“I’m only joking! Ha! You went all silent on me then. Not like you. Ha! You nearly believed me there, didn't you? You’re so gullible sometimes, you know!” He was guffawing so loudly that I had to shout to get him to shut up and listen to me.
“That’s not funny, Michael!”
He carried on, chortling away. Very amused by his joke.
“But really,” he added, “stay away from him. But then, you being you, you’ll probably now go and do the opposite, just because a nice man like me has made a polite request. That’s the trouble with you feminists …”
“Oh, just generalise enormously, why don’t you? I’m more than happy to respect a polite request. But perhaps a little gesture or two of appreciation would help to see it along.”
“Point taken! Mental note to Michael: buy flowers, chocolates and shallow tokens for a woman who claims not to be materialistic and who will probably go and sell her side of the story to News Of The Nation tomorrow.”
I chuckled. “But that reminds me. I was wondering whether the spin-doctor sorts have been hassling you about that side of things. If I would try to sell my story.”
“Oh, yes. I did get a bit of a grilling on that front. From Alex …”
“Alex the Twat?”
“Yes. In fact, he was very rude about you and it ended up with …”
“Why? What did he say?”
“Well. It wasn’t very nice. I’d rather …”
“Oh bloody hell, Michael. I’m a big girl. Tell me. Most weeks don’t go by without some bloke or another here shouting abuse at me. I’m used to being called a fat ugly slag and a stupid biffer and much worse ...”
“Well, OK. He called you the Merry Widow. I know, I know. He’s a total shit.”
“Ha. That’s all right. That’s quite witty, actually …”
Michael was dismissive. “Well, I wasn’t happy about it. And I ended up losing my temper with him.”
“Really? What did you do?”
“I called him a twat. And I walked out.”
“Really? You called him a twat? Is that a word you’d normally use in your office?”
“Wasn’t mine. This was the PM’s office. And his use of language tends to be a lot fruitier than mine most days, anyway.”
“Hang on a minute. You mean all this happened at Number Ten? With the prime minister there?”
“Yes. This morning, in his office. But it’s no big deal really. I mean, we all know the guy is a twat. It’s just that no one usually says that kind of thing to his face.”
“Tell me …”
“Right, well. Just as the conversation turned to who the mystery lady was, Jane – the PM’s wife – stormed into the room, carrying their littlest. Toby, their toddler. Now Jane … she’s a little bit highly strung. Flips every now and then. She strode past the rest of the staff, saw me, and said, ‘Oh, Michael. Nice to see you. Glad we didn’t get to see any more of you, though, in the paper this morning. Would have quite put me off my breakfast.’ Then she plonked the baby on the PM’s desk and said, ‘Toby. Meet Daddy. Daddy. Meet Toby. Daddy – time for Toby’s nappy change. The first that Daddy will have done in a fortnight!’ And then she charged out again.”
“Crikey!” I sniggered. “Bit embarrassing for the prime minister ...”
“Yes. But the worst thing was the stink. From the kid. It – sorry, he – had a dirty nappy, so the entire room … well. You’re a mother; you know. And Alex, he was trying to ignore the whole baby-on-PM’s-desk situation and was using the opportunity to round on me and say stuff like, ‘So, Michael. This woman you’ve been at it with – how long have you known her and does she have a habit of sleeping with people and then appearing in the newspapers?’ And meanwhile, the PM was bellowing “Jane! Don’t just bloody leave him here! I’ll do his bedtime nappy!” He tried to pick Toby up, who then started having a tantrum because he wanted to stay on the desk …”
“Ha! I love it!”
“…And then he bit the PM. The kid did, I mean – not Alex. And in between all this, Alex called you the Merry Widow. And I told him that he was a twat.”
He paused for a minute. “And that’s your fault, Rachael. Because ever since you thought up a new label for Alex, I haven’t been able to think of him in any other way …”
“Oh great. Blame me for my gobshite ways!”
I heard a deep chiming in the background. Brass tones. The sound of Big Ben, drifting above the never-ending roar of traffic.
