The House

by Tom Watson

  He takes the phone from his ear. ‘Georgina, did you see Owen with my computer yesterday? Phil? Did you?’

  Phil is rocked back. What the fuck is Jay talking about?

  Jay hangs up and taps at his screen. ‘Charlotte! It’s Jay… I’m terrible today, that’s how I am! Tell them, tell the team it wasn’t me! No … Don’t give me that ethics crap. You’re not protecting your sources, you’re ruining my life. Don’t hang up! Damn!’

  ‘Jay, calm down and tell me what is happening,’ Phil says. Jay looks at him and there is something glassy and blank about his eyes which chills his blood. His laptop is open on the kitchen table, a half-full cafetière and one of their huge coffee mugs sitting next to it.

  Jay turns and sweeps at it with his arm. Computer, mug, cafetière and grounds crack and clatter onto the uneven tiles.

  Georgina squeals and presses herself against the door.

  ‘Jesus, Jay!’

  As Phil stares in shock at it, the glowing apple fades into blankness. He lifts his hands and takes a step forward. If Jay starts trashing anything else, he’s going to have to try and stop him.

  ‘He read an email and completely lost it! Like a bloody child!’ Georgina says. ‘That’s what happened!’ Her voice is tight with shock and fright. ‘Christ, Jay!’

  Jay looks at her over his shoulder.

  ‘Fuck the lot of you.’

  He pushes past Phil in the doorway and seconds later they hear the front door slam hard enough to make the chain rattle and bounce against the wood.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Phil asks. Georgina really does look shaken.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she says, and sounds steadier this time.

  ‘Chuck me the kitchen roll.’

  She does, and Phil steps over the mess to turn off the computer power cable at the wall, then mops up the worst of the coffee grounds.

  ‘Shit, the coffee’s got right in it.’ He extracts the machine from under the coffee and pottery shards. ‘Do we have any rice?’

  She pulls herself together. ‘Yeah. I think, maybe.’

  She fetches a kilo of basmati and a baking tray; puts them on the table while Phil shrugs off his coat, hangs it on the back of a chair and grabs another fistful of kitchen towel to wipe the pooled liquid off the half-open keyboard.

  Georgina sighs and kicks off her high heels, gets the dust-pan and brush and starts sweeping up the broken pieces of the cup as Phil covers the laptop in rice to draw out the moisture. He has no idea if it will work, but these computers cost a grand a piece.

  The bin lid clatters as Georgina dumps the pieces. ‘Tea?’

  ‘Yeah, thanks, if you’re making it.’ He wipes off his hands. ‘Well, what was that about?’

  She puts her palms on the work surface. Stares at the kettle as it boils. It clicks and she drops bags into mugs, fills them.

  ‘He’s really fucked up this time, Phil. There’s going to be a report in The Times tomorrow based on the draft minutes of Kieron’s last meeting with the Treasury team.’

  ‘Was it a bad meeting?’ Phil asks as she adds milk, squeezes the bags and drops them in the bin on top of the broken mug. ‘You were there?’

  ‘Yeah. I was there. Not great. I mean, Kieron was good, strongly advocating for the members. The Treasury team were saying flat out there need to be public-sector cuts and we should start getting ready for it. We talked about trading a pay freeze for job guarantees. Came to an accommodation. So, a bit tough, but, you know,’ she sketches air quotes, ‘“constructive”. Then Pat Coogan said something silly about how that works nicely for us as we’ll still get the membership dues if there are no job cuts, just a pay freeze. It was in the draft minutes, but not the final version.’

  Typical of Coogan, Phil thinks. He remembers his leers and jibes about the free wine he was necking at conference, the weird way he was with that woman at the Christmas party. Yes, keeping jobs and therefore subs and membership numbers was important for the Union, but it wasn’t something you said. You conceded it, quietly. Certainly not something to cheer about when the bankers were still giving each other bonuses and nurses and teachers were being asked to take the hit.

  ‘And how did it get to The Times?’

  They sit together at the kitchen table. She blows across the top of her tea. ‘Jay’s being accused of leaking the draft minutes.’

  ‘Oh,’ he pauses. ‘By whom?’

