For example, when the findings of the Lawrence report were announced we had calls supporting us and others that were abusive and threatening. Last week a man harangued me, saying that it was black people who’d caused the problems and that the CRE was biased. Unusually, callers get put straight through to me and there’s a constant flow of reactions to what the chairman has said, both positive and negative Our area of work is highly emotive. I have to stop myself from automatically saying “Chairman’s office” when answering my phone at home.The high profile of Herman’s job means my job is pressurised. But though things settled down in my absence, the phones started up again the moment I got back – I swear they were waiting for me. Sometimes getting up at 6am and coming home at 7pm seems like a thankless task so this year I decided to take a different approach, starting with three weeks’ leave in January to get a breather. When I’m not on the telephone I am busy with Herman’s scheduling and ensuring that he’s got briefings for his meetings, but when the phones are continually ringing the only way to catch up on paperwork is by staying on at work.

He also gets invited to attend functions as varied as school assemblies and Downing Street receptions. Despite our professionalism there’s a kind of madness between us.I answer a wide range of calls on the chairman’s behalf; he’s such a charismatic speaker that there is a constant demand for him to address employers and community organisations, including equal opportunity programmes and leadership challenge projects. I also gelled with my colleagues in the executive office; we share the same kind of personality and sense of humour. I felt comfortable with him early on: he obviously trusted me enough to feel I could deliver in his absence. I thought the pace would slow down on Herman’s return, but he came back armed with work for me before rushing off to another conference. I felt puzzled about the exact nature of my role, although I now understand why it was hard for him to describe. When you are so busy focusing on the volume of the work you simply don’t have time to look at the background mechanics.
When I started the job Herman was on leave and I was plunged straight in, without anyone to show me the ropes.

The ad didn’t specify who I would be working for, so it was a surprise to learn that I would be PA to the chairman The first time I met Herman I found him hard to read. I was trying to work out whether we would get on, and he was obviously doing the same. Having been freelance for some time, I wasn’t sure whether I would fit into the office environment. However, my careers guidance studies as well as my English and IT degree stood me in good stead for this job, though I hesitated before accepting it. I applied for this job at a time when I was still hoping to work in the Careers Service, but while I was studying the goalposts moved; the service was privatised and job vacancies became few and far between. Greenberg displays enviable talent, not least for piquant dialogue, but ultimately you’re left feeling that the play is more contrived than emotionally resonant.To 13 Mar (0171-369 1732). The rivalry between the men is captivatingly done and the climactic seduction scene is exquisitely played by a wonderfully gauche, stammering Firth – all spectacles and hunched shoulders – and febrile, skittish McGovern – a headstrong cross between a young Katharine Hepburn and early Blanche Dubois – yet even they cannot stave off the curiously flat denouement.The gap between what we thought we knew and the literal truth widens throughout in the manner of a well-crafted thriller, but the play falls victim to its neatness.

The same actors now play their parents, filling the stage with correspondences through the years. Pinter reversed the action in Betrayal, and Kaufman & Hart played a similar game in 1934 in Merrily We Roll Along, but Greenberg’s twist cleverly explores the idea of the sins of the father.The director, Robin Lefevre, coaxes witty, beautifully modulated performances from his cast, all of whom resist the temptation to signal too heavily what we know of their older selves. Complicating matters is Pip (David Morrissey), son of Ned’s partner Theo and former lover of the now-married Nan. Walker’s realisation that he has been partially disinherited triggers old jealousies.

Then, at the climax of the first act, he dramatically puts the lid on the past. “God damn you,” cries Nan, “Now we’ll never know anything.”We, however, quickly learn much more as the second act cuts back to the time of the diary to reveal the unwritten truth. She’s furious with him for having disappeared for months, leaving her to deal with their father’s death and their helplessly airy mother, wittily described as “Zelda Fitzgerald’s less sane sister”. This, the last in the Donmar’s American season, is an often fascinating study of the legacy of two architects whose family home is a world-renowned landmark and the centre of an emotional whirlpool for their children.The sibling rivalries of the well-layered characters are deftly established as Nan meets up with neurotic Walker for the reading of the will. When Walker (Colin Firth) discovers his late father’s secret journal, he and his sister Nan (Elizabeth McGovern) are disappointed to see that the very first entry is shockingly bland: “Three days of rain”.For the siblings, this comes as something of an end, but for the playwright Richard Greenberg it is a cunningly constructed beginning.