Never Marry a Politician

by Sarah Waights

  ‘So, how did the two of you get to know each other?’ asked Emily, deciding to ignore her incredulity.

  ‘Well it was slightly odd, actually,’ said Susie, carefully, not meeting Emily’s eye. ‘I suddenly got a call out of the blue from him, just a few weeks ago. I had my suspicions at first, what with him being a journalist and the stuff with – you know – with Ralph and so on …’ she flushed slightly. ‘Anyway, we met a few times and – no hidden agenda – he was very caring. Wanted to just make sure I was okay, which was really sweet wasn’t it? So anyway, there’s definitely a connection. You just know these things don’t you? I honestly don’t know if it’s anything serious. We are both grown-ups with a certain commitment to our careers over everything else,’ she finished, pompously.

  Really? thought Emily. She was dying to dig deeper but couldn’t think what to ask without seeming overly interested. Secretly, she admitted to herself, she had been hoping that Susie’s obvious decline was down to being “done wrong” by Matt. As that was apparently untrue then she could only surmise it was because Susie was harbouring a deep, secret, unresolved longing for Ralph. Bad enough that the ghastly woman was lusting after her husband, she was clearly just casually toying with Matt’s affections at the same time. Emily couldn’t decide which riled her the most.

  Reliving her memory of the clinch in the window, Emily ground her teeth. Looking around for a diversion, she was pleased to see the Filipino ambassador’s wife, Amparo, edging towards her. Emily had met her before and had felt sorry for her. Chosen for her exquisite looks and not, apparently, for her education, the poor girl was thirty years younger than her vain, pompous husband, and spoke practically no English.

  ‘Amparo,’ said Emily warmly. ‘Susie, this is Amparo, the wife of his Excellency, UK Ambassador for the Philippines.’

  Susie took the girl’s hand and gave her a little curtsey.

  ‘Amparo,’ Emily added naughtily, ‘this is Susie, my husband’s whore. Actually my husband’s ex-whore if we are being strictly accurate. In fact, I say “whore” which suggests he paid her for sex, which I think he probably didn’t, because, speaking as his wife, I confess he’s always been a bit tight with the cash.’

  Susie’s face was a hilarious mask of dumbfounded shock. Amparo, uncomprehending, giggled prettily and smiled her hello at Susie.

  ‘Emily!’ came a stern voice, from behind. She spun around, but it was just Ralph.

  ‘Hallo darling,’ he said cordially for the benefit of anybody listening, but his hand on her elbow gripped hard enough to hurt, and he propelled her away from the scene of the crime with uncompromising speed.

  ‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?’ he hissed.

  ‘Burying the hatchet with your ex-mistress,’ said Emily guilelessly. ‘I thought you’d be pleased, all things considered …’ She regarded him thoughtfully. ‘You’re being very masterful by the way. Rather sexy actually, you’re quite the leader of men.’

  Ralph looked perplexed. ‘Are you drunk?’ he muttered, looking shiftily around the room to see who was watching.

  Judging from his expression, pretty much everyone was.

  ‘Listen,’ said Emily, suddenly serious, ‘I’m doing the faithful wife thing, standing by my man and all that bollocks, so don’t push your luck and expect one hundred per cent diplomacy as well.’

  Ralph looked aggrieved. ‘No,’ said Emily firmly, ‘don’t give me that look. Just imagine what a liability I could potentially be, I could take a toy boy or hang out in nightclubs without any knickers on, courting the paparazzi, so just be bloody grateful.’

  ‘She’s right,’ said Gerald nervously. Neither of them had seen him arrive, but there he was, rubbing his hands together in the way he did when he wasn’t sure what was going to happen next. He cleared his throat. ‘Actually,’ he added apologetically to Emily, ‘I’m glad I’ve caught you. The office has been taking a lot of media calls. Interview requests.’

  ‘Well, just tell them I’m too busy,’ said Ralph impatiently.

  ‘Erm, it’s Emily they want actually,’ said Gerald. ‘She’s a bit of a hit.’

  ‘How marvellous,’ said Ralph sourly. ‘Perhaps she should stand for PM.’

  Gerald looked embarrassed. ‘It’s rather good actually, reflects well on you if Emily is popular. Bit like Prince Charles and Lady Di were … at the beginning,’ he qualified.

