Harriet is just about to reply when the theme music starts up.
‘Ad break, everyone,’ the floor manager shouts.
Maisie rushes onto set and starts powdering Richard’s face with great urgency, her mouth a thin, unreadable line. Harriet stares at him. Then the producer, a young man with a goatee beard, appears from the gallery.
‘Hi, I’m Mark, the producer.’
‘Hi, Mark,’ Richard says, trying not to move his lips as Maisie brushes over his chin.
‘I just want to thank you for some fantastic TV,’ Mark says, shaking his hand.
‘You’re welcome, Mark.’
‘We’d love to see those files if you were able to email them to us …’
Maisie, her work completed, pats Richard gently on the shoulder and walks briskly off the set.
‘I’d be glad to,’ Richard says.
Mark squats down next to him.
‘That’s great. Thanks so much. And do shout if there’s anything we can help with in terms of your campaign—’
‘But I should tell you that we’ve also given the files toThe Times, who will be running their own exposé tomorrow morning.’
That had been Gary Brotherton’s idea – full media coverage on every platform. He’d reached out to all his media contacts – old Fleet Street drinking buddies and anyone else he knew he could get onside. Mickey Minton was going to do a YouTube ten-minute short, drafted for him by both the Joshes and given final approval by Gary. When it came to it, Richard had to admit that Gary really did know what he was doing.
‘Ah, OK,’ says the goateed Mark. ‘Still, good to have them. We’d definitely like to look into it, wouldn’t we, Harriet?’
Harriet, sitting straighter in her chair, re-tucks her silk shirt into her leather skirt and pushes her earpiece back in.
‘I’d fucking say so.’ Then, looking straight at Richard, she says: ‘Good for you. About time Ben Fitzmaurice got what’s coming to him.’
‘Impartiality, Harriet!’ Mark says.
‘Oh fuck off. This isn’t the BBC.’
‘Do you know Ben?’ Richard asks.
‘Yes. We were at Cambridge together.’ She gives a short laugh. ‘The stuff he and his public-school mates got up to … I’ve never forgotten it. They trampled over everything and everyone to get what they wanted.’
The floor manager comes on to tell them there are two minutes left until they go live again.
‘He wouldn’t remember me, though,’ she says. ‘I wasn’t one of them.’
‘No,’ he says. ‘Me neither.’
Harriet runs her fingers through her sleek hair and he can see her switching back into dispassionate professionalism.
‘An Unprecedented Guy for Unprecedented Times,’ she says, rifling through her notes. ‘That’s your campaign slogan, right there.’
By the time he leaves the TV studio and switches his phone on in the back of the pre-booked executive car, he has 159 unread texts, 74 missed calls and an explosion of emails. He scans his WhatsApps, looking for the one he wants to read. It is there, in among a thumbs-up emoji from Gary, a three-minute voicenote from his political adviser and a curt note from Buller’s chief of staff suggesting they ‘need to talk’. Hannah had texted him at 9.15 a.m., precisely the moment he had come off air.
‘Well done, R. Very proud of you.’
No kisses, of course – that wasn’t her style. But really, those perfunctory words were all he needed to feel he’d done the right thing. He decides to ignore all the other messages until he’s back in his office. Instead, he logs on to MailOnline and sees the main homepage headline in block capitals, stark white letters against a bright blue background.
‘Fitzmaurice is not up to the job’, it reads. And beneath, in smaller font: ‘Takedown: Richard Take sticks the knife in’.
