Never Marry a Politician

by Sarah Waights

  There had never been a divorced Prime Minister before, she thought. Either way, the election was now over. Whatever public duty she had fulfilled by standing by him so as to keep the voters on side, she had done it now and owed him nothing. Dreading the fallout from announcing her decision to him though, she decided to take a couple of days to weigh up her options.

  The following morning continued its peculiar atmosphere. Emily couldn’t decide whether it felt like a holiday or a siege, but, with police stationed outside it was probably more the latter. The groceries arrived so, with plenty of food in the house, she was absolved of any need to venture out. It was the weekend, not that Alfie was well enough to go to pre-school anyway, and the children were happy to lounge about watching television or mooching about the garden where the high walls and plenty of trees lent it an air of seclusion, more welcome now than ever.

  TJ had tried to persuade her to allow security staff to be in the house as well as outside but she had refused, point blank. Keeping them outside allowed for the pretence they weren’t there. At least for now.

  The telephone crouched like a malevolent toad in the hall, Emily dared it to ring and promised herself, if it did, she would ignore it. For the same reasons she refused to switch on the computer, her heart rate rising at the very thought of reading her e-mails. Along with shoving the post in the hall table drawer without looking at it, she felt she had been relatively successful at going to ground. Being his home, of course there was always the possibility Ralph could simply walk through the door.

  But he didn’t.

  In the end, it was TJ that broke the cordon, by turning up on the doorstep. He rang the doorbell, and when that didn’t get a response, he rang it again, leaning on it for several seconds. Emily regretted not having installed a proper spyhole to identify callers. She peered through the letter box instead, which gave her a superb view of TJ’s crotch. Luckily he was wearing his favourite chalkstripe suit, rather too wide in the stripe and cut snugly around the hips.

  ‘I’d recognise that groin anywhere,’ she said with a grin as she swung open the door.

  ‘You and many others,’ replied TJ. ‘Not that I’m a tart, mind.’

  ‘Heavens no. How’s Philip?’ she said, waving him in.

  ‘Hmm. Don’t ask,’ replied TJ. ‘Being a bit of a baby about the whole election thing, not giving him enough quality time, et cetera,’ he admitted.

  ‘I’m sure that’s true. I just hope Ralph is grateful for all your efforts.’

  ‘Hard to tell,’ said TJ with just a hint of reproach. ‘He’s not been in the constituency since election night, but then,’ he added, ‘you know that. He’s not been here has he?’

  ‘Is that really a question?’ asked Emily quietly, putting on the kettle.

  ‘Actually no,’ admitted TJ. ‘What gives?’

  She turned to face him, leaning her bum against the Aga for comfort as well as support.

  ‘I’m not sure how to put it,’ she said at last.

  ‘Have a stab darling,’ suggested TJ. ‘I shan’t quote you if it comes out wrong.’

  ‘Okay, well,’ replied Emily considering, ‘it’s just this whole marriage and keeping up appearances thing.’ She paused. TJ put his patient face on. ‘I’m just honestly not sure if I can be arsed with it all any more.’

  ‘Right,’ said TJ, his eyebrows shooting up. ‘It’s worrying that you feel so strongly about it,’ he deadpanned.

  ‘But that’s it,’ she complained, ‘I just don’t. It’s divorce on grounds of apathy rather than adultery.’

  ‘It could be on grounds of adultery though, couldn’t it?’ argued TJ doggedly.

  ‘Or unreasonable behaviour,’ countered Emily, ‘on account of him deciding to stand for PM without asking me,’ she elaborated when TJ looked inquisitive.

  ‘Mm, not sure that’s a classic example – or at least not one that comes up too often,’ he joked.

  They sipped their coffee thoughtfully.

  ‘How do you feel about the whole affair thing?’ he asked, at last.

  ‘I don’t care – Ralph and Susie can do what they like.’

  ‘Not him,’ said TJ. ‘You.’

  ‘Don’t know what you mean,’ muttered Emily, unable to meet his eye. She was impressed though. TJ had grown in maturity since she had known him. He was always a bit of a laugh when he wasn’t taking himself too seriously. Now she saw a new wisdom in him, a steadiness he didn’t have when she first met him.

