Never Marry a Politician

by Sarah Waights

  ‘Oh you mean the profile of Ralph?’ remembered Emily. ‘Never read it. Anyhow it must have come out ages ago, just after the election if I recall. He’s been shagging my husband’s lover since then,’ she pointed out.

  ‘But you never read it,’ established Nessa doggedly.

  ‘Nope,’ confirmed Emily, not seeing the point.

  ‘Well, it’s about time you did,’ snapped Nessa. ‘Now, where’s that Gerald?’

  As if stage-managed, the doorbell rang and Nessa bustled to open it.

  ‘My house actually,’ muttered Emily but not loud enough for Nessa to hear. She might get even more of a telling off, the mood Nessa was in.

  ‘Gerald darling,’ she said kissing him peremptorily on the mouth. Emily stared, dumbfounded.

  ‘You and Gerald?’ she said, blankly.

  ‘Yes dear,’ said Nessa. ‘For months. You really have had your head up your own arse, haven’t you?’ she observed before turning back to Gerald who was gazing at her dreamily. ‘Now, Gerald, could you please be a love and make sure the office sends Emily a copy of that Matt Morley article that everyone got so excited about?’

  ‘Gladly darling,’ sighed Gerald, clearly in Nessa’s thrall. ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve got a set of post-election cuttings knocking about in the car, shall I get them?’

  ‘I will,’ replied Nessa. ‘Now you get Emily to give you a cup of coffee, and then we must go. There are a lot of extra-curricular activities at this hotel we’re going to, I want to make sure we have time to have fun with them all,’ she winked at Gerald who blushed and grinned like a schoolboy.

  ‘What an amazing woman,’ he said reverently, as they wandered into the kitchen together.

  ‘Amazing,’ agreed Emily, noticing that Gerald had no hint of a stammer. He had even completely stopped saying ‘um’ and ‘er’ since she saw him last. ‘So, you and Nessa …?’

  ‘Yes,’ admitted Gerald blushing. ‘I didn’t think she’d be interested in me but … when I saw her profile online, it was such a coincidence, I already thought she was amazing from the day I met her with you last year and I just decided …’ his grin told her everything she needed to know and more.

  ‘Good for you both,’ she said warmly.

  Nessa barely allowed Gerald long enough to leaf through the cuttings she brought to find the article by Matt before she hustled him off for their dirty weekend together, leaving his barely touched coffee steaming on the side.

  The article was long. It spread across several pages, starting with the front cover of the supplement where she could see – even though it was a poor quality photocopy – that they had used a full page head and shoulders shot of Ralph looking noble. The headline was ‘Planet Pemilly – Matt Morley asks: Can we truly judge a man by the company he keeps?’

  Emily placed the article carefully in the middle of the kitchen table and regarded it. Then, she loaded the dishwasher with the breakfast things and wiped the surfaces, glancing at it all the while. When she had run out of things to do, she reached for it – but then changed her mind. Dragging the kettle onto the hob, she made herself a cup of coffee, measuring it out with unusual care. Then, and only then, she sat down at the kitchen table and began to read.

  First she speed read it from beginning to end before reading it through again carefully and slowly. Finally she revisited a couple of parts that she was most drawn to, studying individual sentences forensically to extract every nuance. The drive of the article was an exposé of the machine which controlled how Ralph was presented to the voters. It was like watching a heckler at a magic show revealing how the magician does his tricks. It was brutally revealing but – Emily had to admit – completely true. Somehow the photographer, Kevin, had managed to capture a shot of Ralph with the children in the kitchen doing his “happy family life” thing. Emily was in the background, slightly out of focus, but looking sideways at Ralph with an expression of frank despair on her face. The image was mesmerising. There was even a little fact box detailing her life before her marriage to Ralph and then – with a jolt of recognition – she read the final sentence. She rubbed her eyes and then read again, holding the magazine up to the light to make sure she wasn’t seeing things that weren’t there.

  Eventually, she sat back and sipped her coffee. She noticed her hands shaking and clutched her mug a little harder to still them. Just as she was taking the last thoughtful gulp, staring sightlessly out of the window at the wintery garden, the doorbell clamoured, making her jump.

