Anatomy of a Scandal

by Sarah Vaughan

  ‘You’d have done it for me,’ he managed, eventually.

  The most powerful man in the country bent over the handles of the running machine but, when he straightened, his look took James back over twenty years. They could have been sprinting round Christ Church Meadows; pushing their bodies in joyous relief at the end of finals or in frantic desperation. James resisted that memory – but, once again, Tom wouldn’t let it drop. ‘Let’s face it: it’s the least I could do. Probably my turn to bail you out.’

  And so far today, it has all been fine. There have been a couple of jibes from the more sanctimonious Labour MPs – out-of-shape northerners who probably haven’t had sex since the millennium – and some disdain from the more shrewish Labour women, but many on his own side have nodded in support. There have been kind notes, particularly from a couple of older politicians: former ministers who remember Alan Clark, Cecil Parkinson, Tim Yeo, Steve Norris, David Mellor. Not to mention Stephen Milligan, who auto-asphyxiated, trussed up in stockings. No one is pretending this government is going ‘Back to Basics’; no one cares – so sharply – about individual sexual morality. There is a frisson of concern about his having dallied with an employee, but Chris Clarke’s strategy has worked faultlessly. James’s sense – and his instincts for this are usually sound – is that his dalliance might be a mark in the chief whip’s apocryphal black book, or worth a paragraph or two in a future political memoir, but that, in terms of his long-term career, a line has been drawn underneath the affair.

  The relief is immense. He pauses by the oak pigeonholes: perhaps anachronistic in this age in which his phone vibrates constantly with texts and emails, but still used, frequently. His is illuminated, revealing a message: a note – surprisingly unpatronising – from Malcolm Thwaites. He pauses, looking towards the entrance of the Chamber beyond the principal doorkeeper, another anachronism in his black tails and waistcoat, who gives him a measured but courteous nod. The lobby is quiet and he stands in the calm of the antechamber, looking up at the bronze of Churchill, hands on hips, head jutting forward like a prize fighter. On the other side of the lobby is Mrs Thatcher, right hand raised, index finger poised, as if at the despatch box. His is a new brand of conservatism and yet he needs to channel their unwavering self-belief; to regain his chutzpah. He nods to the Iron Lady; turns and gives the doorkeeper his most charming smile.

  All will be well. Walking backwards, he glances up at the arch to the Chamber and the reddish patches left by the flames when the Chamber was bombed and completely destroyed in the Blitz. The roof to this lobby caved in, yet you wouldn’t know it. All was rebuilt just as his career – knocked out of kilter but not irreparably damaged – will be. The key, as well as being less aloof with his more tedious backbench colleagues, is to make something of this Home Office brief, a potential poisoned chalice, though Tom knows he can shine. He’ll get back to the office now – and he strides down the Commons corridor, leaving the inner sanctum, the beating heart of this House, behind.

  He crosses into the peers’ lobbies – all thick red carpet and panelled walls, topped with the crests in peacock blue and gold leaf of attorney generals. An elderly peer totters to the printed paper office and nods. Neither speaks, the atmosphere as hushed as a Trappist monastery, though the High Victorian Gothic décor is far from austere. He prefers this sumptuousness and secrecy to the shiny openness of Portcullis, the modern part of Parliament with its vast fig tree-lined atrium, though it might have been better if that committee meeting had been in that part of the Commons. For a moment he considers how events could have been different: there, the doors of the lifts are made of glass.

  He shoves the thought aside and takes a short cut down a spiral staircase and through a maze of admin offices before emerging into a yard at the far end of the building, sheeted in plastic and barricaded in scaffolding, right by Black Rod’s entrance. The autumn sunshine is beating down and, behind him, the Thames sparkles and reminds him of the golden bits of Oxford – he has long since compartmentalised the not-so-golden bit. And then Tom had to allude to it this morning. Let’s face it: it’s the least I could do. Probably my turn to bail you out.

  ‘Mr Whitehouse?’

  The voice drags him from his thoughts. A middle-aged man and a woman in her early thirties come towards him as he prepares to cross Millbank and stride down towards the Home Office.