“Well, actually, the PM didn’t seem to disagree with me. Once he had managed to offload Toby onto some poor aide, he turned to Alex and said, “Yes, Michael was right, Alex. That was twattish behaviour. Sort yourself out, for fuck’s sake.”
“Interesting morning all round, then.”
“For sure. But the only thing that none of us can figure out is who took the photographs – you know, me on the bike, and you and me in my garden.”
“Yes, it is odd. I mean, no one on Brindleford recognised you. Apart from Brenda. And your cottage in Mottram … I mean, it’s not exactly a village that attracts members of the national press. Nothing ever happens there.”
“Other than Doctor Shipman and the Moors Murderers having been previous residents, of course …”
“You just had to go and mention that, didn't you? Us locals try to put that kind of thing behind us. But if you London-centric lot had your way, you'd be running ghost walks or creating some sicko sort of theme park about it all.”
“Actually, you’ve got some good ideas there. And the area could do with a bit of a boost in the tourist figures ...”
“I won’t even dignify that with a response.”
“So does your rampant anti-London obsession mean that you won’t come and visit me here? I was thinking … we’ve got the party conference in Brighton all next week —”
I interrupted him.
“You know, it never ceases to amaze me. You lot are back in Parliament for what – two weeks’ sitting after your extremely long summer break? And then you’re all off on your jollies again to the seaside. For your so-called conferences.”
“Last year’s was in Manchester, Rachael. Hardly the seaside! And we work damned hard at conference.”
“Oh, please. We’ve had this kind of conversation before, Michael. I’ve been to party conferences, remember …”
“Yes, yes. Anyway. Stop changing the subject … London. After next weekend and the conference has finished, why don’t you come and spend a few days with me in the Big Smoke?”
A jolt. I hadn’t been expecting that. I managed to keep the surprise out of my voice, though.
“Well, that’d be nice. I could try to get over my latent prejudices maybe. But the kids …”
“I know. I thought they would be an issue. But isn’t your sister in London? Wouldn’t she have them?”
I thought for a second. Vicky’s flat was the least child-friendly place that I had ever encountered. Matthew would end up breaking all my sister’s art deco pieces and maybe even torching the place. And perish the thought of such a long train journey with the little critter.
“No.”
“Oh. Really? Shame.”
“No, sorry; I mean, no to Matthew. But Vicky would probably cope OK with Lydia. And, I wonder ... whether my in-laws in Reading would take Matthew for a couple of days?”
“That would be excellent. I know it’s not easy with kids. Well, I can imagine. But let’s see what we can manage between us. My schedule often has to change at the last minute, but we can but try, hey?”
I agreed. We can but try.
After we hung up, I realised that I had forgotten to ask him about the funding cuts that Shaun was accusing him of having masterminded.
Chapter 17
TANTALISING APOLLO AND ARTEMIS
I spent the rest of the afternoon working on the same old (probably futile) funding application for the centre. By 4.15, I was thinking about packing up and leaving for home when I heard a timid knock on my office door. It was ajar,
so when I looked up from my desk I was surprised to see two children standing there. Two familiar-looking children. Tyler and Tia.
I rose from my seat and gestured for them to come in properly, rather than hang around the doorway. Tyler was scuffing its frame with the toe of his shoes. They were both dressed in school uniform.
They moved hesitantly forward, not knowing where to stand; what to do. Looking as though they had been summoned to the head teacher’s office. I motioned for them to sit down on the easy chairs next to the desk.
“To what do I owe this pleasure? So, did you come all the way from Mottram on your own?”
Tyler rubbed his eye with the palm of one hand and began to jiggle his leg, and Tia just shrugged and slouched, looking over at her brother.
After an uncomfortable silence, she said, “Well, we had to get two buses to get here. An’ we got lost when we got off the second one. We hadn’t got a clue where we were. His GPS app froze.” She nodded towards Tyler, who was still limbs-a-jiggling.
“An’ when we found that crap park outside,” Tia continued, “we went in there for a bit to figure out where we were exactly. An’ a dog tried to bite me. We've never been to Medlock before. It were, like, right stressy.”
Her brother mumbled in agreement. “Yeah, and I’m not coming to Medlock again. It’s shit, it is. It’s even shitter than Oldham.”