  Chapter Thirty

  The figure she could see through the etched glass was too tall for the postman and lacked the red jacket. Even as her mind tried to make sense of what she was seeing, her heart told her who it was. That was why it pounded in her chest as she reached for the latch to open the door. The last time she had seen that profile it had been through the window of Susie’s flat.

  At first, she only gazed, drinking in every detail of his appearance; his unshaven face, tanned from a recent trip abroad by the look of it, his blue linen shirt washed soft with a slightly frayed collar. He had always been without vanity, she remembered, only buying new clothes to replace something that needed throwing away.

  After a long, silent evaluation she reached for him, intent, concentrating as she ran her hands through the thick, wavy hair on his head, continuing down his back, feeling the muscles beneath the fabric of his shirt and then nuzzling his neck, breathing him in. As she did so, he moved at last, encircling her fiercely in his arms, pressing her against his body.

  Her feet were no longer taking her weight and he lifted her back inside the house, pushing the door closed behind him. In the hallway, they gave themselves to a more detailed exploration. Matt slid both hands inside her dressing gown and down the length of her naked body. With one hand in the small of her back, supporting her, and the other cradling her breast, he finally found her mouth with his. Emily allowed herself to sink into the kiss, and to think of nothing but the warmth, the touch and the smell of him as her senses overwhelmed her.

  After a long moment, as they continued to kiss, she fumbled with his shirt buttons, desperate to feel his bare skin against her own, but her fingers slid off, clumsy with nerves. Reading her mind, he stepped back and started to undress. Then, looking around the hallway where they still stood, as if seeing it for the first time, he swore under his breath and picked her up. Cradling her as if she weighed nothing he climbed the stairs, pausing momentarily on the landing between Emily’s bedroom and the spare room where she had rebuffed him all those months before.

  ‘I’m damned if I’m going to take you to a bed you’ve slept in with Ralph,’ he growled, as he kicked open the spare room door and laid her tenderly down. He was panting but Emily doubted it was from carrying her up the stairs. She was breathless too.

  ‘Now, don’t move,’ he said, as he removed her dressing gown and gazed down at her body with heavy-lidded eyes, whilst systematically removing his own clothes. Finally naked, he left her in no doubt that he was more than ready to take her in that bed or any other.

  ‘Where are the children?’ he murmured as he slid down beside her, then started slowly and thoroughly exploring every inch of her with his hands, mouth, tongue and teeth.

  ‘With friends,’ she gasped, as he slid his fingers inside her willing body, ‘not back until teatime.’

  ‘That should be long enough,’ he murmured, ‘to be going on with at least.’

  As it happened, it was only just enough time. After they had made love, first urgently, then again, exquisitely slowly, they fell asleep wrapped around one another. Waking later, they got up to take a shower together, which led to another session, leaving Emily with her legs shaking and her body feeling deliciously as though every limb had been filled with lead.

  ‘What are these?’ interrogated Matt, finding her anti-anxiety medicine in the bathroom cupboard.

  Emily told him.

  ‘You won’t need that rubbish now you’re with me,’ he said. ‘And you’re
too bloody skinny, what the hell’s that all about?’ he added, his brusqueness failing to hide his concern.

  ‘Am I disgusting?’ said Emily in a small voice.

  Matt sighed, ‘I don’t care what you weigh, you stupid woman. You can put on ten stone and grow a beard for all I care. I’ll still adore you and want you constantly, but you need to eat more – and I’m going to make sure you do.’

  True to his word, he wrapped her back up in the towelling robe and settled her in the Lloyd Loom chair in the corner of the kitchen. Checking out the fridge, he collected eggs, butter, milk and bacon and then slapped some bread on the hob to toast.

  ‘Bacon and scrambled eggs do you?’ he asked Emily who now felt absolutely famished. She nodded gratefully.

  ‘You look about ten years old sitting there,’ he observed, smiling at her scrubbed freckled face and wet, tangled hair from the shower.

  ‘That casts a rather dodgy light on what you’ve just spent the last few hours doing to me, doesn’t it?’ she replied.

  ‘Don’t be cheeky or I’ll insist we do it again before I feed you,’ he joked sternly. It wasn’t until he found a bowl to break the eggs into and placed it on the table to beat them that he saw the photocopied article.