  ‘Philip is good for you,’ she observed.

  ‘Don’t change the subject,’ he said, but smiled serenely. ‘All I’m saying is people could relate to you kicking him out for carrying on with his lover.’

  ‘He rates her,’ said Emily sadly.

  ‘He rates you,’ said TJ.

  ‘Sadly he doesn’t,’ she said, matter of factly. ‘You know what though?’

  TJ shook his head.

  ‘The reason he doesn’t rate me,’ she explained, ‘ironically enough, is because I tried to change myself. I tried to become the person I thought he wanted. The compliant, supportive, powerless, girlie female who pandered to his every wish and made him feel like the big swinging dick.’

  TJ blanched. ‘Sounds good to me,’ he joked.

  ‘Yeah, well, you’d think wouldn’t you?’ she continued. ‘But the truth is he prefers Susie, the hard-nosed, ambitious, child-free career bitch. The woman I was, in fact,’ she added slowly.

  ‘I like you now,’ said TJ loyally.

  ‘You know the real me,’ she explained. Like Matt does, she thought silently. The realisation made her chin wobble and then, unable to help herself, she started to cry.

  TJ was horrified. ‘Emily!’ he exclaimed, tearing off several sheets of kitchen towel and bunging them at her awkwardly. ‘Don’t let the bastard get to you,’ he said.

  She nearly laughed. It was such a sublime irony that the ‘bastard’ making her cry was not her husband, as TJ thought, but her ex-lover who no-one knew about.

  ‘It’s all a bit of a mess,’ she sobbed. ‘Ralph and I have been washed up for years. I just thought everything would be okay if I tried harder to be a better wife. That if I did everything the party told me to he would love me, then maybe I’d love him and the children would be happy …’ she trailed off, staring into space hopelessly. ‘I suppose I really do have to end it,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Why?’ said TJ, desperate. ‘There has to be a reason! I mean a proper one. Needless to say Ralph behaved like an idiot with the whole Susie thing, but we rely on you. You’ve always put up with all that rubbish – for the good of the party.’

  ‘Oh please!’ she exploded. ‘Even now, does it have to be all about the bloody party?’

  He looked surprised. Clearly it had never occurred to him that anything else could be more important. Emily groaned in frustration and despair. ‘What are you telling me? That I not only have to break it to Ralph I want to end our marriage, somehow I have to divorce “the party” too?’

  He gazed at her thoughtfully. ‘All I’m saying,’ he said, ‘is that you may get an easier ride – more understanding – from the party, the press, even Ralph, if the big reason is something that’s Ralph’s fault.’

  ‘Like his affair with that bloody woman,’ she said.

  TJ nodded.

  ‘I don’t know if she’s still got her claws into him,’ she admitted, grudgingly acknowledging to herself that the tender little moment she had witnessed on the election night hardly constituted forensic proof of continuing adultery.

  ‘Then I suggest you find out.’

  The thought stayed with Emily. TJ was right – but for all the wrong reasons. While she was pretty sure she wanted to get out of her marriage anyway, having a tangible ‘hell hath no fury’ reason for kicking him out just seemed altogether less complicated. It wasn’t anything to do with Matt, anyway – not at all. In fact, Emily was relieved that Matt had not been in touch. A little surprised, granted. She rather thought that he might
want to know how Alfie was. But no, basically she was relieved. Yes.

  ‘So,’ asked Emily, the next time Ralph called to find out how they all were, ‘are you still having a thing with Susie?’

  ‘Wow,’ responded Ralph, ‘that’s quite a question to suddenly throw into the conversation.’ There was a pregnant pause. ‘I can’t believe you asked,’ he continued. Then he changed the subject, presumably not expecting her to notice that he hadn’t answered. ‘We’ve had a few journos sniffing around, asking when you and the children are moving into Downing Street.’

  ‘Mm?’ she responded, deliberately vague.

  ‘Yeah, so, Gerald suggested we hold them at bay with the story we want the children to stay in their schools until the end of the summer term. That way we’ve got until the end of the summer recess to, er, you know. Resettle.’

