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Lucy - Three Years Later
It’sastrangekindof torment, living in the same city as of the person who has my heart in a vice. I see him almost every day—his face flashing across TV screens, his name on headlines. And sometimes, I walk through Westminster, lingering just a little too long, waiting for the fleeting glimpse of a passing car, wondering whether he’s inside. So close, yet untouchable.
And today is no different. I’m standing in a queue, waiting for another tour of The Houses of Parliament. Any minute now, a black, bullet proof Mercedes will appear, and behind the black, tinted windows will be Owen.
Sitting there on the phone, or talking with his assistant, planning, plotting.
He did what he said he would do.
Be the change.
The hard drive evidence did exactly what we thought it would, but it took time.
Sources had to be checked, evidence checked, double checked, hell, even triple checked.
The government as we knew it fell.
Most of the cabinet were arrested for whatever charge they were guilty of; every political party was impacted.
And Owen used that chaos to officially launch his independent party.
He recruited the best politicians, he recruited new ones from all backgrounds, who like him, had been through the system and seen how broken it was.
No one really has the experience to be a politician, you learn on the job. You are put in positions where you know nothing about what you’re supposed to be doing, but the difference with this party is that they have lived and experienced the system.
They know what works, and what doesn’t.
And with that experience comes the different thinking, the willingness to change it.
Three years, and the court cases are still going on. The evidence is still being scanned through, people are still being charged. Something this big is done by the book, and just like Roman said, it’s taking years.
Owen is steering the ship now, and he’s steering it with confidence, honour and transparency.
The first thing he did was pass a manifesto that no one saw coming, including me. One that forced every political party to agree on key, national initiatives. A radical, unprecedented move.
The NHS overhaul. The rebuilding of the country’s crumbling infrastructure. The deep, systemic changes that usually take decades and countless elections to even begin. Every political party signed on to the objectives and approach, ensuring that no matter who held power, the outcomes would remain the same.
The details—the taxes, the funding, the policies wrapped around it—would shift with each government. But the path itself was locked in place. Because four years isn’t enough to fix something so fundamentally broken. Four years isn’t enough toreverse decades of neglect. But four years is enough to change the way we approach it.
And for that, I couldn’t be prouder.
The gates to the side of the queue open at the same time as my phone buzzes with a BBC news alert.Breaking story. I glance down at the screen, and my fingers tighten around my phone in a vice-like grip. The headline steals the breath from my lungs.
King abdicates his throne.
But it’s not “The King.”
No, King William has only just taken the throne, so that means…I look up at the Mercedes that is pulling into the courtyard area, and I stare at it.
It slowly drives past where I’m standing, as I stare at the blacked-out window. It usually drives straight past, and I wonder if he sees me. I wonder if he senses me in the vicinity. Can he feel the prickle on his skin like I get when I know he’s close?
The car stops, the window pulls down, and I’m met with the beautifully handsome face of Owen King. Glasses on, five o’clock shadow, hair dishevelled.
“Hello, Cookie,” he says, grinning at me. “Want to come for a drive?”
I stare, stupid for minute, everyone in the queue gasping at the fact that the ex-Prime Minister has stopped in front of us and is addressing me.