  ‘May I help? Can I ask that you make an appointment?’ He glances behind him in the direction of the Commons with its police protection and security guards. It’s not that he is wary of meeting members of the public but he’d rather not, particularly since this man is making for him with the smirk of a nutter.

  ‘We were hoping you could make an appointment with us,’ the man says, coming closer. The woman – not bad-looking, the assessment is automatic, though her ill-fitting trouser suit and lank haircut do little for her – follows a pace behind.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ James notes the twang of his voice but then the man flicks a Met Police ID card from his wallet – and James’s smile hardens into a rictus grin.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Willis; this is my colleague, Detective Constable Rydon. We’ve been trying to contact you, Mr Whitehouse, but your office seemed unaware of your whereabouts?’ He says this with an easy smile, though his eyes don’t waver; his voice, stuffed with glottal stops, holds an edge.

  ‘I switched my mobile off for an hour. Criminal behaviour, I know.’ James chooses his words deliberately, trying for a smile that is unforthcoming. ‘Occasionally I do, at lunchtime. I just wanted to be able to think.’

  He smiles again and offers his right hand. The detective looks down at it as if it is something he would not normally encounter, and refrains from taking it.

  James, affecting not to notice, moves his hand as if to guide them. ‘Perhaps we could talk elsewhere? In my office at the department? I’m heading there.’

  ‘I think you might prefer that,’ the other man says.

  His junior, slim and delicate-featured, nods, implacable. He wonders what it would take to make her smile; and at the same time, where the most discreet place would be.

  ‘Perhaps you could tell me what you’d like to discuss?’ he says. His breath is coming quickly, and he concentrates on slowing it down.

  ‘Olivia Lytton,’ DS Willis says, looking at him directly. He rolls back his shoulders, surprisingly broad for a slim man, and suddenly becomes more imposing. ‘We’re here to ask you a few questions in connection with an allegation of rape.’

  KATE

  9 December 2016

  Seven

  Friday night – and I am in a good mood as I make my way up the path to my oldest friend Ali’s house, in a suburban street in west London. It’s a week since Brian handed me the first set of papers for Whitehouse and I am still queasy with excitement at the thought of bringing this case to court.

  ‘Oooh, fizz! Christmas? Or have you won a case?’ Ali gives me a brisk kiss on the cheek as she takes the cold Prosecco and the bunch of flowers I bundle into her arms.

  ‘I’ve just been given a good one,’ I explain as I follow her through the hall of her Edwardian terrace. A forest of coats sways against me and I am enveloped by the smell of lasagne – onions, garlic, caramelised meat – as I move into her cluttered kitchen at the back of the house.

  The house is busy: one child raiding a cupboard – ‘But I’m hungry’; another playing the piano badly, fingers floundering over the same bar then racing onwards, louder and apparently oblivious. Only Joel, at seven, the youngest, and my godson, is quiet as he works on the box of Lego I brought him in the hope of buying an hour’s uninterrupted chat with his mother. Fifteen minutes after ripping it open, he has almost completed the apparently-not-so-elaborate task.

  Ali places a mug of tea in front of me, sweeps aside a day-old Guardian. She is busy but then she’s always busy: teaching four days a week; bringing up three children aged seven to thirteen; being a wife to Ed. She never needs to point out her busy-ness: it’s
just there. A fact. And one in which I often sense a strain of resentment as if her busy-ness is of a richer texture than mine. Motherhood, marriage and a career – not a career as high-flying or well-paid as mine but still a career – drain her so that, by Friday night, she is probably not in the mood to listen to my triumphs, still less my problems. It’s lovely to see me; but she could do without it at the end of a long week, really she could.

  I imagine her thinking this, of course. She gives no indication but I sense it simmering, implicit in her quick glance at my new handbag, oversized and of firm, rich leather; suggested by the utter exhaustion cloaking her face. It seeps out as she finally sits down, breath rushing from her like air from a deflated balloon, and as she scrapes her hair into a ponytail with quick, sharp movements and a grimace. It’s even implied by her hair: fine grey streaks and dirty blonde strands in which the roots need doing; and the fact that her forehead seems permanently furrowed between two unkempt brows.

  ‘I like your glasses. Are they new?’ I ask, wanting to say something positive.