  ‘Coogan, of course. Kieron’s screaming blue murder. And the rest of the Treasury team have their suspicions, I think. The email that made Jay lose it was telling him to come in first thing tomorrow to “discuss the leak”.’ She pauses. ‘I told him not to ring the team, but he did of course and you heard the rest. Did you know he’s been seeing a therapist?’ Phil shakes his head. ‘I think it’s making him worse. More paranoid.’

  ‘Should we go and try to find him?’

  She sips her tea. ‘Let him walk it off.’

  She looks so miserable, Phil reaches out and squeezes her shoulder. ‘You’ve been really patient with him, Georgie.’

  Jay had heard Georgina had been approached about the Coventry East seat; he was bound to in the end. He essentially told her she wasn’t even allowed to go there, which was ridiculous, then accused her of flirting with her boss to get the Union’s support. It had been an ugly scene which ended with Owen basically ordering Jay out of the room.

  ‘Thanks, Phil.’ She looks at him and he feels the full force of her gaze. ‘I appreciate that.’

  He takes his hand away. ‘Did he leak it?’

  ‘He still hates the Union for supporting me as a candidate, so he’s a prime suspect.’ Then she shakes her head. ‘Apparently, Owen went full Campbell on The Times, insisted that Kieron’s reply slapping Coogan down was included. He was applauded when he hung up the phone. So my sources say.’

  So that’s why Jay said that on his call, Phil thinks.

  ‘Who was the journalist?’

  ‘Charlotte Cook. You know her?’

  Phil sniffs. ‘Seen her around a few times.’ At the conference. For drinks. A quiet kitchen supper with her and her husband at their house where Phil also met a couple of Cameron’s people. This must be what it’s like having an affair, the rush of sneaking about for clandestine meetings, then the guilt and shame waiting at home.

  ‘Don’t let that get out, or Jay will accuse you of stealing the draft minutes off his computer and leaking them yourself.’

  Phil actually laughs. ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘To “get at him”, of course. And there’s another reason he’s prime suspect. He wrote the minutes. Shared the original with his boss. Closed loop – no one else should have had them.’

  Case closed for Phil. Charlotte is a good journalist and can be charming when she wants to. Phil knows he’s not the only young political activist being cultivated. Charlotte wants to make friends with anyone who looks like they have a future. Makes sense she would chat up Jay too, if she could. And Jay is a bit of a sucker for friendly attention at the moment.

  ‘I did see Jay and Charlotte in the Red Lion together,’ Georgina muses, head on one side. ‘I mean, it looked pretty casual, but you know … ’

  She breaks off as the front door rattles open again.

  ‘We’re in the kitchen,’ Phil calls out.

  Owen comes in from the hall, ruffling up his hair where his woolly hat has flattened it. ‘It’s bitter out there.’ He clocks the rice and laptop. ‘What’s up?’

  They tell him.

  He whistles between his teeth. ‘Was it Jay? I wondered, but I didn’t think he’d do anything that daft. Why did he leak it?’

  ‘You know he hates Kieron,’ Georgina says.

  Phil and Owen exchange a glance and a shrug. Phil had been thinking Jay was doing better; other than claiming that some people were being weird with him, he’d kept his head down and been working. But then, Georgina knew him best.

  ‘I’m glad Jay isn’t here, actually,’ Owen says, sprawling into a seat at the ta
ble and pushing some of the post aside. ‘The chair of the CLP in Coventry East just called in a flat panic. The local PSGWU told him this afternoon if they put Jay on the shortlist, they won’t campaign, won’t offer any help on the doorstep and no money for leafleting. Georgina, you didn’t have anything to do with that?’

  She holds up her hands. ‘God, no! Of course not! Kieron is really angry and Coogan is humiliated. But I had no idea they’d do this. Must have happened after I left.’

  He looks at her for a second then nods. ‘Fair enough.’

  Phil decides tea is no longer enough. He fetches beers from the fridge. Georgina takes one too. ‘What? Before they’ve even interviewed him about the leaked minutes?’

  Owen is frowning. He looks like a sad owl in a snowstorm. ‘Which is why they aren’t saying anything “officially”, but they’ve let it be known. Yeah, it’s pretty stark.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Phil asks, sitting back down again.

