Never Marry a Politician

by Sarah Waights

  Emily looked uncertain, but Alfie had fallen back into a deep sleep. He probably wouldn’t even know she had gone.

  ‘Come on, Mummy,’ said Tash, ‘I’m starving, although I’d rather have a McDonald’s. We saw one of those too.’

  Emily grimaced. ‘I suppose so,’ she said, uncertainly, but Tash deserved to have some quality time after their forced separation.

  Nessa had already dismissed them, taking out a book and reading glasses from her capacious handbag and settling herself beside Alfie’s bed.

  There was a slight complication caused by a remaining gaggle of media outside the main entrance but that was sorted with a smart move by the hospital manager on duty who whisked out surgical scrubs for Emily, promising her that hospital staff frequently snuck out to grab a takeaway and that it would act as a sufficient disguise. Tash just put the hood up on her coat and then they were both smuggled out of the side entrance closest to the shops.

  After a vanilla milkshake and a double cheeseburger with large fries Tash’s chirpy nine-year-old persona was completely restored, although Emily was shocked how tired and pale she looked. Glancing in the now darkened window she was even more shocked when she saw her own reflection.

  By the time they got back to the ward it was late and lights were being dimmed to allow the children to settle for the night. Nessa had not, of course, just sat quietly in Emily’s absence.

  ‘Now,’ she announced, when Emily reappeared, ‘we have hatched a cunning plan.’

  ‘Why am I not surprised?’ she joked, suddenly achingly tired now that Nessa was there to share the load.

  Nessa bowed her head to acknowledge the compliment. ‘There’s a house nearby for parents to stay overnight – siblings can stay too,’ she said to Tash who looked panicked at the thought of having to go home without her mother again. ‘That said, there is rather a lot of interest in you, tonight of all nights, so you might prefer to stay within the hospital.’

  Emily nodded wearily. She was also not yet ready to be very far away from Alfie, who did seem to be improving by the hour, but it was going to take her a very long time indeed to be relaxed about him again.

  ‘The option I like best,’ Nessa continued, ‘is for you and Tash to bunk up in the side ward opposite, which is currently empty, by a miracle. The ward sister made a bit of a fuss about it being deeply unusual, but she saw sense in the end.’

  ‘Nessa you are a star,’ breathed Emily. ‘That sounds great, doesn’t it darling?’ she added to Tash, who was sighing with relief at knowing she could stay with her mother.

  ‘I wouldn’t thank me too soon,’ said Nessa swiftly. ‘It’s not the Ritz, but I should think you could sleep on a clothesline after last night.’

  A quick perusal pronounced the side ward perfectly acceptable. The beds, there were four of them, all empty, were a little high and the side bars were disconcerting but, once the blinds were drawn to cut out the fluorescent light from the corridor, it looked very appealing indeed to Emily.

  She persuaded Tash to get her pyjamas on and brush her teeth straight away. ‘You can stay with Alfie for a bit and watch Daddy on television if you like, darling,’ Emily cajoled, ‘but it’s terribly late and at least if you’re ready for bed you can pop across the corridor and go straight to sleep whenever you like.’

  When the sensible older doctor dropped in half an hour later, she found Tash snuggled up next to a still sleeping Alfie, her eyelids drooping. Emily, her arms wrapped comfortingly around her own ribs, was ignoring the television in the corner, gazing at her children instead.

  ‘We need to get you and this little one some antibiotics too,’ she said quietly. ‘The chances of you getting ill are low but it doesn’t make sense not to cover yourselves,’ she continued. ‘His father should probably take them too. Presumably they’ve been in close contact in the last couple of days?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Emily truthfully.

  ‘Oh,’ said the doctor. ‘Well, he’s been busy I would imagine,’ she said waving at the television where a BBC presenter was pointing earnestly to some dull looking charts with pictures of the UK on them.

  After giving Alfie a brief but thorough check and twiddling the drip going into his arm, she smiled and left.