  ‘What are you doing with this?’ he said, pointing at it with the whisk.

  ‘I only got it this morning,’ admitted Emily. ‘I was reading it when you got here.’

  ‘You mean you haven’t seen it before?’

  ‘Actually, no.’

  ‘I can’t believe you didn’t read it when it was published,’ said Matt, staring unseeing into space. ‘That would explain …’

  ‘Well, yes it would, I’m so sorry,’ said Emily quietly. ‘I can’t believe your editor passed that quote …’

  ‘“When you give someone your whole heart and she doesn’t want it, you cannot take it back. It’s gone forever,”’ said Matt quietly. ‘Sylvia Plath, as – of course – you know. My editor owed me a favour. It cost me quite a few favours, actually.’

  ‘You remembered,’ said Emily. ‘I’ve still got it. The signed copy of her poetry you gave me. It was so soon after we met. I was boring on about her and you were the only man I’d ever met who’d ever read any of her stuff …’

  ‘I assumed …’ he began again. ‘I knew you’d understand what I was saying so then – when I heard nothing from you …’

  ‘You could have called,’ she said, knowing she was being a little unfair.

  ‘I didn’t want to put you through any more pain. I felt I was starting to bully you. Of course I wanted you to leave Ralph for me but you were so determined in the hospital, and then, when you didn’t contact me after this,’ he indicated the article again, ‘I decided the right thing to do was support you in continuing with your marriage. By leaving you alone, that is. I was watching over you though. Watching the press. I’ve always had that option, of course. I’ve always done that … all these years,’ he admitted.

  ‘You didn’t take long to hook up with Susie,’ chastised Emily gently. ‘It’s hard to imagine you were that heartbroken.’

  ‘Who says I hooked up with Susie?’ said Matt, looking puzzled.

  ‘She did. Or at least, I think she did,’ said Emily, trying to remember their conversation at the reception. Had she actually said? ‘It was sort of – well – she said she was interested … plus I saw you both. You were definitely hugging.’

  ‘I hug a lot of people,’ said Matt. ‘And I don’t deny Susie made it clear she was up for something if it was on offer,’ he said, remembering, ‘but it definitely wasn’t.

  ‘Look,’ he continued, ‘when I found out you and Ralph were determined to make a go of it, I contacted her to make sure she was all right. She’s pretty flaky, I was worried she might do something stupid, especially she’s obviously been in love with Ralph for years, I could see that from the first time I met her. I might have put my arms around her, sure, but – good grief – not Susie …!’

  He rubbed his scalp through his hair in a gesture she knew so well. ‘You do believe me?’ he asked, staring into her eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Emily. ‘I do, of course I do,’ and she did. The gnawing grief and pain she had felt for months, thinking of Susie with Matt, simply floated away, leaving her dizzy with relief.

  ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘Susie’s as much of a victim of this whole situation as I was, in a way. Just being around a man as charismatic as Ralph is a dangerous game and we all fell for it one way or another.’ She considered, for a moment. ‘I think I may have been a little harsh,’ she added, remembering calling Susie “a whore” the last time they met.

  ‘Really?’ joked Matt. ‘But you’re right,’ he agreed, ‘although Susie is better equipped to be in Ralph’s world than you ever were. They are creatures from the same mould. They deserve each other – in every sense of the word,’ he said. ‘You were miserable with him but she was miserable without him,’ he added rescuing the toast and putting the eggs on the hob.

  ‘She said you were miserable too.’

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed Matt shortly. ‘I was.’

  It wasn’t until they were tucking into their meal, Matt watching Emily with approval as she buttered her third bit of toast, that she thought to ask, ‘So, why did you come here today?’

  ‘Well, it was your text, this morning,’ said Matt, remembering how it pinged through just as he went to switch off his phone prior to take-off. He had practically had to fight his way off the plane and the airline was furious at having to find and remove his luggage.

  ‘Wasn’t me,’ said Emily. ‘I’ve lost my phone.’

  ‘Well someone definitely has it. Here, look,’ he said, handing her his phone.

  She peered at the mystery text. It simply said: “Please come. I can’t bare to be apart from you.”

