Never Marry a Politician

by Sarah Waights

  She glanced at the weary crowd in the waiting room as she shot through. Some looked as if they might have aged a decade or so since arrival. The dot matrix board announced a waiting time of five hours. But not for Alfie. Not for her little boy.

  The urgency simultaneously reassured and terrified her.

  Scampering to keep up, she dived through the doors and saw the group disappearing into a side room. She met Matt coming out, who fielded her in his arms and blocked entry.

  ‘Come here,’ he said, giving her a hug.

  ‘What did they say?’ said Emily shakily, detaching herself. ‘What are they doing to him? I want to go in.’

  He barred her way. ‘Leave them to work. They’ll tell us when they have some news.’

  ‘He was fine this morning,’ she sobbed.

  He nodded. ‘It happens like that.’

  ‘Actually that’s a lie,’ she added, almost talking to herself. ‘He wasn’t fine. He was really under the weather. This time last year I’d have tucked him up on the sofa with his favourite teddy and some warm milk. Now, I bundle him into a coach and drag him off around the country. All for my husband’s bloody benefit. What was I thinking?’

  ‘It’s a difficult balancing act,’ sympathised Matt surprisingly. ‘If it’s any consolation I think you pull it off – admirably – with the same talent and dedication you apply to everything, in my experience.’

  She blinked. She couldn’t remember the last time someone whose opinion she respected had said something so admiring. He carried on, oblivious. ‘Personally, I don’t know why you bother. Not for him. I mean I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Lucky he didn’t ask you to marry him then.’

  ‘I just can’t believe he asked you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ retorted Emily.

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ he explained, reaching for her hands, ‘I mean you’re too good for him.’

  ‘But not too good for you?’

  ‘Emily,’ said Matt, his head in his hands, fingers gripping his scalp. ‘I’m sorry …’

  Before he had a chance to say what he was sorry for, a woman wearing blue cotton scrubs and a stethoscope came out.

  ‘Mum and Dad?’ she queried.

  Emily wasn’t going to waste time explaining. ‘Yes,’ she said, getting to her feet but, on taking another look at them both, the doctor was clearly confused.

  ‘Er, I have to ask,’ she said, ‘have I seen you before somewhere?’

  ‘You don’t watch “Clarissa” do you?’ she replied, incredulously. Surely doctors were too busy to watch rubbish daytime telly. Obviously the humiliation she suffered – was it really only yesterday? – had a bigger impact than she had thought.

  ‘Of course you’ve seen her,’ said Matt, cutting across her. ‘She’s Ralph Pemilly’s wife.’

  ‘Heavens, of course you are,’ said the doctor. ‘I’m so sorry not to have realised.’

  The doctor’s eyes flickered nervously as she quickly reviewed whether anything that had happened so far was in contravention of treatment expected by the son and mother of the likely future Prime Minister. ‘It’s lucky you brought him in so quickly,’ she explained at last, having clearly decided that the hospital had not yet let itself down. The name tag said Dr Llewelyn. She looked weary, with her hair hanging in limp strands from an untidy ponytail seeming to illustrate her fatigue.

  ‘We are treating him for bacterial meningitis,’ she went on. ‘We won’t have a definite diagnosis until the test results come back, but the progression of the disease is so rapid, it would be unwise for us to wait.’

  ‘Bacterial?’ said Emily. The doctor nodded. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’s good isn’t it? Bacterial is good, right? You have antibiotics for bacterial infections. Viral would be worse wouldn’t it? He hasn’t got that.’ Even to her own ears, she was aware that she was gabbling.

  The doctor met Emily’s eye. ‘I’m sorry to say I would prefer, in this context, to be telling you it’s viral. Mrs Pemilly, you need to understand, your son is extremely ill. We are treating aggressively but this is a rapidly advancing disease. I cannot, in all conscience, give you a guarantee that Alfie is going to recover fully. Or,’ she paused, ‘or if he is going to recover at all.’

  Emily swayed, and felt, rather than saw Matt move closer to her.

  ‘I want to see him.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Dr Llewellyn. ‘I’ll take you in to see Archie now.’

  ‘Alfie,’ corrected Emily quietly, but the doctor didn’t hear.

  Matt put his hand on Emily’s back as they moved forward.

  ‘Er, sorry,’ said the doctor, barring their way. ‘I’m afraid I can only let close relatives in.’ She looked at Matt apologetically.