  Few staff were around now. The hallways were only dimly lit and Emily felt cocooned in the darkened room with her two children, like a lioness with her cubs. Her window to the world outside – not that she had the slightest interest in it – was the television in the corner. With the sound turned off, the expressions on people’s faces were pure entertainment. Portly old men in blazers with brass buttons and earnest young, usually spotty, party workers, were shoulder to shoulder in church halls across the country.

  As announcements were read silently, Emily was mildly diverted by letting the expressions on the faces of the candidates tell her the results. The losers were largely stoic, hiding their devastation with an almost immediate polite smile. Entertainingly, the winner, Emily noticed, would do the opposite, instantly plastering a deadly serious look on their face and accepting congratulations with the kind of pained expression that one would expect from someone going to the dentist – or perhaps the gallows. How frightfully British, thought Emily, amused.

  Another source of comedy was all the live feeds from lowly regional BBC reporters who had probably never done telly before, so fazed were they by the complexity and confusion. The country was constantly broadcasting live from Little Snoring or some other backwater constituency where the local reporter was blankly unaware they were on air for several seconds. One was yawning hugely, another was chatting on her mobile and yet another was picking his nose with extraordinary thoroughness.

  Her attention was snapped suddenly into gear when the cameras alighted on their own constituency. There Ralph was, surrounded by a phalanx of familiar faces and a much larger crowd of voters than at many of the other venues. Ralph was looking more unattractive than usual, his hair separating with a hint of stringiness over a thinning spot on the back of his head, his face greasy and redder than normal and eye bags pronounced. Emily was surprised the party hadn’t sorted out some make-up for him. The usual crowd jostled around him, with TJ looking pained and anxious in the background and Party Chairman James adding sombre weight to the occasion. Emily scanned the faces, not admitting to herself who she was looking for. Then, with a lurch of shock, she saw Susie, right behind Ralph’s elbow – the power behind the throne, she thought, sourly. What the bloody hell was that smug tart doing there?

  Yet again she felt the twist of bitterness that Ralph’s lover’s identity had not been revealed in the press, despite fevered speculation. Ungraciously, she resented Susie being spared the full glare of the media’s and public’s fascination with the subject. To top it all, as she watched, Susie’s puppy dog gaze was rewarded with a moment of attention from Ralph. He grasped her upper arms in both hands and spoke intently to her. Even in the small television camera picture Emily could see her competitor melting into an adoring heap at his ministrations. Fuming, she was glad when the camera panned, but then her bitter musings were arrested suddenly by the sight of another face.

  Matt stood quietly on the edge of the crowd, watching. His stillness was compelling and his expression, as he too watched Susie and Ralph, was grim. Emily was disappointed when the broadcast returned to the studio for another tedious interview with a political pundit.

  What amused her even less was to see the maps of the UK being gradually covered with the trademark vibrant orange stain of Ralph’s party. By midnight it was clear that – against all the odds – it was to be the party of government, with him at the helm and his family dragged reluctantly in the wake. Through the night, the children snoring gently, Emily’s mind skittered from one problem to another. As her second night without sleep, she knew no sensible decisions could be made but she was reminded of the Wordsworth poem – or was it Keats? – with the line “shades of the prison house close upon the growing boy” which seemed to perf
ectly sum up her increasing sense of entrapment.

  And then another crushing thought struck her. Of course, Matt was producing his definitive piece on ‘the Prime Minister the man’ right after the election. That would be the Sunday after next, Emily reckoned. Even if he was putting the finishing touches to it over the next few days, she doubted very much if he would be in contact with her after their last conversation. She longed to be able to see him again and this time – having done her duty – to be honest about her true feelings to him at least.

  After another couple of hours, she started imagining things moving in the shadows, making her jump and glance nervously into the corners. Alfie was still sleeping soundly so this was her signal to at least lie down. Letting herself quietly into the room opposite Alfie’s and closing the door softly to avoid waking Tash in the bed by the window, she slipped into the remaining empty bed. As she did so every muscle in her body started to ache, as they resisted her instruction to relax into the hard hospital mattress. Her eyes felt impossibly gritty, so closing them was a relief, but sleep would be bound to elude her.

  Chapter Nineteen

  When she woke, stiff and cold, she discovered Tash had crept into her bed.