  ‘I suggested an all-woman shortlist in Coventry East. Keeps Jay out with plausible deniability they haven’t been influenced by the allegations round the leak.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Phil says and drinks deep.

  Owen lifts his can towards Georgina. ‘All woman shortlist and Union backing. Looks like the seat could be yours to lose, Georgie. Congratulations.’

  ‘Cheers,’ she says. ‘Lucky me.’

  ‘Jay’s denying it then?’ Owen asks. They nod. ‘He should have just ’fessed up to it: said he thought he was providing background and hadn’t clocked the Coogan quote.’

  Phil wouldn’t have thought of that. Owen’s getting better at the ducking and diving, the half-truths of politics every day. He stares at the table-top for a long moment. ‘Any chance you could try and soothe Kieron a bit, Georgina?’

  She pushes herself up from the table. ‘I’ll call him. See what I can do.’

  She takes her can and her phone upstairs.

  ‘Think she’ll have any luck?’ Phil asks as she disappears.

  ‘I’m told she can wrap Kieron round her little finger, but who knows.’

  ‘You think Kieron would really follow through with a threat like that?’ Phil says. ‘Kill off the funding to a constituency party? I mean, I know he has power in the Union, but this is a lot.’ He stares at the political cartoons torn from newspapers and slogan magnets stuck to the fridge. Last year, they kept their delegate badges from the conference up there for weeks. Not this year.

  ‘Everyone expects him to be general secretary in a couple of years. They are scared of him.’

  ‘Still, bit of an overreaction, isn’t it?’

  Owen laughs darkly. ‘That’s just it. Overreacting is Kieron’s favourite tactic. Just go nuclear now and again and you can afford to be a pussy cat the rest of the time … Keep everyone else in line by once a year picking a victim and breaking them.’

  ‘That’s a shitty thing to do,’ Phil says.

  ‘I know. Effective, though.’ He finishes the can. ‘This year it’s Jay. Last year it was Julie Coats.’

  ‘Never heard of her.’

  ‘She was rising in the ranks of the Union. Had some star quality so we were looking at her for a speech at the conference. Then Kieron and she had a falling out and he put it about she was unstable.’

  ‘Was she?’

  Owen tries to remember the details. ‘Single mum, two kids with different men, and she had a restraining order out against the dad of one. We had plenty of good candidates for the slots without the Daily Mail-ready baggage.’

  ‘Where’s Christine tonight?’

  ‘Spending the weekend with her folks. Look, don’t say anything to her about the Jay stuff, will you? I’d rather keep her out of it. She’ll want to defend Jay and sometimes these things are best handled quietly. Jay’s a good candidate. He’ll get a seat eventually. A few months and Kieron will find someone else to pick on.’

  ‘Kieron does a hell of a lot for his members and without his fundraising you wouldn’t have the stamps to send out your fancy campaign leaflets, Owen.’ Georgina says, coming back in with her phone in her hand. ‘And he’s got every right to be pissed at Jay.’

  Owen lifts his hands in surrender.

  ‘Fair enough! Look, I like it when Kieron’s pointing his guns at the Tories, I just wish Jay wasn’t in his sights. Any luck calming him down?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Nope. In fact, I think Jay’s in more trouble than we thought.’

  Chapter 18

  Tuesday 8 March 2022

  ‘Thank you, Minister,’ Lefiami says. ‘So it was after the leak allegation that Kieron Hyde stepped in?’

  Phil nods. ‘He was bloody angry, and when that man lost his temper he was pretty terrifying. He could scare Owen – and that takes some doing.’

  Her eyes flick up whenever he mentions Owen. She must have heard the story about the engagement party, some humiliating version of it anyway.

  ‘Clearing the way for Georgina in Coventry East with an all-woman shortlist wasn’t enough. No, he made it clear any constituency party who even interviewed Jay as a candidate would not get a penny from the Union Political Fund. Owen managed, with Georgina’s help, to persuade the Union to let the message go out quietly rather than making some sort of public declaration. I mean, there weren’t many seats available then, let alone winnable ones, so it was just a matter of a few phone calls. Keep Jay undercover until Kieron moved on.’