“But, anyway. What we’ve come for, like, is to say we’re sorry. An’ to give you this.”
Tia’s voice grew smaller and she looked sheepishly up at me from beneath her pale eyelashes. She handed me a grease-spotted brown envelope.
“Can I open it?”
They both nodded. It contained two twenty-pound notes and a piece of torn paper, from a school textbook by the looks of it. Untidy handwriting read: ‘Where reelly sorry’.
I shook my head. “I don’t understand.” I frowned and looked back up at them. “What are you saying sorry for?”
“For the photo. Obviously ... Like, durr!” Tyler burst out of his fidgeting mode and leaned forward. “We had these photos on Tia’s mobile of you and thingy Chisswickson. An’ we knew you stayed at his house, anyway. ’Cause we’re not stupid, like.”
I held my hand up.
“Wait a minute. You’re saying that Tia also had a mobile? That she took photos of Michael Chiswick?”
Tyler looked at me. With an expression that clearly read ‘moronic bint.’ Of course they both had their own mobiles. What planet was I from, eh?
Tia bit her lip and nodded, wrapping her pudgy arms around herself, a hug for comfort. She carried on with the story, screwing up her pink and freckly face.
“An’ yeah, so I took a couple of photos. But we didn't really know who he was. Proper, like, yer Cheesywick bloke. Well, we knew he ’ad a bit of money or whatever, ’cause of his car and bouncer blokes hangin’ round ’im. But then, yesterday – like, Monday mornin’ – we saw ’im on Sky News. About that queer poofter fingy bloke workin’ for ’im down in London. An’ some people were sayin’ that it were really bad to be a queer poofter an’ doin’ what he were doin’. But I fink it’s bang out of order havin’ a go at ’im for that innit?”
I nodded.
“So, yeah – the telly were on like, before we got off to school and us mum … well. Me an’ Tyler were gettin’ all psyched up when we realised it were ’im! Yer Cheesehead bloke. So, yeah, she were askin’ us what the frig we knew about ’im. An’ we were sayin’ that we, like, knew ’im. An’ that we’d helped ’im out with the mad old lady at her flat. And, er …”
I looked at them both. I had a feeling that I knew what was coming next. Tyler sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve, taking up the tale. I was right.
The twins’ mother had seized the phone and contacted News Of The Nation , selling the photographs to the newspaper. At first the kids had been “well chuffed”. Until mum said she’d put it in a bank account for us till we’re like, sixteen. And we’re, like, ‘Yeah, right – bullshit – we all know she’ll blow it on the gee-gees’.”
The twins had managed to track me down, thanks to them having had a good nosey in my “crap car” and seeing all the leaflets about “your violent place here”. And I tried to do the stern and disappointed headmistress act, but it was difficult not to crack a smile when Tia revealed one of their real motivations for wanting to find me.
“Well. We were finkin’ about how people kill themselves. When they’ve had a bad story written about them in the papers … like … they go a bit mentalist. An’ that.”
They were both gazing at me, all frog-eyes. Clearly trying to gauge my emotional or psychological wellbeing.
“Mmm,” I said.
“So, er ... so yer not going to go and kill yerself, are you?”
I shook my head. “No, Tyler. I won’t lie and say it’s been a good day for me today. But no, I’m not at that point. Yet.” I smiled grimly.
“And what about ’im?” Tia asked, referring to Michael. “Yer boyfriend. Is the prime minister gonna go all Alan Sugar on ’im and start on with the ‘You’re fired!’”
“Or,” Tyler added, “is yer Cheese-maestro bloke gonna go and jump off of Big Ben or summat and kill ’imself?”
Tyler’s comment brought a very vivid picture to my mind of the Right Honourable Michael Chiswick about to launch himself off the Houses of Parliament and into the Thames. I had to stifle a giggle with a mug of lukewarm tea.
“Well,” I replied, “for starters, I wouldn’t really know what Mr Chiswick thinks about all this. Because, despite what you think – he isn’t my boyfriend.”
I caught Tia smirking at her brother.