  ‘Oh no, please,’ said Emily desperately. ‘I need him.’

  The doctor looked at them both. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Come through.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Alfie was deathly quiet, looking tiny and defenceless on the high hospital bed. Emily was desperate to gather him into her arms, but with the oxygen mask, the drip going into his arm and the monitoring equipment she was too scared in case she dislodged something. Instead, she contented herself with pressing his little hand between both of hers. The bruises on his skin had spread like an evil tide, even in the last few minutes. Blotches on the backs of his hands had grown and Emily thought there were more pinpricks of blood under the skin on his waxen face. His blond hair had darkened so much with sweat now, it looked like he had just had it washed. Despite his sweaty face, the hand Emily was clutching to her was clammy and colder than ever.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ said Emily panicking. ‘He’s really ill, they should be … someone should be doing something …’

  ‘They are,’ Matt reassured her. ‘Just be still, calm down.’

  ‘How can I?’ she asked, stroking Alfie’s forehead distractedly. ‘What are they doing for him? Why aren’t they here?’

  ‘Look,’ said Matt reasonably. ‘Here are the antibiotics going in.’ He indicated the drip going into poor little Alfie’s arm. ‘These machines are monitoring his heart rate, blood pressure, respiration. If anything exciting happens they’ll come crashing in here like the wrath of God.’

  She felt a bit better. ‘Alfie,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘Mummy loves you sweetie.’

  For a moment, Alfie’s eyes opened a slit and he turned his head towards her voice.

  ‘Mummy?’ he said, in a cracked voice.

  ‘Yes sweetie-pie,’ she said, squeezing his hand.

  ‘I want Daddy,’ he whispered, barely audible.

  Emily realised she had not thought about Ralph since they left the coach. His presence or otherwise had been completely irrelevant.

  ‘I know Daddy wants to be here, darling,’ she said, remembering with cinematic clarity how he had turned away from her. ‘I am sure he will come and see you just as soon as he can.’

  ‘I suppose I’d better call him,’ she said reluctantly to Matt.

  ‘I’ll sort it,’ he said and let himself quietly out of the room. Shortly, he was back with a phone on a little trolley.

  ‘Can’t use mobiles in here,’ he explained. ‘I, er, I’ll make myself scarce …’ he added looking back at the door.

  ‘Stay,’ she said, urgently. Matt nodded and went over to the window, gazing out, hands in pockets.

  Needless to say, it wasn’t Ralph who answered.

  ‘Emily – er – Mrs Pemilly,’ said Gerald nervously. ‘How is little Archie?’

  ‘Alfie,’ corrected Emily, ‘not good actually, I need to talk to Ralph.’

  ‘Yes, of course, I’ll ask him to call you just as soon as he can,’ replied Gerald, trying to sound as if he was being terribly helpful whilst being precisely the opposite.

  ‘No, Gerald,’ she said, firmly. ‘I need to speak to him now.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Gerald. ‘Yes, right,’ he added, clearly weighing up the options. He wisely decided to be more scared of Emily than Ralph. ‘I�
��ll get him,’ he announced, and the line went dead for a considerable time.

  Emily tried not to imagine that Matt’s back was saying ‘I told you so,’ as she waited – yet again – for her husband to give his family the slightest priority ahead of his political ambitions.

  ‘Emily,’ came Ralph’s voice at last on the line. He had that firm, dynamic tone that told her he was in a room full of people he needed to impress.

  ‘Alfie’s really ill,’ she choked.

  ‘In what way?’ he immediately interrogated.

  She explained briefly. ‘He wants you to be here,’ she added, imagining she ought to say that she wanted him there too.

  Only she wasn’t sure she did.

  ‘Look darling, it’s pretty difficult …’ she could hear the conflict in his voice. ‘I want to be there, of course I do, but I am sure the hospital staff are all doing a fantastic job. I’ll give the doctors a call – get an update – and then I’ll get to you as soon as I can,’ he said, trying to sound upbeat and decisive. And then he added – with just the tiniest hint of irritation – ‘The polls are opening in just a few hours – in case you’d forgotten.’

  Frankly, she had.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Alfie slept, peacefully it seemed, but secretly Emily wondered if he was unconscious. She dared not ask the intermittent stream of staff who came in to check the monitors. She didn’t think she would be able to contain her panic if they told her something even scarier than what she had already heard.

