Greatest Love Story of All Time

by Lucy Robinson

  FRAN, YOU HAVE A NEW MESSAGE FROM JAMES! HERE’S WHAT HE HAD TO SAY!

  Fran, I think it is extremely rude of you not to have replied to my text messages since our date. However, having read the newspaper I am rather glad you haven’t replied and would ask you not to contact me again. Best, James I ran to the tube as fast as I could, trying not to throw up last night’s cocktails and redialling Mum every few seconds, but her phone was switched off. Something serious had happened. Mum had trouble remembering to call me on my birthday, let alone twenty-seven times in one day. So when I arrived at Victoria to get on a train to Cheam, I was strangely unsurprised to see her face staring out at me from the corner of the Mirror on a newsstand. ‘Bennett’s Bit,’ the headline yelled. ‘Tory big hope forced to admit extra-marital affair’. In slow motion I picked up the newspaper and turned to page four. There, clutching a bottle of champagne and staggering across a carpet at some posh reception with her hair in her eyes, was Mum. And next to the picture, above a caption that read ‘Like mother, like daughter: Bennett’s bid for top cabinet post is in tatters’ was me, falling off the kerb outside the Brit Awards. My knickers were plainly visible. If you looked hard enough, you could even see my tropical muff. I handed the newspaper vendor a fiver and wandered off, clutching the newspaper to my chest as waves of nausea washed through me. I stared at a man who appeared at my elbow, trying to give me money. Ah, the newspaper vendor. I smiled distractedly at him and took it, drifting on towards ThickCrust kiosk where I ordered a salami baguette. Perhaps this wasn’t really happening. Perhaps Charlie had drugged me last night and I was just entertaining an odd hallucination. Perhaps James from the Internet had been looking at crotch shots of someone else who just had the same name and knickers as me. I nibbled a mouse-sized portion off the end of the baguette only to find myself with a mouthful of armpit-flavoured salami. Past caring what people thought of me, I spat it into a bin and threw the rest of the baguette after it, leaning heavily on a pillar as another wave of sickness pummelled me. Then I froze. Was some dirty little paparazzo following me right now? I pulled my hair over my face and glanced around furtively. The only person looking at me seemed to be the newspaper vendor, who was probably more interested in the fact that Knickers Girl from page four had just bought a paper from him than he was in my bin-hugging. I breathed deeply and lurched off to Platform Nine where I curled up on a lurid red and orange train seat and hoped that everything would stop. As the train pulled out of the station, I sat up and looked again at the paper. It appeared, rather unfortunately, that this really was happening. There was Mum, drunk, half obscured by her champagne bottle. And there was me, drunk, half obscured by my pants, which were hogging most of the picture. The article was grim. I read it with an increasing sense of despair and humiliation. Power-suited Eve O’Callaghan has been helping herself to Tory hopeful Bennett for nearly twenty years, we can reveal. The sordid affair has been conducted in O’Callaghan’s £400,000 semi in Cheam, right under the nose of Bennett‘s pretty wife Laura who is president of three local charities, mother of two, and pillar of the local community. Our source revealed that stiff-haired wine lover O’Callaghan often threatened to go to the press if Bennett ever left her. ‘It was pitiful,’ our insider told us. ‘She’d get wasted in the Prince of Wales and then leave crazed messages on his phone until he had no option but to go round.’ Who the fuck was this ‘source’? No one knew about the affair. It was possibly the best-kept secret in the history of politics! Nick’s wife knew, of course – she had done for at least ten years, but she would be the last person to tell the press. (Laura’s recent attempt to upstage Mum’s Cheam in Bloom contribution was just the latest in a long line of suburban war tactics. My personal favourite had been when Laura had persuaded the director of the Cheam Players to demote Mum from the role of Hermia, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, to Nick Bottom. Unfortunately Mum, drunk, had put up an unintentionally outstanding comic performance and received a standing ovation and several gushing local newspaper reviews.) Laura risked losing her husband and pride if she went to the press. It couldn’t have been her. One of Nick’s colleagues? It felt unlikely. Nick had always been so sure that they