  ‘Good plan,’ she agreed. ‘Get Gerald to say that then.’

  And that was the closest they got to discussing whether their marriage was still living and breathing or whether they had both implicitly decided it was already on the mortician’s slab.

  It took a fortnight for Alfie to go from dangerously ill to completely recovered. The interim time was tricky with him veering from demented with boredom at missing preschool to clingy and whinging, with the slightest exertion leaving him pale and listless. Tash was hard work too, missing her father and fed up with the interest from her mates at school who were not always kind about the change in status and positively cruel about reminding her of her father’s infidelity.

  ‘Take a break,’ said Nessa one morning. She had dropped round on the way back from the constituency office, bringing chocolate biscuits and constituency gossip.

  ‘To do what?’ asked Emily.

  ‘Whatever you like and wherever you like. I’ll look after the children,’ Nessa replied. ‘You need to get out of this house, my love.’

  She was right. Now that Tash was on an independence kick, she insisted on making the short walk to school on her own. Emily was quietly relieved, not wanting to face the school gate mums, but the upshot was that she had barely been out of the house at all for the best part of two weeks. During that time, she had seen nothing of Ralph, speaking to him on the phone just a handful of times. Nessa was right. She would go mad if she didn’t get out. And she knew exactly who she wanted to see.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Whilst your role is to be there for him at all times, it is important for a husband to have a life of his own so don’t be a nag and expect to know everything about how he is spending his time.

  FELICITY WAINWRIGHT, 1953

  She lied to Nessa, telling her the plan was to go out with some of the other mothers from Tash’s school. She felt terrible about doing it and was sure Nessa didn’t believe her, but she said nothing, just agreeing bed times for the children and making sure Emily had her phone with her, just in case anything went wrong and Nessa had to call. ‘Although I won’t my darling, because I am sure we are going to get on splendidly, aren’t we children?’

  ‘Can I come with you, Mummy?’ Tash asked again.

  ‘You know you can’t,’ sighed Emily, ‘but you and I will go somewhere together this weekend. Maybe go shopping for some new clothes?’ she added, pushing Tash’s hair out of her eyes. ‘You could do with a haircut.’

  She groaned. ‘I’m growing it,’ she complained. ‘Can we get nail varnish?’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ Emily said evasively.

  Continuing to maintain the illusion of a boozy evening with the girls, Emily left the house in a taxi, but it took her straight to the station where she caught the train to London. The plan was vague. She would just have to make it up as she went along. One useful bit of intelligence was that there were no major votes planned in the House that night and the official engagement diary was empty. She knew that because she telephoned the office and asked. That was humiliating.

  Surely, was the undercurrent, the wife should know what the husband was up to. It also struck her that, if he was – as she suspected – still carrying on an affair with Susie, the office would certainly know and would be colluding with him over it. Oddly, that thought made her angrier than anything else.

  No, she would not only get to the truth, she would get evidence. Photographs she supposed. Then she, Emily, would be dictating the agenda at last. For a start she would take her evidence to Matt, she decided. He could do what he wanted with it, after abstaining from running the story the first time. Better still, she admitted to herself, the meeting would give her a chance to tell him at last how she really felt about him. After that, who knew what would happen. It could only be good things …

  So, anyway, she knew Ralph wasn’t up to anything good, which meant it was likely he was up to something bad. Following him was too obvious though. She was cleverer than that. It was smarter to follow Susie surely. If her suspicions were correct, Ralph would turn up soon enough. Then she could have ‘the conversation’ with him, and she would have the upper hand for a change.

  The trouble was, she didn’t know where Susie lived exactly, although she knew it was somewhere in Chelsea, a posh flat, presumably funded with family money as the salary of a PA working for a member of the opposition would hardly be high enough for that. Of course she would probably be doing better now he was PM. Emily had no doubt the favoured ones would be benefitting and she had no illusions over whether Susie continued to be ‘favoured’.

  She nearly missed Susie leaving Portcullis House, seeing her at the last minute, scuttling out of the side entrance with a tidal wave of other office staff, all heading en masse to the tube station. Susie stopped at the edge of the pavement though, and hailed a taxi instead. Luckily there was another taxi just behind. Flagging it down so furtively the driver nearly didn’t see her, he screeched to a halt just past her, forcing her to run after it.

