A Place To Call Home (Willowbury)

by Fay Keenan

  ‘He told me some bollocks about not being able to be influential on the back benches, that he needs to bide his time and push the issue from inside the department, but it sounds like he’s chosen fast advancement over us. So, we’re back to where we started.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Rachel whispered. ‘After everything he said… he’s going to leave us out in the cold again?’

  Holly reached out a hand and pulled her sister into a hug. ‘It’s shit, I know,’ she murmured, trying to push aside the feelings of hurt and anger at Charlie’s betrayal and focus on Rachel and Harry right now. The sadness she felt at losing Charlie personally battled with her rage at his seeming ability to just walk away. ‘But we’ll get there, I promise you. I’ll keep fighting for Harry, even if Charlie won’t.’

  ‘Thanks, sis.’ Rachel hugged her back. ‘I’m so proud I’ve got you on my side.’

  ‘Always,’ Holly said. ‘Even if I have to sell this place to help fund this drug, I will do that for Harry.’

  ‘Oh no you won’t!’ Rachel replied. ‘This place is your security. You need it for your own future. But we’ll find a way, I know we will.’

  Despite the ache in her heart over Charlie’s defection, Holly knew Rachel was right. It didn’t take politicians to make the changes, that much she now knew. It would take courage, determination and a lot of shouting. The last one, especially, she was more than prepared to do. Charlie had better get his ear defenders on, she thought savagely, because she was about to make a lot of noise.

  Holly immediately threw herself head first into boosting the campaign to get the CF drugs reassessed. This not only involved tweeting and social networking as much as possible, but since Isabella was working more regular shifts in ComIncense before tutorials for her Creative Writing degree started next term, Holly could attend the demonstrations that were being organised by friends and family of CF patients. A couple of them had been held in Bristol, but there was a bigger one, taking place over two days, planned for outside of the Houses of Parliament in the next few weeks. She’d also set up an online petition, which was gathering momentum. As was the convention in the UK, once the petition reached ten thousand signatures, it would get a written response from the government; if it reached a hundred thousand, it would be granted debating time in Parliament. Let Charlie sit in on that one, she thought, and let’s see where his priorities lie. In the rare moments when she wasn’t busy in the shop or masterminding the next steps for the campaign, she did catch herself missing Charlie; they’d been so good together, and had really been getting to know each other as people before he backed off. But he’d made his choice, and she’d made hers by throwing him out of her home. There was nothing else to be said.

  Holly had already had her photo taken a fair few times in connection with the campaign and had even been interviewed on the early-evening regional news. She’d cut quite a figure with her long red hair bedecked with yellow ribbons, coltish legs encased in blue jeans and a figure-hugging tie-dyed T-shirt clinging to her curves. That she was also articulate and engaging on camera meant that she was now becoming the go-to person, a ‘good talker’, as it was known in the media business, for soundbites about the campaign. It wasn’t long before she had her own hashtag, #GreenGoddess, to go with the #JustBreathe #WhatPriceBreath and #CFDrugsNow ones that were doing the rounds on Twitter.

  In truth, she found all this a bit embarrassing, but anything that drew attention to the campaign to get the drug on the NHS was worth it, she figured. Rachel had attended a few events by her side, but after Harry’s recent hospital stay, she was trying to stay close to home, and so a trip to Westminster was out of the question.

  So it was that, on a sunny Wednesday morning, Holly stepped off the train alone at London Paddington and headed to the Underground. Her base for the night would be an Air BnB just on the outskirts of Westminster, which enabled her to be present for as long as possible at the demonstration. A few stops later, hot from a train carriage crammed with commuters and a few tourists, she stepped off at Westminster and made ready to join what looked like hundreds of other protesters on Westminster Square.

  As she approached the statue of Winston Churchill, around which most of the demonstrators were congregating, she was pounced upon by a news reporter who was covering the story.

  ‘Cathy English, Channel 4 lunchtime news. Are you OK to have a word?’