  ‘Oh, these.’ She takes them off and peers at them as if seeing them for the first time. One arm is bent and the lenses are smudged with fingermarks. She thrusts them back on; flashes a look that manages to be both wry and defiant.

  ‘They’re ancient. Can’t remember when I got them.’

  ‘You used to hate wearing glasses.’ I think back to the girl who wore contacts through her late teens, twenties and early thirties; who I’d thought so glamorous for expertly balancing a lens on her forefinger and, mirrorless, brushing it into her eye.

  ‘Did I?’ Ali smiles. ‘Well, these are cheaper and a lot less hassle.’ She shrugs, not needing to state that she no longer has time for grooming or to recall that she was the one who once drew the looks – naturally slim, blonde, confident – while I was heavier and shyer. A gallery of old Kates and Alis in our various physical incarnations – memories heaped layer upon layer on one another – hover like a string of cutout paper dolls.

  ‘So – you’re well?’ Ali pushes her glasses onto the top of her head as she brushes aside random pieces of Lego. I wonder if she really wants to know. She seems distracted by the lasagne bubbling away in the oven; the second load of school uniform sloshing around the washing machine, or the first, in the dryer, that rolls with a heavy regularity, a repetitive thud.

  Her attention flickers. ‘I said not to eat anything.’ She stands and slams a low cupboard door shut as her eldest boy, Ollie, ten and apparently permanently hungry, tries to plunder it. ‘Dinner’s in ten minutes.’

  ‘But I’m hungry!’ The boy stomps his foot, testosterone palpable as he runs from the room.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says, sitting back down and fixing me with a smile. ‘Hopeless trying to have a proper conversation around here.’

  As if on cue, Pippa, her eldest, slopes in and curls around the back of my chair; sinuous as a cat. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Can you just go? All of you!’ Ali’s voice rises in exasperation. ‘Can you just let me talk to my friend for ten minutes in peace?’

  ‘But Mum . . .’ Joel looks aghast as he is unceremoniously shooed out. His big sister peels herself from the back of my chair and stalks out, her slim hips swishing in a parody of a model. I watch her, this girl-child: half in awe of the woman she will become, half fearful for what her future brings.

  ‘That’s better.’ Ali sips her tea with relief; emits a tiny, satisfied sigh. Why aren’t we drinking the Prosecco? It’s a Friday night. Once upon a time we would have been three quarters of the way through a bottle by this point. But Ali has stashed it away in the fridge. I sip my own tea, too strong for my liking for she never gets it quite right, reach for the huge plastic carton of milk on the counter and pour a little more in.

  ‘So – you said something about a case?’

  So she is interested. I feel a wave of relief and then my apprehension wells up inside me.

  ‘It’s a big one. A rape. Quite high-profile.’

  ‘Sounds exciting?’

  I am torn. I am itching to divulge just a little: not to run through the evidence but to let her know whom we’re talking about here.

  ‘I can’t really talk about it.’ I slam the possibility of disclosure shut and catch her expression: a be-like-that-if-you-want smile; a slight sigh; a distancing between us when we seemed, briefly, to be easing back into being our familiar, gossipy selves.

  ‘It’s James Whitehouse.’ I break my own rules, eager to regain that closeness; and more than that, to check her reaction.

  Her blue eyes widen. I have her attention. ‘The minister?’

  I nod.

  ‘And you’ll be prosecuting?’

  ‘Yes.’ I roll my eyes. I still can’t quite believe it.

  Her breath eases out and I wait for further, inevitable questions.

  ‘So – do you think that he’s guilty?’

  ‘The CPS believes it has a strong case.’

  ‘Not the same thing.’ She shakes her head.

  I wrinkle my nose and offer my usual, bland, straight-as-a-die response. ‘He says he’s innocent. The CPS submits that there is sufficient evidence to convict and I’ll do my best to convince the jury of the case.’

  Ali pushes back her chair; picks cutlery from a drawer with a silvery rattle. Six knives; six forks; the cruets held in her other hand like a pair of maracas. She turns quickly; pushes the drawer closed with her hip.

