner.
Lucas North was there too and beside him that pretty blond girl whose name escaped him.
He paused for a moment, distracted by the annoying recollection that his secretary had forgotten to provide a list of the members of Harry's staff before today's meeting.
This was not the first error on her part over the past week by any stretch of the imagination. To be honest he should have got rid of her, and would have if it wasn't for the other personal services she made available to him at all hours of the day and the fact that he was well aware that she had in her possession some pictures of him that were definitely recognisable as his person but not in a position that most members of the voting public would recall ever having seen him in before.
He resumed his earlier train of thought and stared hard at the blonde girl as he tried to recollect her name. She was a definitely a junior agent and he was sure he'd met her a couple of times previously. He noted that hair was now fashioned into a short bob which finished just above her shoulders and she looked somewhat plumper than he remembered. These changes had changed her from simply pretty to, in his opinion, a right corker.
He sighed, then moved on, coming to the view that he was clearly never going to work out who she was.
He opened his briefing with a questionable joke which he'd heard only the other week at his favourite private members club, then quickly moved on to the subject of domestic terrorism. This led rapidly on to his favourite topic – the need for the service to be continually vigilant against the threat posed by radical muslim terrorism.
He spoke passionately on the need to disarm a known terrorist cell which the service had been monitoring for some weeks but had not managed to crack yet and to make sure that they were placed securely behind bars for good. "If we succeed then this is an opportunity for the service to win the confidence of the entire Cabinet and the JIC back after the recent failed attempt to prevent an explosion in central London."
"If we fail, then this", he exclaimed loudly, "is an opportunity for the Prime Minister to cut my bollocks off!," he finished, banging his fist on the table.
There was a slightly shocked silence.
"Not this again," thought Harry. He'd heard this from the Home Secretary three times already in the past month and paused to wonder exactly how many sets of balls the Home Secretary thought he possessed and why he was so firmly of the view that the Prime Minister wanted to get hold of them.
"Home Secretary," Ros said gravely, "I think we should focus less on your bollocks and more on the matters at hand."
Harry cringed and manually tried to calculate how this comment would affect next weeks budget bid to secure additional funding for the development of a new document management system.
The Home Secretary gave Ros a cool glance, then resumed his diatribe on the need to protect the security of this great country from the scourge of terrorism while Ros stared out the window and tried not to imagine what might have happened at last week's Cabinet retreat where the Home Secretary was rumoured to have insisted he needed both his secretary and his press secretary to share his room "for convenience."
Beside her Malcolm was distractedly trying to compare the advantages of the new Alphawhizz computer system with the relative merits of the less novel but more reliable IJK Max software, and finding himself unable to reach a clear conclusion.
Despite the fact that this week was his last in section D, after having applied for and received a transfer to a similarly senior but much safer position in Section A as a result of Jo's subtle suggestion, Lucas was giving the briefing his full attention.
That was, until he was distracted by a strange expression on Jo's face. He looked over at her, alarmed to see her hand move to sit on her stomach and whispered urgently, "Everything ok?"
She nodded and took his hand to place it over her stomach so that he too could feel the fluttering inside her as the kicking became more persistent.
The Home Secretary continued his rant with increasing vigour as he moved into the topic of Guantanimo Bay and his personal efforts to see that Britain could secure a similar facility off shore.
He paused for a moment in the midst of an impassioned speech on the merits of incarceration without trial when necessary to turn his attention to his audience and observe the effect his rousing address was having on them.
He could not have been more shocked by the outrageous behaviour he was forced to witness which had apparently been going on for some time under his very nose without him even noticing.
The sight of Lucas North kissing the blonde girl next to him in a rather dramatic and protracted manner was clearly out of order at a security briefing, let alone one where a Minister of Her Majesty's Government was present!
After several minutes longer of this behaviour Lucas finally lifted his lips from Jo's and smiled at her. To the horror of the Home Secretary this outrageous behaviour was topped off by the sound of her giggling loudly, in what was he considered to be a highly inappropriate manner.
Ros looked up to see Harry put his head in his hands, having given up all hope of securing the new document management system the records staff had insisted was vital to bring their records management procedures into the 21st century.
Not only was that now out of his grasp but he was beginning to anticipate an extended lecture on the matter on appropriate behaviour amongst his staff.
The Home Secretary looked around the room, irritated to find that everyone else appeared not to share his sense of decorum. Indeed – many of them were smiling broadly at the offending couple and that techie had even gone so far as to pat Lucas on the back approvingly.
**
There's another chapter still as I have split them in two but please review. There is so much about this chapter that just makes me laugh so I hoped you liked it too!
Also the Home Secretary really does say the line "This is an opportunity for the Prime Minister to cut my bollocks off" in one of the early episodes in series 7 to Harry. I fell about laughing when I heard him say that so had to have him come back and say it again here.