‘Make sure you pull the back of your jacket down and sit on it so you don’t look all hunched over,’ she’d said as she’d run the lint brush over his black turtleneck.
He feels hot under the studio lighting and immediately begins to worry that the sweat Maisie identified is going to break through the many layers of powder she applied. He doesn’t want to look like a shiny-lipped Nixon in a career-ending TV debate.
‘Hi, Richard,’ Harriet says, leaning forward to shake his hand across the table. ‘Thanks for coming in.’
‘Thanks for having me,’ he says, the words already sounding nervous and stilted.
‘Did you have fun at the party?’
‘Not really, Harriet.’
She smiles.
‘Me neither. Look, we’ve got a couple of minutes before we go live. Anything you want to ask me?’
She gazes at him in the same way she did last night, her eyes hypnotic yet impenetrable.
‘No – er – well, actually, there is one thing.’
She raises an eyebrow.
‘Do I look sweaty?’
She laughs.
‘No.’
The floor manager appears in Richard’s peripheral vision.
‘Right folks, ready to go in five, four, three …’
Richard’s heart beats faster. The floor manager signals the final two counts with the fingers of one hand and then the jazzy theme music starts and before he knows it, Harriet has swung her chair towards thedarkness and is speaking directly down one camera, its red light steady and piercing as a laser beam.
‘Good morning and thanks for being here. I’m Harriet Seeker, and this is me … on politics.’
He can see the autocue she’s using and has the surreal experience of reading her introduction to him a fraction of a second before she says it out loud.
‘… after a much-publicised scandal, he lost his cabinet seat but his time on the backbenches allowed him to reconnect with the youth vote through the medium of reality TV. Now, Richard Take is masterminding the campaign to anoint Ben Fitzmaurice as our new prime minister.’
More jazzy music and then Harriet swings her chair back round to face him. Her eyes have narrowed and the glint has been replaced by something steelier and more focused.
‘Mr Take, thank you for joining us.’
‘Pleasure to be here, Harriet.’
His mouth is dry and his voice cracks shrilly on the last syllable of her name. He reaches for the glass of water in front of him.
‘How’s the campaign going, then?’
A softball question, but open-ended enough to allow plenty of rope for Richard to hang himself, should he be so inclined. She’s a pro.
‘It’s been going well, Harriet. There’s been real momentum and I think that’s because we’re only too well aware that this marks a turning point for us as a party and us as a country, and I believe—’
‘A turning point?’ Harriet asks, feigning astonishment. ‘How so? Ben Fitzmaurice has long been seen as the heir apparent to Edward Buller. The viewers at home are surely asking: how will the Fitzmaurice regime be any different from his old university chum and predecessor’s?’
He doesn’t answer. He counts slowly to six and watches Harriet’s face tense. He can hear the raised voices in the galley snaking out from her earpiece. A few seconds of silence in a live TV studio canfeel like hours. It is uncomfortable to draw it out for this long but, Richard has decided, it’s also necessary if he wants to make the desired impact.
‘Mr Take?’ she prompts.