  ‘“Bare?”’ quizzed Emily raising an eyebrow.

  ‘Yeah, I wondered about that.’

  At that moment, the back door crashed open and Alfie ran in. ‘Beat you!’ he shouted back at a person or persons unknown behind him.

  ‘Hi Matt, hi Mummy,’ he said casually. Turning the TV on, he then threw himself onto a beanbag where he immediately adopted a vacant stare and shoved a thumb in his mouth.

  ‘You’re here,’ said Tash approvingly to Matt as she came through the door her brother had left swinging open. Like Alfie, she showed no surprise at his presence. ‘Going upstairs, Mum,’ she muttered as she wafted vaguely through the kitchen, stopping briefly in the doorway to the hall. ‘Are you staying then?’ she asked Matt.

  Matt and Emily glanced at each other.

  ‘Yes,’ they both said, together.

  ‘Cool,’ replied Tash.

  Epilogue

  A year later …

  Although the food is important, more important still is a daintily laid table, with crisp white linen and polished silver. Standards in this area should not be allowed to fall below the very highest level.

  FELICITY WAINWRIGHT, 1953

  Tash chucked the handful of cutlery onto the bare pine table with a clatter. ‘Do we have napkins, Mum?’ she asked.

  ‘God knows,’ Emily told her. ‘Even if they’re clean they’ll need ironing and I can’t be bothered with that. Bung the kitchen towel on the table. That’ll do.’

  Looking idly out of the kitchen window as she stood at the sink scraping carrots, she noticed a man in a dark suit and sunglasses, picking his way through the plants at the end of the garden. He had his finger in his ear and appeared to be talking to himself.

  She sighed. ‘Ralph? Is that one of your security bods lurking in the shrubbery?’

  ‘Fraid so,’ he replied, fiddling with the foil on the bottle of wine he was supposed to be opening. ‘Two more out the front, by the way.’

  ‘Shall I take them a cup of tea, do you think?’ asked Matt, slipping his arm around Emily’s waist as he came to stand beside her.

  ‘That’d be nice,’ she agreed. ‘The poor things, having to work
on Easter Sunday. Give them some chocolate biscuits too and ask them if they’d like some lunch later – there’s going to be loads. And for goodness’ sake don’t sneak up on them,’ she added. ‘They’re all armed remember.’

  ‘Here we go,’ said Ralph, passing Emily a glass of white wine. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Cheers,’ she said, taking a tiny sip and then leaving it casually on the kitchen window sill. ‘You’d better take poor Susie a glass. I think she’s having a hard time out there.’

  Susie was in the garden with Alfie and the new golden retriever puppy, who, at four months, was already a gangly teenager with razor sharp teeth and a propensity for chewing shoes. He liked them best with the feet still in.

  ‘You can stroke him,’ Alfie was telling Susie, ‘but don’t pat him on the head like this, because, to him, it just feels like hitting,’ he explained. The puppy who was lolling on the lawn with one ear inside out, basked in the attention, licking Susie’s hand and finishing with an affectionate little nip.

  Susie stifled a yelp and surreptitiously wiped her slimy hand on her jeans. Only recently Emily had persuaded Susie that jeans at the weekend were perfectly acceptable but, even now, she noticed with amusement, they were the darkest blue denim with an ironed crease down the front.

  ‘Can I help?’ said Susie, escaping into the kitchen with relief.

  ‘Sure,’ said Emily, ‘it would be lovely if you could lay the table for me.’

  ‘How many are we?’ asked Susie, counting the knives and forks Tash had dumped down.

  ‘Us lot, plus TJ and Philip, Gerald and Nessa,’ said Emily, counting on her fingers. ‘I’ll feed the security boys on trays because I know they won’t want to come inside.’

  ‘All the usual suspects then,’ commented Susie.

  ‘Family,’ said Matt. ‘A pretty unconventional one too, lucky for us,’ he continued. ‘Did you see Emily’s article on the new nuclear family in the paper last Sunday?’ he asked Ralph. ‘Very well received it was, the editor’s already commissioned another piece. A bit more of that and my wife-to-be will be well on the way to keeping me in the style to which I’d like to become accustomed,’ he joked.