  And we all know how Prince Charles felt about being upstaged by his wife, thought Emily.

  ‘Anyway,’ continued Gerald with forced enthusiasm, ‘Emily’s quite the Twitter star too. She’s got more followers than Kirsty Allsopp now, so,’ he asked her, ‘could we sit down and go through it all? Decide on some key messages – think about your profile, who to go for, that sort of thing …?’

  ‘No thanks, Gerald,’ said Emily firmly.

  ‘No?’ Gerald quavered.

  ‘No,’ she repeated firmly. ‘I really, really can’t bear it. In the past – when I was allowed to be me – I was a journalist too, as Ralph doubtless remembers.’ She glanced across at Ralph, whose face said ‘so what?’

  Emily carried on. ‘Because of what we did to other people, intruding on their privacy, we couldn’t see why anyone would court media attention.’ It was Matt she had discussed it with. They had agreed, as they agreed on most things – the important stuff anyhow. ‘We could never understand how people could bear to do it, but we used to say that if we, the journalists, ever became the story, then we would have failed as journalists anyway.’ She looked at Gerald, pleading with her eyes for him to understand. She thought she could see a degree of sympathy – but it was hard to tell with Gerald’s face.

  ‘Not even “Good Morning with Lola and Mitch?”’ he said with what he fondly assumed was a persuasive tone.

  ‘Nope, sorry.’

  ‘BBC Newstime?’

  ‘Not even …’

  ‘How about “I’m a celebrity get me out of here”?’ he wheedled.

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘Well,’ huffed Ralph, ‘I really think you might consider it.’

  ‘You’re just cross they didn’t ask you,’ she retorted.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he blustered. ‘I’m the PM. I wouldn’t dream of doing anything so undignified.’

  ‘Oh but it’s all right for me to do it though?’

  ‘Children, children,’ interrupted Nessa, appearing from nowhere and grabbing them both playfully by the ear.

  Ralph detached himself, obviously considering this undignified too and Gerald, grateful for the diversion, made his escape muttering something about discussing it further when Emily wasn’t quite so busy.

  ‘Nessa!’ exclaimed Emily, throwing her arms around her old friend. ‘It’s been ages. What brings you here?’ She didn’t think she had ever seen Nessa at Westminster.

  ‘Oh, I’m just the “plus one” to someone much more important than me,’ she said, evasively, glancing after the retreating Gerald. ‘I just thought it would be fun to come and make sure this one’s behaving himself,’ she added, nodding in Ralph’s direction.

  Emily felt more cheerful than she had for days. It was so entertaining to see Ralph being treated like a twit. ‘I don’t think he’s got any choice,’ she told Nessa, ‘he’s too busy to get up to anything too much and anyway Sexy Susie’s dumped him by all accounts.’

  ‘Shh,’ said Ralph, furiously. ‘She did not,’ he added.

  ‘What? You mean you dumped her?’ needled Nessa. ‘It’s all a bit “High School Musical” isn’t it? Having arguments about who dumped who first.’

  Emily thought it highly likely Ralph’s eyes were going to pop out of his head. Or possibly that he was going to burst a blood vessel, he had gone so purple. In a rare flash of altruism she decided to come to his aid.

  ‘Hark at you with the High School Musical stuff,’ she said to Nessa to distract her. ‘How on earth do you know about all that?’

  ‘Hanging out with your daughter,’ admitted
Nessa. ‘I could do Robert Pattinson as my Mastermind specialist subject. Actually either that or questions on that ghastly riding programme, what’s it called … Saddle Club?’

  ‘You watch that with her?’ exclaimed Emily. Nessa nodded ruefully.

  ‘I’m surprised she hasn’t asked you to adopt her,’ admitted Emily. ‘You’re a much better mother to her than I am, listening to all that tosh so patiently. Personally, I can hardly bear to be in the same room …’

  Nessa demurred, laughing, but was unable to hide a tinge of embarrassment. ‘Good God,’ Emily said, recognising it, ‘she has asked you to adopt her, hasn’t she?’

  ‘No!’ exclaimed Nessa. ‘Well,’ she admitted, ‘Tash has asked me to be her sort of honorary grandmama.’

