Lunch with Theresa May? The very idea provokes a look of dread in the eyes of some Westminster journalists, traumatised by memories of stilted culinary encounters with Britain’s former prime minister, the small talk exhausted before the starters arrive.
Cycling through sun-drenched Thames-side meadows to Bray, an implausibly quaint Berkshire village, my ears ring with warnings from former Downing Street allies of things I should not ask about: notably the time she held hands with Donald Trump at the White House. And Boris Johnson.
May does not like journalists much and she hardly ever talks about herself. She has not written a memoir and rarely discusses her tumultuous years as prime minister: Trump, Brexit, the disastrous 2017 election and her ultimate downfall, with Johnson waiting in the wings.