  ‘Sure,’ Holly composed her features into a smile. ‘Can you just give me a sec to sort my hair out?’ Holly reached into her bag and pulled out several yellow ribbons attached to butterfly hair clips, shook her hair out and attached the ribbons in. She’d been practising a lot in the mirror at home, so they looked striking with very little effort. Yellow was the colour of the campaign, and the contrast with her red hair was powerful.

  ‘You’re Holly Renton, aren’t you?’ Cathy chatted as Holly ran her fingers through her hair to untangle it a little more. ‘The Green Goddess?’

  Holly grimaced. ‘That seems to be my hashtag at the moment, yes.’

  ‘OK, are you good to go? We’ll record this for the twelve-thirty slot and it’ll probably get a repeat on the evening news, too.’

  ‘Yup, let’s do this.’ Holly pushed away the habitual butterflies that seemed to flutter in her stomach.

  Cathy, calm, cool and confident, faced the camera person and did a brief intro before turning back to Holly. ‘I’m standing here with Holly Renton, known on social media as the Green Goddess, who has a very personal reason for being at this demonstration today. Holly, why don’t you tell us all about it?’

  ‘My three-year-old nephew Harry has cystic fibrosis,’ Holly began. ‘And because of the hold-up in deciding whether or not a course of potentially life-extending drugs can be prescribed to patients on the National Health Service, he faces an uncertain future.’

  ‘I understand you’ve had some support from MPs on this issue,’ Cathy, nodding, replied.

  Holly shook her head. ‘Unfortunately, that support has also stalled, so more direct action is needed to move the campaign along. It’s great to see so many people here today to support patients with CF, and I hope that this strength of feeling might be of some influence where the conventional routes to government have failed.’

  ‘And how might viewers become more involved with this campaign, if they want to?’

  ‘You can sign the petition at gov.uk, which will prompt a debate in Parliament, and, if you want to, you can contact your local Member of Parliament. I wouldn’t hold out much hope that they’ll respond, however.’ For a moment, Holly’s bitterness at the way Charlie had backed off both her and the campaign showed through.

  ‘I take it you haven’t had much luck through the parliamentary channels, then?’ Cathy probed.

  Holly paused, then smiled for the camera. ‘On the contrary, we have had some support from MPs, but, unfortunately, our current MP for Willowbury and Stavenham has chosen to distance himself from the issue, much like his predecessor did.’ That would hurt, Holly thought, if Charlie saw the interview. He hated being compared to Hugo Fitzgerald.

  ‘And do you have anything you’d like to say to him, while the camera’s rolling?’ Cathy gave her an encouraging smile.

  ‘I’d rather just concentrate on moving the campaign forward, Cathy,’ Holly said. The temptation to dump Charlie in it onscreen was nearly overwhelming, but Holly knew it would do more harm than good. Better just to focus on the demonstration and the cause itself.

  Cathy continued. ‘You’ve been hashtagged The Green Goddess online. How have you found being the face of the campaign?’

  Holly laughed. ‘I wouldn’t call myself the face of it at all. It’s better to focus on those who really need these new medications. I’m happy to speak up for CF patients though, since they can’t form a physical group to campaign here themselves because of the risk of cross-infection.’ Holly dug in her bag and found the blown-up photograph of Harry she kept with her for things like this. ‘This is my nephew Harry a
nd these new drugs could potentially extend his life. Isn’t that worth taking a financial risk on?’

  Cathy, who was professional enough to disguise her disappointment that she wasn’t going to find out any of the finer details about Holly’s reportedly more intimate dealings with her MP, smiled and thanked Holly, and then gestured to the camera person to stop filming. ‘Just between us,’ she said in an undertone, ‘I fully support your campaign. Let me know if there’s anything else I can help you to cover and I’ll be there like a shot. My sister died two years ago after waiting too long for a lung transplant. Anything I can do to make other patients’ lives more comfortable, I’m happy to support.’