knew nothing. He was almost as proud of his secret as he was of his wine cellar. For months Bennett has feared that his dubious dealings might taint his political future, our source revealed, and so he recently started planning his escape from the toxic affair. It’s believed that his decision to leave booze hound O’Callaghan and her chip-off-the-old-block daughter were what prompted them both to go out and get slaughtered, as these pictures reveal. If the Conservatives, widely tipped to win the General Election in May, aren’t able to form a scandal-free cabinet, then Cameron stands to lose widespread public support. Mother and daughter may be in need of help but Mirror readers have the right to know that there’s more to Bennett than meets the eye. And there was the answer, right there in the text. There’s more to Bennett than meets the eye. I sat up and rested my head against the cold window, suddenly clear. ‘I’ve been spending a lot of time with his aides during my research,’ Alex had said pointedly. ‘I think there’s more to Nick Bennett than meets the eye.’ Then he’d winked. Alex. Of course Alex. Alex who considered himself a serious journalist. Michael had said Alex would sell his own bloody mother if he believed she’d done something newsworthy. Instead, he’d sold mine. My vulnerable, confused, lonely mother, who would now lose the only person in her life she seemed to care about. My stomach churned furiously. How could he? How could he? What about Michael? Michael loved Mum! Alex. The rotten, stinking scumbag. Hot tears gathered in my eyes as I began to scrabble around in my bag for my phone. ‘Hi, this is Alex Sutcliffe. You know what to do.’ I gathered all my strength, enough to sound like I wasn’t crying, and began to speak: ‘Alex, you are disgusting and despicable. I cannot believe you sold my mother to the press when you knew full well how vulnerable she was. Nick might be a fucking moron, Alex, but at least he loves her. But why would I expect you to know anything about love? If anything happens to her, you’ll have blood on your hands. You scum.’ When I put the phone down and slouched back in my seat, a large, kindly face framed by mousy curls was staring at me from between the two seats in front. ‘Erm, are you OK?’ the face said. Clearly, I was not. ‘Yes,’ I croaked, with a weak smile. ‘Never better.’ The face smiled kindly. ‘You poor thing,’ she said, in a broad Dorset accent. ‘I’ve just bin reading about it all. Get your mum into Alcoholics Anonymous, OK? It’s ’mazin’. Totally sorted my husband out.’ I tried to smile again. ‘I’m working on it. Thanks.’ And then I wept into my salami napkin, realizing I’d just admitted to a complete stranger – probably another fucking reporter, knowing my luck – that my mum was an alcoholic. When I got off at Cheam, the sky was overcast and the air damp. Planes moved slowly across the sky above me, banking down into Heathrow as calmly and slowly as a feather falls to the ground. I jogged along the street as fast as my hangover would allow, praying that Mum hadn’t drunk herself unconscious and wondering how on earth she would cope if Nick really was leaving her. As I rounded the corner to her house I stopped dead and caught my breath. Outside there was a small gaggle of paparazzi and – far worse – four news cameras. In the middle of them, wrapped up in a grubby army coat and a strange Bolivian hat, was Dave. ‘Oi! Fran! Great photo in the Mirror, doofus!’ It was Raza, one of our political correspondents. I turned puce as I walked slowly towards them in my hoody, with tear-stained cheeks. The journalists’ code of honour was evidently not in place: every single camera, except Dave’s, turned and pointed at me. Raza trotted up to me as I began to run through the crowd towards Mum’s house. ‘Look, get Eve to give us a quick comment and we’ll leave you alone, my love.’ I ignored him. ‘Fran, come on, dear, you know I have to do this. It’s that or some dick misquotes her in the Daily Mail.’ As I made a run for the front gate, Dave piped up: ‘Leave her alone, Raza, you cunt,’ he said. And then, as I fum