  Extracting herself carefully, so as not to wake her, Emily scooped a mouthful of water straight from the tap and splashed another handful on her face. Pulling her fingers through her hair, she sloped across the hall and snuck into Alfie’s room. He was already awake and – she was relieved to see – looking reassuringly bored.

  ‘There you are,’ he said petulantly.

  ‘Hallo darling,’ she said. ‘Better?’ He nodded irritably.

  ‘Is Daddy pry mincer?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘Think so.’

  ‘Are we going to live in the House of Commons and have a policeman standing outside the front door?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she said, her heart sinking.

  ‘I want to stay at home,’ said Alfie. She saw tears welling in his eyes.

  ‘Darling!’ she scooped him up into her lap. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll be together wherever we are.’

  ‘Will we though?’ contributed Tash as she came in, blearily rubbing her eyes, ‘if you and Daddy get divorced?’

  ‘Where on earth did you get that from?’ Emily asked unconvincingly. ‘Listen. Wherever you both are, I’ll be there. And Daddy will be with us as much as he can – just like before,’ she added.

  ‘So you are getting divorced,’ said Tash, razor sharp, despite having had barely any sleep.

  ‘No darling, that’s not what I said,’ flailed Emily, ‘but anyway, now is not the time.’ Looking distractedly at the still broadcasting television in the corner she grabbed the remote control and turned up the volume. There, giving an impromptu press conference, was Ralph.

  ‘So, later today,’ he was saying, ‘I shall have the privilege of visiting her Majesty in the hope that I will be asked to form a government, but first,’ he smiled engagingly, ‘I have an even more important appointment to keep,’ he paused, ‘with my wife and children.’ Recognising the background on the screen, Emily ran to the window and there he was, just disappearing through the main doors of the hospital, a group of security men guarding the entrance from a rabble of journalists who tried and failed to follow him.

  ‘Hullo everyone,’ said Ralph as he came into the room, barely giving Emily a glance before Tash flew across and threw her arms around his waist.

  ‘Daddy, Daddy you won!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘I did,’ he said. ‘Actually, we did, I could never have done it without you sweetie, what with all your canvassing work.’ Tash positively swelled with self-importance.

  ‘What happens now?’ she pleaded. ‘Is there going to be a big party?’

  ‘Sort of, sweetie. Certainly we are going to be very busy, but the main thing is to get settled at Number Ten …’

  ‘No,’ said Emily loudly, surprising herself, but not, she noticed, nearly as much as she surprised Ralph.

  ‘Darling!’ he said, unsure how to handle this unplanned for response. ‘It’s been a long couple of days, I appreciate …’

  ‘It has,’ said Emily, smiling apologetically. ‘It really has, and Alfie just needs to have peace and quiet when he gets out. He needs to go home to a familiar house,’ she gabbled, convincing herself, more than Ralph. ‘Tash needs it too.’

  Tash looked mutinous but said nothing.

  ‘It’s going to look a bit odd,’ said Ralph, musing on the public relations impact of the new Prime Minister’s family just leaving him to it as he took up the role. Then, he brightened. ‘Okay darling, you’re right. Go back to the constituency for a bit. There’s lots of time. We’ll need to look at schools for the children and so on. Probably best to give it until the autumn, start of the academic year and so on … yes …’ he mused, stroking his chin, ‘we can do a whole “putting the family first” thing.’ He smiled into the middle distance, but then snapped back to the present. ‘You’ll have to do without me a lot of the time though. I’ll need to be in London.’

  Emily tried to look as if she was weighing up the options. ‘Right,’ she said slowly. ‘Of course, yes, well we’ll just have to do our best.’

  ‘I’ll send someone in to sort out arrangements to get you all back home.’

  ‘I’ll be staying until Alfie is well enough to leave,’ said Emily firmly.

  ‘Absolutely,’ agreed Ralph, making Emily blink with surprise. She studied him covertly. He was keen to avoid meeting her eye, she noticed. Far from being the confident and triumphant character she expected, he looked furtive. Nervous, even. Knowing him as well as she did, she sighed. Ralph was nervous alright. He was hiding something. Almost certainly from her, and she thought she could probably guess what.

