Ebenezer Grayling sat busy in his counting house. It was a cold, bleak day at the Department for Transport. Big Ben had only just struck three but it was getting dark already and the lights were going on in the grand buildings of Whitehall.
Grayling stared down at the papers in front of him. He had to make these figures add up before he could go home to his constituency for the holidays. The document was headed ‘HS2 — Overspend; Compensation’, and it made for depressing reading.
Because his boss, Mrs May, had backed a previous Labour plan to build a mightily expensive high speed railway through the English countryside, Ebenezer Grayling was having to grapple with a project that now ran billions over budget. And what was worse, hundreds of families whose homes had been made worthless by the blight of the railway were beating down his door for compensation.
Some of these householders his department had agreed to compensate, if only to shut them up, and that was true of the case he was staring dismally at now, the case of one Tiny Kite, daughter of Mr and Mrs Kite of Cratchit Crescent in the town of Kenilworth in Warwickshire.
Ebenezer Grayling knew Tiny Kite. He had met her when she was working at Westminster as a reporter and he was an up-and- coming minister. She had interviewed him, and they had dined together at party conferences.
But things were different now. Tiny Kite had made trouble for his government, winning a long battle for compensation and forcing them to buy her parents’ three-bedroom semi which was right next to the route of the railway.
Where was Kenilworth anyway? Somewhere north of Surrey. He lived in Epsom, as well as in Pimlico, as the press never tired of reminding him.
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