  Matt had tried to persuade her to go to the canteen to eat. She refused but allowed a kindly nurse to bring her a cup of tea. The young nurse was star-struck at Emily’s presence and in awe of Matt, who she clearly found attractive.

  Mostly, they just sat beside one another, Emily at Alfie’s head and Matt at his feet. Emily found she couldn’t take her eyes from her son, devouring the very sight of him like she remembered doing in the hours after his birth. She watched the marks under his skin obsessively. Were they spreading?

  Without saying a word, Matt took a pen from his pocket. She looked at him curiously as he gently took Alfie’s hand from Emily’s and marked the edge of the largest blotch of browny-red. Understanding what he was doing, Emily said, ‘but why don’t they do that? Surely they should be watching him.’

  ‘You heard the doctor,’ said Matt, the voice of calm. ‘They are treating him. I’m marking the line so you can see if it spreads. I know nothing else will reassure you.’

  ‘What makes you think that’ll reassure me?’ she ventured shakily.

  ‘Because the only thing that ever made you feel better about scary situations was knowing absolutely everything,’ replied Matt. ‘That was always one of the things I loved about you.’

  ‘You loved me,’ she said.

  ‘You know I did,’ he replied. ‘I haven’t stopped.’

  Silent, they both gazed at Alfie, watching his chest go up and down as he took his too shallow, panting breaths.

  ‘You left me,’ she said at last. ‘We needed to be together. To talk. And you just went away. Your work took precedence.’

  ‘I know. I was an idiot. I’m sorry.’

  She didn’t reply.

  ‘But I couldn’t believe it when you told me what you’d done,’ he added, after a long pause. ‘I never thought – I was shocked.’

  Emily was taken aback. ‘What I’d done,’ she hissed. ‘We are talking about the bit where I told you I was pregnant and you buggered off in the dead of night to pretty much the only part of the world you couldn’t be contacted?’

  ‘I don’t blame you,’ Matt said, grabbing Emily’s hand. ‘It was my fault for not being able to cope. Actually I blamed myself for driving you to it. I’ve been blaming myself for the last ten years, wondering what she would have been like. Or he,’ he added, looking at Alfie. ‘Actually,’ he admitted, looking searchingly at her for her reaction, ‘I even thought you may have lied about it, just telling me that so you could end the relationship. Next thing I knew you were with Ralph and pregnant with Tash. I wondered if she was really mine, if you were just punishing me …’

  ‘Er, sorry?’ she stuttered, floundering as every word he spoke deepened her confusion. ‘What on earth is it you think I’ve done? And,’ she added before he had a chance to reply, ‘might I say it’s a bit rich for you to accuse me of lying about whether I was pregnant, whether I wasn’t pregnant…’ she trailed away in confusion, ‘when you were clearly appalled to hear I was carrying your child.’

  ‘Not so appalled I wanted you to terminate it,’ he snapped, before dropping his face into his hands and rubbing wearily. ‘Sorry, like I said I’m not blaming you …’

  ‘Too bloody right you’re not,’ she said, after a stunned silence. ‘Did you honestly think …’ Tears sprang to her eyes. She didn’t trust herself to speak for a moment. ‘Did you honestly think,’ she said at last, ‘I would deliberately destroy our baby?’ Her face crumpled.

  He looked up, saw the disintegration and ten years of guilt and blame fell away. ‘God, Emily I am so sorry,’ he said gathering her in against his chest. ‘I hurt you so much, I know I did. I suppose when you told me the baby was gone I assumed you had got rid of it because I had behaved like such an idiot.’

  They both replayed in their minds that grim conversation, the line from Kazakhstan so poor that Emily heard everything Matt said twice, the repeat a second behind and coming from the far end of a long, echoing corridor. She had been determined not to show the depth of her distress when she lost first her lover and then, ten days later, her baby in an early and painful miscarriage. When he had asked after the baby she had snapped angrily that it was gone. Only now did she appreciate that she had provided no detail as to how and why. At the time her overwhelming feeling was anger that she had gone through the whole devastating event without the one person she wanted beside her. Still numb from the shock and betrayal, allowing herself to fall so quickly into a relationship with Ralph, and then becoming pregnant before she even thought it medically possible … she realised she had simply let it happen, relieved to hand over thinking and decision-making to whoever was there beside her. And it happened to be Ralph.