bled with the latch, he called, ‘Fannybaws, I’m coming with you. Without the camera,’ he added, appearing next to me. I looked briefly at him and considered punching him hard on his craggy nose. ‘They didn’t tell me who it was,’ he muttered. ‘They just told me to meet Raza down here urgently. You know I’d never have come otherwise.’ He grabbed my hand and followed me up the path. I let him; I wasn’t in any state to start scrapping. His hand felt rough and alien in mine. Right at this moment I missed Michael more than I’d ever missed him before. Dave took the keys out of my shaking hands and let us into Mum’s house. ‘He’s told me we can’t ever see each other again and that I’m not to contact him,’ said Mum, when we sat down in the lounge a few minutes later. ‘Ever.’ She was drunk, of course, although not as badly as I’d feared. She was still in her dressing-gown, looking old and heartbreakingly vulnerable. Her hair was flat and her eyes were glazed. ‘Oi, Fran! Come on, babe!’ yelled Raza, through the door. ‘I’ll sort it,’ said Dave, abruptly, and went outside. ‘Don’t come back,’ I said, following him out. ‘You’ll get sacked. It’s not worth it. I’ll explain it all to you next week.’ He looked uncomfortable. ‘Seriously, Dave,’ I said. ‘Hugh will whup your ass. But thanks for coming in.’ Dave stood his ground. ‘Why didn’t you tell me things were this bad with your mum, Fannybaws?’ he asked softly. His normally inscrutable face was kind and concerned, enough to tip me over the edge. ‘Because I …’ I stopped, unsure. ‘Because you didn’t want to believe it was happening, aye?’ I nodded. Dave hugged me. ‘She’ll survive this, Fran. Just be there for her. Listen to her. Don’t tell her what to do. She’ll get help when it’s the right time.’ Without any further ado, he disappeared out of the front door, yelling, ‘Raza, if you don’t fucking piss off, I’ll knock you out.’ ‘Surely Nick’ll change his mind, Mum,’ I said, knowing he would do no such thing. ‘Surely Laura will kick him out and he’ll come running.’ Mum just shook her head and then she started crying. ‘Be a dear and go and get me a bottle of Gordon’s,’ she said pathetically. ‘Franny, I have none left and I can’t take another moment of this. Please, darling.’ I started listing every reason I could think of why this was a very poor idea indeed but was interrupted by a phone call from Leonie. Terrified she was ringing to say that further pictures of my lady garden had made their way into the press, I answered. ‘God, Franny, are you OK? Are you with your mum?’ ‘Yes. Not good.’ ‘Oh, God … is she drunk?’ I nodded, although she couldn’t see me, and shuffled into the downstairs loo. ‘Franny?’ ‘Sorry. Yes. But she’s not too bad. She’s run out of gin. She wants me to go and buy booze. She looks like she’s going to top herself. I think I’ll have to.’ ‘Oh, fuck, Fran. This is awful.’ There was a lengthy silence and then I heard a sniffly noise. ‘Leonie?’ Nothing. ‘Leonie, are you crying?’ ‘Yes.’ Further silence. ‘Fran, I need to tell you something.’ ‘Go ahead,’ I said dully, bracing myself for some further breach of our privacy. ‘Fran, it wasn’t Alex.’ ‘Er, it was,’ I began, and stopped. Hang on. ‘How do you know I thought it was him?’ I asked. A small tendril of something not nice had begun to wind its way around my stomach. Leonie exhaled nervously. ‘Because I’m with him right now. We listened to your message together.’ The tendril got larger. A snake, perhaps. ‘Excuse me?’ ‘I’m with him now. Fran, I’m sorry you had to find out like this but I’ve been seeing Alex for a while now. Since, erm … since you broke up with Michael.’ I watched a money spider swing awkwardly from the bottom of the basin. ‘No,’ I said eventually. This could not be true. Of that I was quite sure. ‘Yes,’ Leonie said firmly. ‘Yes, I have. I’m sorry, I know the timing’s poor but I’m with Alex and I plan to continue being.’ The snake in my guts was going fairly mad now. This news was simply too preposterous to take in. ‘Leonie, I hope you’re lying. Because this would be a betrayal of the worst kind,’ I said, as clearly as I could. ‘No, I’m not lying. It’s not a betrayal at all. It happened. And I’m telling you, Alex did not sell the story to the Mirror.’ ‘He fucking DID!’ I yelled, suddenly furious. ‘He fucking TOLD me he knew about Mum and Nick – and the article was in the same fucking WORDS he used. He’s a cunt and a weasel and a fucking scummy, pushy journalist. He cares about politics more than anything else. You fucking KNOW THAT.’ ‘Fran?’ Mum was in the hallway. ‘What’s going on?’ ‘Stay there,’ I hissed at Leonie, and opened the toilet door. ‘Mum, remember Michael’s friend Alex? He spent a lot of time with Nick recently. Do you think he found out?’ Mum nodded meekly. ‘Yes. Nick’s been a bit worried about it, actually. But I told him we could trust Alex, what with him being Michael’s friend –’ She broke off, her voice faltering. ‘Oh dear. I really do need that gin, Frances. Can you go now?’ She shuffled off, clutching her stomach. ‘Did you hear that?’ I asked Leonie quietly. She replied strong and clear: ‘He wouldn’t do it. He didn’t do it. Sorry, Fran, you’re just going to have to accept that.’ She ended the call. Chapter Twenty-eight