Lost causes

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Melissa Carlisle, daughter of Lord and Lady Pennington and wife of John Carlisle MP, looked at her husband across the breakfast table as if she were examining something she’d just trodden on. When it came to expressing extreme distaste, the upper classes were a breed apart. Melissa had been born with the ability to look down her nose, as her husband — from more modest, middle-class roots — knew only too well.

‘Tell me it isn’t true,’ she said in a flat monotone, taking care to enunciate every syllable slowly and clearly.

‘What isn’t, dear?’ Carlisle brushed his thinning fair hair back from his brow in a nervous gesture that caused his wife to tighten her expression even more.

‘What isn’t,’ she mimicked. ‘The story in the Telegraph this morning… about your expenses claim for a mortgage that doesn’t exist on a second home you don’t have. That’s what.’

Carlisle moved uncomfortably in his seat, as if his trousers were filling with ants. ‘Well?’

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