  Perhaps she’s irritated by my use of legalese: inevitable, when it’s the language I use in court. Hard, when discussing a case, to slip into something more colloquial just as I find it hard to shed my lawyerly precision, my tendency to cross-examine when trying to prove a point. I watch for the telltale signs that she’s angry: a refusal to meet my eye, a tension around her mouth as if she’s forcing herself not to speak. But Ali looks more thoughtful than cross.

  ‘I can’t believe it of him. I mean, I know he had that affair but I genuinely thought he was one of the good guys. He seemed to be doing a good job: reaching out to Muslim communities rather than automatically pillorying them. And he just seemed lovely.’

  ‘Lovely?’

  She shrugs her shoulders, momentarily embarrassed. ‘The one Tory I wouldn’t kick out of bed.’

  I’m shaken by her tone but, ‘Not really your type, is he?’ I tease, for he is as unlike Ed, her partner since our early twenties and now a rather earnest, balding head teacher, as it is possible to be.

  ‘I just think he’s beautiful.’ She looks at me, frankly, and all the baggage she wears so heavily – as wife, as mother, as teacher to small children – slips from her with this uncharacteristic admission. We could be getting ready for a college bop, freshers discussing which boy we had our eye on; both eighteen again.

  I shrug and busy myself by clearing her table, troubled by her response on several levels. This is what we are up against. A man who will win over every female member of the jury by virtue of being beautiful; may win over some male members, too, for his looks are never going to alienate. The chiselled jaw, the high cheekbones, those green eyes, his height, his charisma – because that’s what it is; this rare quality that marks him out so clearly – are those of a leading man. And then there’s his charm – for James Whitehouse has this in abundance. The effortless, unostentatious courtesy that is the trademark of an Old Etonian, that cannot help but flatter so that you feel, when their attention is on you, that they are genuinely interested; genuinely concerned to help. As Olivia Lytton found, it can be seductive. I have no doubt that, if he is put in the box, as he surely will be, he will use every ounce of this charm, every trick up his sleeve.

  ‘Bit shallow of me to be swayed by his looks, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not shallow. I’m worried it’s natural. That the jury will think it.’

  ‘I keep imagining his poor wife and family. He’s a father and husband. I think that’s what makes it so difficult to believe.’

  ‘Oh, Ali. Most rapists are
known to their victims. They’re not men with knives who pounce down alleyways.’

  ‘I know that. You know I know that.’ She starts slamming the cutlery down.

  ‘You’ll be telling me you don’t believe in marital rape, next!’ I laugh to cover my frustration; my disbelief that she can think the best of him.

  ‘That’s not fair, Kate. Not fair at all.’

  The temperature in the stuffy kitchen suddenly drops five degrees. She is red-faced, her eyes dark beads as she looks up at me. It strikes me that she is properly cross.

  ‘I didn’t mean to patronise.’ I row back; aware that the gulf is widening between us – a chasm that began with a chink when I got my first, and she her low 2:2; and that has widened as she entered teaching and I progressed to the Bar. She has long been chippy about feeling intellectually inferior and yet, once upon a time, she would argue as passionately as me; would be joining me in lecturing about feminism and sexual politics and putting her point across, sometimes forcefully. Is it marriage, motherhood or just age that has changed her? Made her more conservative. Less willing to believe that a good-looking – no, a beautiful – man, and an upper-class one at that, could be capable of such an ugly crime? We all mellow with age: we make compromises; bend our opinions; become less strident. Except that I don’t. Not when it comes to rape.

  I feel prickly but it’s unfair of me to direct my exasperation at her. This case – and the likelihood of James Whitehouse getting off – has affected me in a way it usually wouldn’t. For, despite the heat of my fury, I am good at remaining emotionally detached. On the rare occasion I lose a case, it’s my failure that bugs me as much as the implications for the complainants – the girls whose dress sense, levels of alcohol consumption and sexual behaviour are pored over in the witness box, as if we were prurient tabloid readers, and whose stories are still not believed after all that.

  Usually, I bounce back from any loss: a fast run; a stiff gin; plenty more work in which to immerse myself, for the pressure of my job means that I cannot wallow in self-pity. I presented the evidence and the decision was out of my hands, now move on. That’s what I always tell myself and, usually, it’s what I manage to believe.