  Now, ten years later, the real comfort she craved was there at last. He rocked her gently as he held her, his body warming and soothing her distress as he stroked the back of her neck.

  ‘Tash is beautiful, just like her mum,’ he murmured in her ear. ‘I would have been proud if you had told me she was mine.’

  She choked back a sob. She could hardly afford to fall to bits but his tenderness, along with the sadness of her memories and worry over Alfie was breaking down her defences alarmingly.

  ‘When I said I never thought of you, I lied,’ she admitted, hiccupping slightly.

  ‘I know,’ he replied, sliding his hand into the hair at the back of her neck, kneading gently. ‘I’ve thought of nothing else, how I ballsed everything up. Hurt you, and then lost you to that prat …’

  ‘Careful,’ responded Emily dutifully. ‘That’s my husband you’re talking about.’

  He sighed. ‘You hardly need to remind me. It should have been me.’

  ‘You didn’t ask,’ she replied, sitting up and carefully wiping the tears from her eyes.

  ‘Marry me,’ he said, holding her tear-stained face in his hands so she couldn’t look away.

  They stared at each other for what felt like a hundred years.

  ‘It’s too late.’

  ‘It’s not.’

  ‘Of course it is,’ replied Emily, wishing it weren’t true. ‘Ralph and I have quite the most public marriage in the UK – at the moment certainly. I can’t just bail out, much as I would like to …’ she added with honesty.

  ‘What, because people you don’t care about don’t approve?’ he challenged.

  ‘No,’ she said, although it was. ‘It’s about Tash and Alfie too – he is their father after all.’

  ‘I wish I was,’ said Matt intensely. ‘I would love
them, not just because they are fantastic kids but because you’re their mother.’

  ‘It’s too late,’ she said, ‘don’t do this.’

  ‘You do feel for me though,’ persisted Matt. ‘You love me. I know you do.’

  She did. And the realisation that her feelings were just as intense as they were when he let her down in the past was no comfort, the impossibility of it all was greater than ever.

  ‘Enough,’ she said, remembering her promise to James. ‘Matt, you must stop this.’ She raised her chin determinedly. ‘I am totally dedicated to my husband. There is no room for any possibility that you – we – can have any future. I need you to go.’

  His face hardened. ‘You don’t mean that.’

  ‘I do,’ replied Emily sadly. ‘I really, really do. And if you won’t go, I will.’

  The last word was a sob and she pushed him away reeling out into the corridor. Finding a little dark room filled with steel shelves of bedclothes and towels, she sank to the floor and sat, head in hands listening to her heart pounding, shutting her eyes to intensify the darkness.

  In the end, she couldn’t bear to stay away from her vigil with Alfie. Creeping back she was relieved to see that Matt had gone. In his place, a white-coated doctor, a man this time, was checking the chart at the end of Alfie’s bed.

  ‘How is he?’ she pleaded, resisting the urge to pluck at his sleeve.

  He jumped and turned, revealing a ridiculously youthful face that needed a shave.

  ‘Hello Mrs Pemilly,’ he said nervously. ‘Try not to worry, everything is being done you know, and it’s a real help that you got Alfie here so quickly. Also,’ he threw her a disarming grin, ‘he looks like a tough kid.’

  She was tearfully grateful he had got Alfie’s name right. ‘He is,’ she agreed, ‘but what about this terrible rash?’

  ‘It can look worse than it is,’ the doctor replied. ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he gets away with just losing his toes and fingertips.’ He seemed to expect Emily to find this reassuring.

  When he had gone she returned to holding little Alfie’s hand and stroking his head. The biro mark Matt had made on his hand a couple of hours ago was being incorporated into a particularly big blotch, but Emily did dare to think the awful stain was spreading less quickly. It felt like days since they had set off that morning. Actually, as it was well after midnight, it was officially yesterday they had set off. Emily didn’t know how she was going to survive until the dawn. She didn’t even know what had happened to Tash but only hoped that someone had thought to take the poor child home and put her to bed. Now it was too late for her to telephone and find out. She would have to wait until morning only, being polling day, she seriously wondered if she would get any sense out of anyone even then. Not for the first time, she felt the desperate tug of being a mother not able to assuage her need to care for and protect both her children. Never had she felt more inadequate and more torn.