  ‘Thanks, Cathy,’ Holly was touched by this admission. ‘And thank you for continuing to show up at events like this. It’s more support than we’ve had from some people not a million miles from here.’

  Cathy’s eyes twinkled. ‘I’d love to hear about it, off the record sometime!’

  Holly laughed. ‘That’s one story that I’m keeping under wraps for now. Sorry!’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Cathy moved on to talk to other demonstrators. ‘Good luck, Holly,’ she called as she left.

  Inevitably, as a cause of the favourable media coverage, that lunchtime Holly once again found #GreenGoddess trending along with the regular hashtags. If it made a difference, Holly was more than happy to claim the title. She hoped that Charlie, probably sat in his office in Portcullis House a stone’s throw away, was seeing what real political action looked like.

  41

  He’d behaved like a twat. There was no getting away from it. Charlie put down his iPad in exasperation as he realised he’d been staring at the same article in the online newspaper he subscribed to for the past twenty minutes. Twitter was a better source of news these days, anyway, he thought.

  As the train to London Paddington ground and rumbled its way out of Reading, slowing almost to walking pace as it hit the London suburbs, Charlie didn’t even care that he was going to be late again. What did it matter? His career was in jeopardy over the medication question and his love life was equally in tatters. He wasn’t even sure why he was bothering to turn up to the House today; the Secretary of State for Health wouldn’t be pleased to see him.

  But there were other things to do, he reminded himself irritably. He was not the centre of the political universe, no matter how it sometimes felt that way when he was back in Willowbury. He’d glanced at the discussion papers for today before he’d eventually fallen asleep last night and he knew there was, as usual, plenty to be catching up on. Perhaps a day of parliamentary debate was exactly what he needed to take his mind off this whole mess.

  As the train finally drew into Paddington, Charlie grabbed his wheeled suitcase from the luggage rack and headed down to the Tube station. At peak rush hour, the Tube was crammed, but at least it meant he didn’t even have enough space to get his phone out. As the train started to clear out when it drew closer to the Westminster stop, he risked a look at it once more. Swiping through to the app and glancing at the trending topics, his knees started to tremble. With a no less shaky finger, he tapped the first of two hashtags that had inevitably drawn his attention. Collapsing back into the newly vacated seat behind him, he feverishly read the first few tweets.

  How had he not known about this? Why had his constituency office not warned him? Two hashtags in combination were proving surprisingly popular, and both of them made Charlie’s heart thud in his chest. #CFDrugsNow was there, but then it usually was, since the CF campaigners had mobilised. But the one that took his breath away was #GreenGoddess.

  ‘No…’ Charlie whispered, as image after image of Holly, decked out in the yellow ribbons that represented the cause, scrolled past on the feed for the hashtag. He was well aware of the #GreenGoddess hashtag, of course, but it was the fact that Holly was here in Westminster that shook him. In his head, he’d wanted to keep her in her Willowbury box, so that when he was in London, he didn’t have to face the impact of his own decisions, politically and personally.

  The two-day demo was in its second day today and, it seemed, they’d started early. How the hell was he going to slip past that unobserved?

  The Tube train moved relentlessly towards Westminster, and Charlie felt a rising nausea, not at all caused by the permanent, sooty heat of the Underground. Taking several deep breaths to try to calm the dread that was rising in his mind and in his stomach, he put his phone away, unable to face more evidence of Holly’s total commitment to her cause, and his contrasting lack of dedication to it. When he could trust his knees to hold him up, he stood and waited for the train to reach its destination.

  As he stepped off the train, the short walk up to the daylight seemed interminable. Charlie felt himself propelled by the pace of the crowd into a speed that was half a walk, half a jog, and gave up trying to apologise to the people who he nudged with his suitcase. He reached the station’s entrance and blinked in the daylight, bracing himself for whatever sight might greet him on College Green. He heard it before he saw it. Although he could easily have just turned left and headed into his office in Portcullis House, which was connected by an underground tunnel to the Palace of Westminster and meant he didn’t have to go through the above-ground entrance into Parliament itself, he felt himself compelled by the crowds, and some deeper desire for information, to turn the other way, towards the sound and sight of the demonstration.