  ‘Well I have to hope you said “yes”,’ said Emily, meaning it.

  ‘I said I would be delighted,’ confirmed Nessa. ‘Tash is a child with a lot on her mind,’ she added, giving Emily a penetrating look. ‘I am happy to be there for her and the last thing I want to do is lose touch with her – or any of you come to that – when you move to London.’

  ‘Never,’ said Emily, giving Nessa another hug. It was an unwelcome reminder of what they were giving up, for the sake of Emily’s and Ralph’s marriage. ‘But you’re here now,’ she noted. ‘That lunch date must have been quite a draw.’

  It was a totally unsubtle prod, but Nessa just gave her a mysterious smile and declined to elaborate. ‘Indeed it was,’ she purred. ‘And I am bound to say the whole internet dating thing is working out famously, with some highly unexpected results …’ she added with a raised eyebrow.

  ‘Oh?’ prompted Emily.

  ‘Weeell, let’s just say, the dating site played an important part in getting us together, but that it’s a surprisingly small world …’ Nessa said, tapping the side of her nose.

  Good grief, thought Emily fleetingly. Don’t tell me Nessa is going out with Matt as well. Obviously he is a busy boy.

  ‘Anyway,’ announced Nessa, who had clearly decided she had said enough on the subject of her love life, ‘you may be moving to London but you won’t be excused from the constituency work you know.’

  ‘I suspect Ralph will be excused an awful lot of it,’ said Emily, talking quietly so he wouldn’t hear.

  ‘All the more reason for you to be around my dear,’ said Nessa firmly. ‘The constituents frankly think more of you than they do of Ralph anyway.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ protested Emily, but she knew Nessa was partly right. The real career complainers much preferred the surgeries where Emily was deputising. Not only was she more sympathetic, she was an awful lot better at following up and getting things done. She wasn’t quite sure how she was supposed to achieve everything. Life as a Prime Minister’s wife was going to be tough on several fronts, as if she hadn’t already realised. If, before, Emily felt she was answerable for the needs of too many people, her husband, his career, the constituency and children – not necessarily in that order – it was now going to get a lot worse. That said, Emily was relieved Nessa was reminding her how much she would still be needed in Sussex. It was home, and an excuse to spend time there was more than welcome. If only she could keep Tash and Alfie there too …

  ‘What about schools for the children?’ asked Nessa, putting her finger right on it as always.

  ‘Okay, I think,’ said Emily wearily. The whole thought of finding alternatives for their cosy village primary made her feel exhausted and depressed. Worse still, security issues were now a factor, meaning sending them to anything close to the equivalent of the local school had been deemed impossible.

  ‘I think I’ve found quite a nice prep school for Alfie to start at in the autumn,’ she said to Nessa. ‘Trouble is it’s impossibly posh. You have to be a duke or a pop star with social ambition to get a place. All the children seem to be called either Marcus Earl of Shropshire or Moonbeam Coochie Face – poor little gits. Very international though. Lots of embassy children attend as well, which is nice.’ She didn’t add that it made her heart bleed to think of those youngsters who had been parachuted into a London school from all four corners of the globe, just to be snatched out of it again, away from their friends, as soon as their father was posted elsewhere. Still, she thought, the alternative was probably boarding school from the age of four which was marginally worse.

  ‘And Tash?’ prompted Nessa, gently interrupting Emily’s bleak train of thought

  ‘Mm. That’s a bit more of a struggle,’ admitted Emily. ‘She’s pretty bright so I want to send her somewhere that’ll kick her arse when she needs it – being congenitally lazy like her mother. Trouble is, one so desperately wants to avoid those hideously competitive academic hothouses. One I looked at last week had more than half the fourteen year olds already taking their GCSEs, and ninety per cent of the sixth formers down for Oxbridge.’

  ‘Not a bad start in life,’ prompted Nessa. ‘It was good enough for me.’

  ‘Oh yes, true,’ said Emily, remembering that Nessa had once confided she was an Oxford graduate, having attended in an era when the idea of women like her going to university rather than finishing school was unusual. Nessa was certainly intellectually superior to her husband but had learned early on to keep her intelligence hidden and, marrying so soon after graduation, it was assumed a career was out of the question.

