I was twenty-eight weeks with triplets and bleeding on a hotel sofa when my husband adjusted his tie and went downstairs. Four days later a man I had never met put a small black recorder on my hospital bed.

PART 1 — THREE MINUTES

At a quarter past eight in the evening I found out what my husband was willing to trade.

Twenty-eight weeks. Three of them.

And I was bleeding onto the velvet of a sofa in a suite on the fourth floor of the Corven.

"Callum. Something's wrong."

He did not turn round. He was doing his tie in the mirror by the door.

Verena Skeel looked at her watch.

"He's on in three minutes."

I said, "I'm bleeding."

"You're panicking."

"I need an ambulance."

And Verena came a step closer, in a way that was not concern.

"Callum. Three minutes."

I said, "I'm carrying your children," and he finally looked at me, and I have never seen a face do what his face did. It was not anger. It was arithmetic.

"A premature birth can't ruin ten years of work."

"What?"

"If the press get a photograph of you being carried out of this hotel, that's the campaign." And then, to her: "Handle it quietly."