“But I do appreciate the fact that you came all the way here to apologise. Still … doesn’t your mum know where you are?”
Tyler laughed now. Stupid question, lady, “Nah, she never knows where we are.”
I pointed at them now. Glowering.
“But you’ll have to explain this bit to me. The money.” I handed the open envelope back to them.
Tia did her best. “Well, politicians are always doin’ stuff for people or sayin’ they’re sorry with money in brown envelopes. Bit like the Mafia.”
“And?”
Tyler continued the explanation. “An’ we were finkin’,” Here, Tyler became very animated, “right, about your own kids. Right – if we’ve, like, ruined your life and turned you into a total freaky basket-case and you ended up locked up in the loony bin, so that you couldn’t even have a crap without someone watchin’ you, what if, like, your kids one day want to try and find out why you went all mentalist? What if, like, they come looking for the people what did it to you? An’ that’s us! And what if they, like, take us out and torture us really slowly by pouring lighter fluid on different parts of our body and settin’ it alight and then they get these pliers an’ ...”
Now Tia took up the tale.
“So – what we were finkin’ was – if we do the brown envelope fing with you now. It might stop yer kids comin’ and findin’ us and puttin’ some Regatta on us or whatever they call it. An endin’ up with us being decapitated an’ that in, like, ten years’ time.”
Here were two youngsters who spent a bit too much time watching rather unsavoury films and TV programmes. Perhaps similar to Vinnie and Dawn’s two boys. I thought of Lydia. A girl who would cry for hours if she found a dead daddy-long-legs in the shower. I couldn’t see Lydia wanting to behead Tyler or Tia at any point in the future. Matthew, on the other hand, had been worrying me of late. He had developed a rather disturbing interest in eating garden snails (live). And in stringing up Lydia’s Barbies with her skipping rope. Plus, the crucifixion that took place last night on the Bob the Builder workstation. And this morning I found him pulling the stuffing out of his toy sheep and shrieking “I killed LambyWamby! I ripped his guts out! He’s really dying badly!”
Thankfully, the twosome interrupted my darkening thoughts.
“So, ’cause we’re not stupid,” Tia chipped in
, “an’ we know that us mum is never gonna give us any of that money … we found her bingo money. When she went down the pub at lunchtime … Well. There you go.” She nodded towards the envelope.
“OK,” I snapped out of my oh-so familiar ruminations as to The Future Of Matthew. “If you did steal this money from your mum then there’s no way I can accept it from you. But I can see that you’re really sorry about it all.”
Wide-eyed nods.
“Yeah. We are. But what was well weird,” Tia added, “was that there was another photo. One of yer Cheesemonger bloke ridin’ that motorbike. An’ we never went there with you to Brindleford, did we? So we never took that bike photo what got onto the front page!”
Tyler was genuinely puzzled, too. “An’ I’d never go to Brindleford anyway, ’cause it’s full of Man City scuzzers. We’re Liverpool FC in our house, we are.”
That thought had already occurred to me too (about who took the other photograph – not about the Man City scuzzers or whether the twins were Scouse-loyalists).
I glanced at the clock. Half past four. Let’s wrap this up.
“So, have either of you, or your mum ...” I gave them a steely look “had any more journalists visit? Or speak to you at all? Or the other grown-ups in your life?” Finishing my glance in Tia’s direction.
“Not what we know of. Not since yesterday when Mum were on the phone to them. And Dad moved over to Rochdale with his new girlfriend, a few months ago. Though she wants them to move to that Hebden Bridge place, now. She’s like, into her crystals and her dragons and all of that. She’s like, so well up herself, she is. So anyway, he doesn’t know nowt. And after today … well. We’re not sayin’ nowt to no one. No way.”
She folded her arms again with a flourishing emphasis. Tyler unconsciously mirrored his sister. They seemed to be batting for my side now. But they needed a bit more to shore them up.
“Good. But you might come under a bit of pressure … from your mum. Or another grown-up. You wouldn’t believe what nutters adults can be when it comes to the lure of money. Like … vultures around an animal carcass. Ripping it to shreds .” Tyler’s eyes lit up at that little analogy.
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