  ‘I wouldn’t say Tash was as brainy as all that, though,’ Emily said. ‘And I suspect if they ever stop competing with each other intellectually it’s only to compete over who is precocious enough to become anorexic first. When I went around there were even a couple of girls Tash’s age who looked worryingly thin to me.’

  ‘Anywhere else?’ prompted Nessa.

  ‘Some,’ Emily replied. ‘One the security people refused to consider because it had too many entrances and would have cost tax payers the entire national debt of a small African country to police. Another one was just so unbearably snooty. I’m thinking about St Catherine’s but Tash is determined to hate it …’ Emily trailed off despairing.

  ‘She’ll be fine,’ reassured Nessa. ‘And as for Alfie, he would withstand nuclear attack. He’ll survive anywhere.’

  ‘Too true,’ said Emily, thinking longingly of the village school with the oak tree in the playground.

  The next thing was to pack up the house which overwhelmed Emily totally. She had never undertaken such a large life change with so little enthusiasm she realised. Still barely eating, she kept finding herself staring into space in the middle of a room, packing paper in one hand and a pile of shirts in the other. Her decision making was shot to pieces. It was taking her an insanely long time to sort each drawer, and she was agonising tearfully over throwing anything out. Even manky old single socks at the back of Alfie’s chest of drawers made her weep, their stains and holes reminding her of how impossible it was to get him to put on his shoes before running out into the garden. In Number Ten the surprisingly poky flat had no direct access to outside space at all. Emily could imagine both children becoming thin and pale, starved of exercise and fresh air. Ralph had promised lots of trips to Chequers but Emily doubted very much if that would present them with the casual, grubby outside life they had loved in Sussex.

  They would keep the Sussex house of course, but Emily knew perfectly well they would be lucky to get back there often. To lose it altogether would be easier, she thought in some ways, than having to rip out its soul and relegate it to the status of holiday home. Sorting through the kitchen stuff was impossibly hard in Emily’s befuddled state. With every possession having to be categorised as chuck, pack or keep, she found herself tenderly wrapping the orphaned lids of long since lost Tupperware boxes whilst chucking the only corkscrew that actually worked into the bin by mistake.

  When Emily woke one morning already crying, after a night where hours of heart-pounding wakefulness were broken up by snatches of nightmare, she knew she had to get some help. It was Nessa in the end who insisted on making her an appointment with her GP.
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br />   ‘I can’t,’ complained Emily, sobbing helplessly. ‘He’s an old fart. He’ll think I’m going mad – which I probably am – and anyway it’s just too indiscreet. He’ll be onto the press before I am even out of the door. I can see the headlines now. It’ll be “PM Pemilly mad wife in attic shock”.’

  ‘Mm,’ replied Nessa, ‘quite apart from the fact you are not locked in the attic and even Ralph wouldn’t think to put you there, do you honestly think your own doctor would shop you to the press? And not just any media but the sleazy tabloid end of the market? If you think he would, then I think we can add paranoia to your list of exhaustion, depression and anxiety.’

  ‘I’m not anxious,’ said Emily, declining to deny the bit about depression and exhaustion.

  ‘No?’ replied Nessa. ‘Hold out your hand.’ Emily copied her in holding her arm outstretched. Unlike Nessa’s, her hand quivered and shook. No amount of effort would still it.

  ‘I rest my case,’ said Nessa. ‘Now, give me the phone.’ Emily meekly obliged. The idea of talking about her desperate state was appalling, but Nessa was right.

  On the phone Nessa had to calmly but firmly explain that she was making the appointment with Emily’s co-operation but that no, Emily couldn’t speak to the receptionist herself, as she was in no state to do so. This seemed to convince the woman on the end of the phone, who offered an appointment in just two hours, a huge change from the usual wait of three to five days that was the norm. Emily had always felt this was a strategy to manage resources. Generally, whatever was the matter surely most people would have either died or got better in that time?

  Against her expectations, crusty old Dr Gladwin was very inclined to take Emily’s condition seriously. Apologising to him for bursting into tears as soon as she sat down, Emily explained through her sobs how she had been barely able to eat or sleep since – well, she didn’t say since she saw Matt with Susie – but just let him know it had been a couple of weeks. He took her pulse, which Emily knew was permanently racing, and looked stern.