He quickly handed her the notes he was clutching tightly for her victory speech with a wide smile of congratulation and a comforting rub on her back. She took them without a glance and bounded straight for the stage.
Hugh O’Leary, 48, our new Prime Minister’s accountant husband, could currently walk down a street unnoticed. Probably even Downing Street.
About to enter Number 10 by his wife’s side, or maybe three steps behind, with their two teenage daughters - the first teens to slope self-consciously behind the black front door since the Blairs 25 years ago - this gentle-looking everyman has been largely absent from Truss’s campaign trail.
Much as Denis Thatcher once described himself unwittingly menacingly as the “most shadowy husband of all time”, O’Leary seems to be forging the same stealthy niche.
“Always present, never there” was Denis’s motto, Theresa May ’s husband Philip later followed suit, and it appears O’Leary will now take the same baton as Tory spouse. A baton Carrie Johnson dropped with a clanger - or, more likely, never accepted.
Currently believed to work from home, and sniffily labelled a ‘house husband’, Truss rarely mentions O’Leary. Although she has praised him for always being on hand to answer an economic query (which may come in handy in the months ahead).
Former London School of Economics student O’Leary apparently knows to make himself useful. “Whenever I want a late night discussion about supply side reform or econometrics, there’s always someone on hand,” she once said. Oh, the romance.
The maths whizz, perhaps soon to be tackling the nation’s energy woes from his pillow, grew up in Allerton, Liverpool, before his family moved to Heswall, Wirral.
A fellow Tory, in 2002 he stood as candidate in the Greenwich council elections, but lost. Although he still canvasses with the blues, Truss is given full ownership of the stage.
“He doesn’t want to have a sort of massive public role, I think it’s fair to say,” she said. “He goes out campaigning for the Conservative Party. He’s very active as a local Conservative member. But he’s a very stoical person.”
Amid scant detail, he has been described as quiet and serious growing up, perhaps the perfect foil in the making for his photo opp-loving, karaoke queen wife.
His mean curry cooking has also come up - he and Truss share a passion for cooking. It was said to be him who rustled up lunch at home during her first campaign meeting. But while additionally described as quick witted and funny, you can’t quite picture him joining Liz for fizz, or dueting on a late night rendition of the karaoke PM’s Whitney Houston’s I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Truss’ self-confessed fave).
Truss met O’Leary - his parents’ occupations as college lecturer and nurse echoing her own - at the 1997 Tory conference, post Oxford University days while she was an economist for Shell.
They soon went on their first date, which happened to be ice skating - her pick - and he promptly sprained his ankle.
Further jeopardy lay ahead.
Six years after their wedding in 2000 in Greenwich - where their current townhouse is - news of her reported 18-month affair with former Tory MP Mark Field, then Shadow Minister for London and her mentor, became public.
The relationship had begun in 2004 when she was mid-20s and still trying to get into Parliament.
Field’s marriage broke down. Hers however, did not. Neither Truss nor O’Leary have elaborated, she only saying she is “really happily married”.
In 2019 she posted an image of them smiling happily on Valentine’s Day at an event, accompanied with the hashtag, LoveOfMyLife.
Friends have commented they’re strong, a “great team”, who haven’t shown cracks.
Interestingly, of the new first family, it has been Truss’s daughters Frances and Liberty, 16 and 13, who have proved less shadowy during her campaign.
Memorably, of our last First Teens, a 16-year-old Euan Blair had to apologise for being arrested for drunkenness in London’s Leicester Square while out celebrating his GCSE results. Blair admitted being a parent was tougher than being Prime Minister.
But it perhaps won’t be so for Truss.
It appears these first teenagers, who attend a selective state school, show no signs of wild rebellion, despite probing the possibility of Number Ten sleepovers.
Images of her kids have been largely shielded from the public gaze. Their mum has only posted their backs and wonky birthday cakes on Instagram (baked goods pop up intermittently).
However, choice remarks have given the impression of two mini PAs with wise heads on young shoulders, who help her run her life... if not now the country.
“Frances is maybe a bit more centrist and Liberty is maybe slightly more Conservative but they are both very supportive of me,” she once said.
“I remember carrying Frances round in a baby sling when I was campaigning to be a councillor, so they’ve been brought up on politics, and they’re very involved in what I do, they come campaigning, they’re involved in this campaign, although sometimes they complain that I talk too much about politics.”
She revealed Frances worked on her digital campaign team. “She’s done a computing GCSE so she’s helping out on that.”
While, perhaps more disconcerting, “my younger daughter was there as well, giving general political advice.”
Aside from the political, Truss has also revealed her girls act as both her stylist and counsellor.
While Liberty advises her on “pops” of colour, both girls see themselves as their mum’s “unpaid therapist” - Truss admits she can be “too honest” with her kids.
But although this all sounds very democratic, there is probably only room for one first lady in the Truss family.
Her brother Francis has even recalled the family’s board game playing during childhood as a combative arena Truss sought to conquer.
“My dad would say she cheated to win,” he recalls. “She was someone who had to win. She created a special system to work out how she could win, and then if she was losing she might sort of disappear rather than lose.”
It’s a trait which has surfaced more recently, too.
Cooking is her form of relaxation, but even that, she can politicise.
“During lockdown we had a routine where we had a rota so all four of us cooked. We had a sort of family Come Dine With Me thing,” she said.
She went on to explain she had wanted scorecards. Her family drew the line.
Truss clearly adores family life, and gives the impression of hands-on parenthood, shared supportively with O’Leary.
She likes to rustle up roasts, pasta, Mexican and Chinese food for her brood, not to mention the odd croissant. She’d quite like an invite to the Bake Off tent, she once owned.
But perhaps we shouldn’t be totally fooled by the cosy cakes, and always keep Monopoly in mind.
She once conceded: “I’m known as the phone jailer in our household.”
Yes, she’ll take her daughters’ advice on fashion, but she’ll happlily lock their phones in boxes to prevent too much screen time.
In the first heady age of teenagers plus social media in Downing Street, that might well be a sensible approach.
But let’s hope O’Leary gets to hold onto his.