  Lefiami tapped the pen on her pad. ‘And did anyone tell Jay that was happening?’

  Phil frowns.

  ‘No, I don’t think so … ’

  Lefiami raises her eyebrows and Phil feels a cold knot in his stomach. A long pause. Outside they hear a vacuum cleaner being pushed along the corridor. It’s getting late.

  ‘Look, I liked Jay, he was clever and he could charm the birds from the trees when he felt like it, but he had a temper on him and he’d never learned to control it. We didn’t want him storming into the Union offices and challenging Kieron, or getting in his face at some meeting.’ Phil examines the gothic swirls in the carpet at his feet, their geometric interlocking shapes. If only life were that orderly. ‘Maybe we should have told him, but his mood was all over the place in those weeks. And you’ve got to remember how hellish things were. The economy was falling apart, and then in May we had to deal with the expenses scandal. We were all … There was so much anger about, and shame. Owen’s private list of defensive marginals was getting longer.’

  It sounds pathetic and pleading, even to him.

  Anger and shame. Humiliation and fear of humiliation. They run through the pipework of the House while idealism and noble purpose white the sepulchre.

  ‘Defensive marginals?’

  How did they get onto this? ‘Yes, seats which were Labour but the private polling told Owen were in danger of going blue.’

  ‘Why private?’

  Phil shifts in his seat. Shame and humiliation. ‘Every party has a list, and keeps it secret so their opponents can’t use it to shape their own strategy. It makes a big difference to where money is spent, and no one had money to spare in 2010.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She makes a note. The recording angel writes on. ‘So how do you think it looked to Jay?’ she asks and Phil says nothing. ‘Basically barred from Coventry East then being blocked from every chance to stand for a seat and no one telling him why?’

  Phil feels the cold from his stomach spread through his limbs.

  ‘Let me be clear; you said, Minister … ’ she turns back a page in her notes, ‘that you never plotted to do damage to Jay’s career. But it sounds to me as if you did exactly that. Hardly surprising that his mental health deteriorated, is it? Now, if we could move on to Glastonbury … ’

  Ian stirs into life. ‘Ms Lefiami, I’m sorry but it’s after ten and the Minister still has work to do. Can we continue at another time?’

  She nods and puts the lid on her pen. ‘That would be fine, Mr Livingstone.’

  ‘It will hav
e to be next week,’ Ian says, a bit too quickly. ‘The Minister’s diary is packed.’

  ‘Whenever is convenient to you.’

  ‘I really was … we honestly were trying to help,’ Phil says as they stand and exchange their shallow bows.

  She doesn’t comment on that, only wishes him a pleasant evening before Ian shows her out. Phil sits down heavily. He thinks of Jay lying in his tent, the blueish tinge on his lips, the inhaler in his loose grip, the distant thudding sound of music, the shiny pill case. Unintended consequences …

  Chapter 19

  Owen’s calendar tells him he has tickets to watch the parliamentary choir at St John’s in Smith Square, and that Anna Brooks had agreed to come with him.

  Seeing her name on the alert delivers a familiar pang of regret. Owen is finding it hard to be ‘just friends’. Their relationship was fractured by lockdown, warped by their schedules and then the local lockdowns which set off small bombs along the way, tangling their plans, but it had been going somewhere. He misses her ambition and her throaty laugh; her unapologetically strange sense of humour, her enthusiasms. They had started talking about next steps: her beginning to attend political events as his official partner, living together, marriage. The practicalities would have been a challenge. Owen thought they could have worked it out, though.

  No, she’d stopped laughing as much, then began to disentangle herself from his life when a friend of hers persuaded her to look at what happened to MPs’ wives in the press. She told him she just didn’t think she’d be able to take living like that. Curtains closed, the fingerprints of the journalists on the living-room window; knowing they were there clambering over the bins to stare through the cracks in the curtains, cameras at the ready. She never wanted to be one of the startled faces on the doorstep or clustered around the TV watching their lives being torn apart in real time.

  He texts her, and her reply, swift and affirmative, saying she is already on the way shoots a burst of pleasure through his brain.