Chapter Twenty-One #2
It had been a hard one to explain to most people.
Rumours had swirled in Whitehall at my sudden and complete exit from frontline politics, some more ridiculous even than the truth.
At the time, I was just relieved that the truth had been buried and that my affair with Felix had never gotten out—the thought of Leo finding out, reading about it in some tabloid rag, was inconceivable.
Most people knew Adrian Brooke had been the one to cut the rope on the attempt to manoeuvre me into No.
10 after Nish Patel’s vote of no confidence.
Most people also knew that when Adrian Brooke had a grudge against someone, that someone had a target on their back, and it was merely a matter of time before they were gone.
“Because a very powerful man wanted me gone.” No one but Felix knew the real reason for my resignation from the foreign office. I trust Asher more than I trust almost anyone else in my life, which is incredible, really, considering I’ve known him a matter of months.
“Why did he want you gone?” His voice is taut.
“Because I was sleeping with his son.”
??
I arrive at the FCDO just after 8am the following morning.
It’s already bustling. Grey-suited bodies swarming between desks and titanium clocks showing the time of every commonwealth country to the exact second.
It feels good to be back here, in a place where the doorman knows my name, where my picture hangs on the wall downstairs, where the meeting rooms stock my favourite tea and biscuits.
To my right, a door opens, and Bridget Morris’s assistant, a sharply dressed man about Leo’s age but who is already thinning a little on top, pops out into the empty hallway.
“Sir Darling,” he says politely. “Ms Morris is wondering if you have some time right now.” It’s a question, but it isn’t exactly posed as one.
The blinds are closed inside the meeting room, so I’ve no idea who else might be in there.
I’ve also no idea how he’s managed to time my route past the room so accurately.
“Sure.”
He smiles, relieved, and beckons me into the room by coming fully out into the corridor and gesturing toward the open door.
When I step through, he closes it behind me, remaining outside of it.
Bridget is alone, eating some kind of flaky breakfast pastry with no hands while she types furiously on her laptop.
She removes the pastry and says, “Have a seat, Chris,” without looking up from her screen.
I do as I’m bid, pulling out the chair adjacent to her and planting myself in it.
She continues to type something, finishes her pastry in four efficient bites while she does, and then closes her laptop and looks at me.
“How are you doing?” She lifts a large thermos cup and takes a drink from it. “We never got a moment to talk last night.”
“I’m fine, Bridget.”
She looks disgusted by this answer. “You were banished to fucking Siberia and then had a heart attack. Are you… fine?”
I huff a laugh. “Washington DC is the centre of the universe, actually. Weren’t you aware?”
“Hmmh.”
She’s giving me that look she’s known for, as though she’s plotting my death and how best to dispose of the evidence.
It’s quite terrifying. We’d gone on a date once, whilst I was still seeing Felix—he’d been incensed—and I’d been terrified for the entire dinner.
She’s a scary woman. Brilliant, Machiavellian, but terrifying.
“How are you?” I ask.
“Surrounded by a miasma of incompetent fucking men, as is my lot in life.”
“Well, you’ve had one less to worry about, I suppose.”
“Adrian had no fucking right to do what he did,” she says with a tone so cold I feel a distinct chill from it. “Who the fuck does that man think he is?”
I shift in my chair. I know she likely knows everything. Aside from Adrian, there is no one else in Westminster who knows more than Bridget Morris does. I’m certain she knows what colour underwear I’m wearing right this moment. “He did what he felt was right,” I say diplomatically.
There’s a narrowing of her eyes. “Why didn’t you come to me?”
She means when Adrian’s ultimatum landed on my desk.
“It was a very sensitive situation, Bridge. I didn’t want to put anyone else in a position where they’d have to lie or defend me. What I’d done was... unsavoury.”
“No, that fucking pastry was unsavoury,” she bites. “What exactly did you do, Christian? Have a consensual sexual relationship with an adult?”
I give her an imploring look. “You know it’s not as simple as that.”
“No? Then what was it?” Her voice is combative. Daring me to put words to it.
“It was his son.”
She makes an angry dismissive noise. “Perhaps. But you have no fucking idea the shit some of them get away with, some of the shit I’ve spent my entire career covering up for these wankers, who still sit in their offices to this day. It was consensual, yes?”
“Of course it was.”
“And he was an adult when it began?”
“Of course it bloody was,” I say again, angrily.
“Then you should have come to me,” she hisses. But then, softer, she says, “Stella would have told you to come to me.”
“Well, Stella was a lot smarter than I was.”
“I won’t argue with that,” Bridget concurs. “Anyway, none of this is why I called you in here.”
“The worst is still to come? Christ.”
She almost smiles. “It really depends on how you look at it.”
I nod, gesturing for her to go on.
“They want you to come back.”
Two things happen at once: my heart gives a dissonant quaver against my chest cavity, and I laugh. “Excuse me?”
“Adrian fucked up. Which is unusual for him, I’ll grant, because there’s another no-confidence vote gathering momentum; they’re even talking about an early election. Less than a fucking year after we just scrapped a victory.”