  ‘Follow that taxi,’ she said breathlessly as she clambered in.

  ‘’Fort no-one would ever ask me that,’ said the driver good-humouredly. ‘Will do, darlin’.’

  He was as good as his word, tailing it so closely she was sure Susie would think it odd, but neither she nor her driver seemed to pay the slightest attention. After just a few minutes, they drew up at Cadogan Square and Emily fumbled for her money to give her an excuse to stay in the cab until she saw Susie disappear safely in through the grand main door.

  She gave the cabbie a hefty tip and set up camp opposite the building. There she stood, partly hidden by a small stand of trees, watching carefully. There were so many windows, most of them still unlit, although the evening darkness was intensifying by the minute. Just when Emily was starting to wonder if Susie’s flat was around the back of the building, she saw a light snap on in a room on the fourth floor. She watched carefully, trying to make sense of the brief flashes of movement she could see inside. Then, suddenly, Susie came to the window and stood staring out. Emily shrank further into the cover of the trees, feeling exposed. Was Susie looking for her? Perhaps she had noticed she was being followed after all. She held her breath. After a few seconds, Susie disappeared and a light in the room next door came on.

  It was the kitchen, she could see, and she watched Susie moving about purposefully, opening cupboards and drawers before appearing in the window again, holding a glass of wine. Her heart quickened but this time with anticipation. Susie was clearly unaware of Emily’s presence but the obsession with what was happening outside did appear to suggest Susie was waiting for someone and Emily reckoned she knew who.

  Rehearsing what she would say to Ralph the next time she saw him, “you’re busted mate – I saw you,” was probably a phrase worth contemplating. She also quite liked “You dirty cheating rat bag”, and the chance to say “I suppose you told her your wife doesn’t understand you,” was definitely an opportunity not to be missed. Not that she was vengeful. Why would she be? She had only given up her career, her dignity, her very identity just to support him and his career. The children were a plus, obviously �
� she even thought this when they were being horrible – but, in retrospect, she did wonder what else the last ten years of dedication had got her.

  She was so immersed in her showdown rehearsal, it took her a moment to register the presence of a second person in the flat. She was sure she had not noticed anyone else arriving at the front entrance, but of course Ralph would have to slip in under cover. There was probably a back entrance or an underground car park. Her heart thumping with anticipation, Emily watched so intently her eyes began to water. She brushed at them impatiently and desperately hoped Susie would not decide to draw the curtains. The sky had darkened to ink now and the windows of the occupied flats glowed like a lit stage. Suddenly, Susie and her companion appeared at the window and stood facing each other before falling into each other’s arms.

  The profile was unmistakable, instantly recognisable to Emily, as the man she knew best in the world.

  It was Matt.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Emily looked away in horror. She realised she was panting, as if she had been running. Leaning forward and resting her hands on her knees seemed to help a bit, so she stood like that, legs trembling, while she tried to absorb what she had seen. The pain was physical, she noticed with detached interest, a crushing ache in her chest. Slowly, she forced herself to raise her head, to look back at the lit window but Susie and Matt had moved away, and – in the seconds since she had looked – the curtains had been drawn. Well, they would be, wouldn’t they? Flickers of hope that somehow she had misinterpreted what she had seen, were dismissed, replaced with incomprehension and then a slow-burning anger.

  God knows Susie was an evil witch, but to cheat with her husband and then to bloody well take the love of her life too, just when she had begun to find him again? What else did she want from her? Perhaps she should just hand over the keys to her home, her wardrobe maybe, even her children. That said, from what she knew of Susie, she didn’t seem the maternal type. No, okay, just the Jimmy Choos then, except that the woman definitely had smaller feet than her. Bitch. In her increasing anger, Emily even entertained the fantasy of going and hammering on the flat door, confronting Susie and quite possibly punching her on that oversized nose. But of course she would have to acknowledge that even bloody Susie couldn’t make Matt do anything he really didn’t want to. No-one ever had yet. And that meant he actually wanted to be with Susie. By now the embrace had probably moved on to something even more unthinkable.