‘See ya.’
The phone goes dead. She should have said she loves her, but Cosima has been difficult to love of late – constantly disappearing from school, forging emails from her parents, lecturing them all on the impending Armageddon and refusing to take long-haul flights because of global warming, which makes holiday plans infuriatingly difficult. She even suggested they give poor Fliss a natural burial in a biodegradable coffin so as to lessen the impact on the environment. As if Fliss hadn’t suffered enough. Washed up dead on a Bali beach. Tragic, troubled Fliss.
Serena shouldn’t have invited Martin to the funeral without Ben’s knowledge, she really shouldn’t. But she’s fed up of being ignored and sidelined. She’s sick of having so little impact on her own life and on the lives of the people closest to her. She’s furious with Ben and his inability to engage with her as the woman she is rather than the girl she once was. And she’s angry with Hector and all the boys like him for lacking the imagination to become anything other than their fathers.
The incident with Violet had been the tipping point. She still hadMartin’s address from all those years ago, so she had popped the invite in the collection basket along with the rest of them, ready for the housekeeper to take to the post office. She wasn’t sure what would happen. All she knew was that she wanted to feel something. She wanted Ben to take notice of her, to prod him out of his slumber. And yes, OK, perhaps she wanted revenge, too. Just a delicious little smidge.
III.
Richard
RICHARD TAKE DECIDES HE WILLwalk from St James’s back to Portcullis House. He could do with the fresh air. Lunch was a tedious ninety-minuter upstairs in a gastropub with a representative from the Crown Estate. He ate claggy shepherd’s pie while listening to the man drone on about various legal issues affecting the seabed, which – in one of those arcane twists of history that seemed so uniquely British – was actually owned by the monarch.
These were the kinds of things one learned when one was a junior minister for the environment. Not that he actually is a minister any more. Relegated to the backbenches now. After his quote unquote ‘indiscretion’.
The walk will also give him an opportunity to catch up on a backlog of political podcasts. Podcasting is the new mania for Richard’s former colleagues. Any MP who has ever lost their seat or been sacked or resigned on a point of principle (the ‘principle’ in question usually being their own personal career advancement) has become an overnight broadcaster. Almost as soon as they’ve trundled their belongings out of the Houses of Parliament in a wheeled suitcase, they’re ordering USB microphones on Amazon Prime and sharing inane thoughts about the news cycle. Most of the podcasts feature two white men from different sides of the political divide, joshing agreeably while analysing the brokenness of a system they contributed to breaking.
Richard walks at a rapid clip through the park. A swan looks at him with patrician distaste. He scowls back. Swans are also owned by themonarch and don’t they just know it. Superior arseholes. He heads left towards Trafalgar Square where he weaves his way in and out of the gaggle of tourists congregating in front of the National Gallery, almost tripping off the pavement and into the path of an approaching taxi. The black-cab driver beeps his horn and then, clocking Richard’s face, winds down his window to shout, ‘You’re a fucking disgrace!’
Richard gives a polite politician’s wave and an amiable smile.
‘Don’t believe what you read in the papers!’ he shouts after the cab, trying to sound unflustered: a man confident that the truth, eventually, will get out. He shouldn’t have said anything but it’s too late now. Hopefully no one else has overheard the exchange or filmed it on their smartphone to leak to theDaily Mail.
He is already regretting the decision to walk. His shoes are new brogues from Church’s and are pinching his left pinky toe. But he no longer has an official driver. I must be in the melee, he thinks as he heads towards Westminster; I must be with the people. No more elite metropolitan bubble for Richard Take!
He looks up to Nelson’s Column. What is politics if not this – he thinks, loftily – being of the throng and yet also capable of seeing above it to the horizon of a solution? It is important to connect to the everyday concerns of the common man. And woman, he reminds himself hurriedly. And, ah, individuals who do not feel that retrograde and binary notions of gender belong to them. God, it’s all so complicated. One word out of place and you’re cancelled by the braying virtue-signallers on Twitter. Or X, as it’s currently called. Why doesn’t anything stick to the same name anymore?
He plugs in his AirPods and presses play. The lolloping, folksy theme tune ofTalking Politics with Jeff and Johnstrikes up. It’s been number one in the charts for weeks. Apparently Jeff now rakes in a million a year. Richard doesn’t really understand why the podcasts are so popular when politicians themselves are so reviled. One minute you’re sitting across from Jeff, discussing European fishing quotas in cabinet while he surreptitiously brushes dandruff off his shoulders, and the next he’s selling out the Royal Albert Hall with live shows, andhawking T-shirts with his custardy face beaming out like the ugly man’s Taylor Swift.
Richard skips to the end ofTalking Politics …and presses on with the latest episode ofPolitical Chatter. He grits his teeth as the reedy voice of a former prisons minister worms its way deep into his ear canal to inform him of the fantastic new deals offered by a kitchen and bathroom purveyor.
‘For 10 per cent off your next home improvement, quote CHATTER at checkout.’
Richard hits the fast-forward button and the episode leaps ahead.
‘Today, we’re going to be talking about Ukraine …’
He crosses the street to avoid striding past the gated entry of Downing Street where, just a few days ago, he was forced to make a humiliating exit in front of a barrage of reporters.
‘Have you resigned, Mr Take?’ the most persistent shouted. Some self-important toff from Sky News.
‘I have,’ he said, smiling and nodding like one of those bobble-head toy dogs you see in the backs of vans. ‘I will have more to say in due course.’
‘Were you forced to go?’
Smile.
‘Are you sorry, Richard?’
Nod.
‘Are you embarrassed?’
Smile and nod and walk on by. No ministerial car waiting for him – it was brutal, really, the efficiency with which politics operated – so he had to keep smiling until he made it back to the relative safety of his office. That would be downsized too, now that he was no longer in cabinet.
He approaches the Cenotaph and pauses the podcast as a mark of respect. Richard bows his head. He has never been in the armed forces, but he firmly believes he would have made an excellent soldier and the romantic heroism of the idea appeals to him. He likes a good uniform. He should have been Defence Secretary, really, instead of a minorplayer in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. What does he know about the environment and rural affairs? He grew up in Sevenoaks and has only ever listened toThe Archersby accident. As for food – well, of course he has an interest in eating it, but there are only so many times you can sit through a committee meeting on emerging pork markets without wanting to chew your own ears off, let alone the pig’s.
Still, he’ll be sorry to leave it behind. It’s all so unfortunate. What red-blooded male hasn’t occasionally been caught at his computer watching a few minutes of consensually filmed pornography? Let he who has not sinned cast a splinter in someone’s eye, Richard thinks. Is that the quote? Or is it about stoning? He can’t recall.