“Jasmine needs time to bed in.”
“Time is a luxury she doesn’t have, Christian.
She’s lost every fucking vote she’s put through—a foreign secretary, yes, she’s getting the blame for you, the education minister, a budget speech that almost crashed the fucking economy, and almost the entire FCDO.
In less than eleven months. While The Sun are printing pictures of her in the hospitality box of Taylor Swift concerts like she has not a care in the fucking world.
She’s disliked by the country and even more so by the cabinet.
They need to fix it and fast.” She’s looking at me as though I have all the answers.
“Adrian wanted her in No. 10.”
“Yes, and he’s paying for it now. It’s making him look as bad as her and that is something he will not stand for.”
“I suppose that’s why he’s been trying to call me? To beg me to come back?”
She tilts her head, looking at me like I’ve just said something very na?ve. “Oh, Chris, he’s not going to beg you. You know that’s not his style.” She opens her laptop again, clicks a few keys, and then she’s twisting it around so I can see the screen.
There, in gorgeous high definition, is a photo of Asher and me outside the Marriott Bonvoy in Jersey City.
I’m looking at him fondly. Too fondly. It feels less horrifying than it had the first time around, certainly, and though the papers would still have a bloody field day with it, it’s not as though I could fall any further than I have already.
“You and Adrian are still as thick as thieves, I see.”
“He doesn’t know that I have them.”
I glare at her. I suppose she could be telling the truth, just as easily as she could be lying. The trouble is, I don’t know. I don’t think like these people, and I’m glad about it, but not thinking like them has always made my life far more difficult than it needs to be.
“And what do you intend to do with them?”
“Nothing, Christian. I’d never do that. Not to you,” Bridget says, sounding sincere. I’ve no doubt, however, that she would do it to someone. “I’m going to make sure they disappear from Adrian Brooke’s arsenal.”
“Well, do forgive me if I don’t quite believe you.” I sit forward and scrub a hand over my face. “Dirty fucking politics. What am I doing with my life…?” It’s not a question to her, and I don’t expect an answer.
“Making things better,” she says. “Being one of the decent ones.”
“Yes, well, it’s tough to do that when you’re surrounded by vipers day in day out, Bridget. Sort of makes it all a bit of a fucking chore, if I’m honest.”
“Yes, I get that. But there are still a few of us left. A few of us who want to see you back here fighting the good fight.”
“Say what you bloody mean, Bridge.”
She sits back and levels a very serious look at me. “I think you’d make an extremely competent Prime Minister, Christian, I always have.”
“Or perhaps you think if I’m Prime Minister, you’ll still have a job and not be ushered out with Adrian and Jasmine?” It’s said meanly and spitefully, and I regret it immediately. Bridget doesn’t look offended.
“Or perhaps I’m just sick to fucking death of trying to make idiots look clever.
Look, I buried my head in the sand and asked no questions last year.
I just assumed Adrian wanted you gone because you were a threat to him—anyone with a conscience and morals usually is—and so I backed the woman out of some misplaced loyalty to my gender. I’m paying for that now.”
“I won’t work with Adrian Brooke,” I tell her, as though this is the only issue that needs to be worked out. “Never again will I bend the knee to that man in any capacity.”
“I have enough to ruin Ade if you want me to, Christian, and when you’re safely in No. 10, I can do just that without any connection to you.”
I blink at her, stupefied, terrified. “Who even are you?”
She gives me a vicious-looking smile. “I’m him but without a tiny dick between my legs, and the entire range of female emotions to sharpen my wits on.”
“I think you might be the most terrifying person I’ve ever met.”
“Thank you,” she says. “So, is that a yes? Will you come back?”
“You can’t just make me Prime Minister, not even you have that sort of power, Bridget.”
“I mean, I could give it a try. But I’m thinking Chancellor for now—Lyle has cancer, stage 4, and he’ll be bowing out soon enough. Then you only have to move next door when the time comes.”
It’s cold, clinical, clever. It’s madness.
Is this even what I want? It had been once, yes, but now?
It would be terrible for my health, just like the foreign office had been; long days and short weekends, and work that never stopped.
But hadn’t this been exactly what I’d been telling Asher just last night?
How I want to feel useful again? Do a job where I make a difference.
Chancellor is a role that matters, second only to the PM.
I’d have to win a by-election first, and campaigning is a lot of work on its own, but I’ve never lost one of those.
What would returning to London mean for Asher and me?
Bridget could disappear those photos, but what about any others that may emerge, and I’d be once again putting myself under the kind of scrutiny that came with being in the British government.
I could be months away from having to resign in disgrace (again) if I said yes to this and kept Asher in my life.
And what could I offer him if I did? He is half my age and would someday want more than I can give him.
Why then is there a note of discordant loss singing across my chest?
Why then do I miss him like an ache in my chest already?
How easy would this decision be if he were sat in front of me now?
“You’re asking me to jump aboard a sinking ship, you do realise that?” It’s not my main concern, most incumbent governments were sinking ships, but it’s the easiest concern to address right at the moment.
She thinks about this. “No, I’m asking you to be the lifeboat.”