  It seemed extraordinary to Emily that the hospital staff could go from seriously concerned about Alfie to smilingly certain that he was well enough to go home.

  ‘Really Mrs Pemilly,’ the sensible Welsh doctor reassured her, ‘he’s fine.’

  Emily looked at her son doubtfully. Granted he was jumping on the bed, whilst complaining about the relative lack of bounce, having polished off two slices of toast, a bowl of Weetabix and a boiled egg for breakfast. This was a mammoth amount even for him. To Emily, being the hypercritical mother, he had visibly lost weight and his skin was still pale, his face pinched and shadowed.

  The doctor clearly followed her line of thought, ‘He’s fine,’ she insisted again. ‘It’s nothing that a few days at home with his mummy won’t sort out. Now,’ she continued, ‘you’ll need to take him to his own GP for a check up next week. Give him this letter when you visit …’

  Chapter Twenty

  Letting herself into the house, it felt lifeless. She could smell the dust in the air, as if it had been empty for months, rather than just a few days. Settling Alfie in front of a favourite DVD, she and Tash checked out resources. The milk in the fridge was just about okay but there was little else to eat. She would have to put an order in to the supermarket and said a silent prayer of thanks for grocery delivery services.

  ‘We could get a takeaway?’ suggested Tash hopefully.

  ‘Good plan,’ said Emily smiling. ‘Find the menu could you darling, and see what Alfie feels like having.’

  They ate pizza with their fingers while slobbing on the sofa in front of Finding Nemo and, once Emily had persuaded both of the children to go to bed, she poured herself a glass of wine and settled in the sitting room. Even after a long sunny day, the air was musty and chilled. She thought about setting a match to the fire laid tidily waiting. After only a few minutes reflection she vacated the uncomfortably hard and overstuffed sofa – one of an expensive pair lined up either side of the fire – and retreated to the kitchen. Curling up in the Lloyd Loom chair where the cat usually slept, Emily felt the anxieties of the last few days ebb away, leaving her aching and drained in their wake. A couple of tears escaped and dripped off her chin. Brushing away others as they ran down her face, sh
e sniffed defiantly and rubbed her nose on her sleeve like a small child. Then she sighed and hugged her knees. God, the chair was uncomfortable. Heaven knows why the cat was so keen. She wiggled her fingers under the cushion to see if the basketwork had collapsed, but instead she found herself running her fingers along the edge of a hardback book. Hauling it out, she was disappointed to see it was Felicity Wainwright’s How to Run the Perfect Household. Raising her arm to fling it across the room, it slipped from her hand and fell open on her lap. A little pen and ink drawing of a perfectly coiffed woman with a tiny waist getting a perfectly risen cake out of the oven caught her eye.

  It was captioned, ‘Home is where the heart is’. How bloody true, thought Emily – probably why Ralph was hardly ever there. It was perfectly clear his heart was elsewhere. Being brutally honest with herself, she had to admit she had not only been determined not to see that Ralph was messing around with Susie before Matt insisted she be told, she also had no proof he was carrying on misbehaving now that his sins had been found out. But she thought he probably was. And where did that leave her?

  Divorcing him with a clear conscience probably, that’s where. She was astonished to admit how relieved she felt at the very thought. But it wasn’t that simple. He had been an arse, and was probably incapable of changing, but he was the children’s father and she was honest enough with herself to admit that the most unappealing aspect of continuing her marriage with him was the impact of his new job and not any greater flaw in their marriage than most people tolerated. As the ghastly Felicity Wainwright put it, “A wife simply cannot expect her husband to maintain the glorious romance of their early courtship, but must remember, he remains her provider and protector nonetheless.”

  What would happen to the house if they divorced, Emily wondered. There was a big mortgage on it, she knew. Too big for her to pay on her own, but surely he would have to help with his big fat PM’s salary? He would hardly need to buy another house for him to live in. As well as his London flat, he would have an embarrassment of residences to choose from now, not least Number Ten and Chequers.