  College Green, which was adjacent to the Houses of Parliament, was the hub for demonstrations about a whole range of political issues, and was home to various camps at any given time; some semi-permanent, and some more temporary. Charlie had become accustomed to the various banners, tents and flags that often filled the space, and became even more crowded when the various national media outlets flooded in to report on stories of note. Often, it was difficult to differentiate between the paraphernalia of the many different causes represented outside the House, but as Charlie drew closer, there was no mistaking the vibrant yellow ribbons and clothes, and the ringing chants of the CF campaigners. Standing out against the backdrop of historic Westminster, voices ringing in the morning air, they made an imposing group.

  ‘NHS make CF drugs free! Let our children live and breathe! NHS make CF drugs free! Let our children live and breathe!’

  The chant, and, even more heartbreakingly, the banners with pictures of young child CF patients on them, cut Charlie to the bone. And suddenly, inexplicably, he knew they were right. It didn’t matter the cost, this had to be something that was voted through, for the sake of every child in the country with cystic fibrosis. He’d been wrong to question his instincts; he knew that now. He should have put Harry and his family first all along, and the thousands of other patients. But he still had no idea how to fix it.

  ‘And if I’m not mistaken, here comes one of the figures at the centre of the debate about CF drugs, MP for Willowbury and Stavenham, Charlie Thorpe…’ the reporter’s voice cut into Charlie’s thoughts, which, unseeingly, had guided his feet towards the eye of the storm. ‘Mr Thorpe, have you any comment on the current stalemate between government and the pharmaceutical companies?’

  Charlie’s heart thumped as a microphone was thrust into his face by a blonde reporter, Ruth Middleton, for one of the morning television current affairs shows. When he’d started this job, he’d received some training about what to do when asked a question on the hop like this, but he’d been so preoccupied with the sight of the demonstration and thoughts of Holly that all of that useful advice had fled from his brain.

  ‘Mr Thorpe, as the recent publicity for this cause shows, you and your constituents have a lot to gain if an agreement is reached. Do you have any comment on that?’

  Charlie opened his mouth, but not for the first time in front of a microphone, didn’t have the first clue how to respond. The chanting behind him grew in intensity, with one voice standing out above all others; a voice that split Charlie’s heart the second he recognised it.

  ‘I wouldn�
��t bother asking him,’ the voice taunted. ‘He’s not got any answers.’

  Charlie glanced briefly away from the reporter’s questioning gaze and his eyes locked with the speaker’s. Eyes flashing with challenge, hair bedecked with yellow ribbons, Holly looked as formidable an opponent as he’d ever encountered across the benches inside the House. How awful it was to be on the opposite side to her. It felt wrong, all wrong.

  The reporter caught his glance and turned towards Holly, motioning for the camera operator to do the same. ‘Am I right in thinking that this is one of your constituents, Mr Thorpe?’

  Charlie tore his gaze back to the reporter, uncomfortably aware that he still didn’t quite know what he was going to say. ‘That’s correct, Ruth, yes. But at this present time I have no comment on the progress of the discussions. Regrettably, I have to step away from the issue.’ Cursing how pathetically formal he sounded, reminding him of the very first on-camera interview he’d ever given, he also knew that his words would provoke nothing but derision from the assembled campaigners. He was just another politician going back on his word; saying one thing one day and then taking it back another.

  ‘So, you are unable to give your support for an issue that you asked a question about recently at Prime Minister’s Question Time?’

  ‘I have no further comment,’ Charlie said hopelessly, feeling his stomach sink at how incredibly lame that response sounded.

  He glanced over the reporter’s shoulder to see Holly had stopped chanting and had her gaze fixed firmly upon him. His face felt hot as he remembered the way they’d parted, back in Willowbury, and he found that he couldn’t focus on what the reporter was now asking him.