Gillian Slovo - Ten Days

Too frivolous. She turned her head and looked at him. Sharply.

Knowing that it always took her a while to come out of one of her glooms, he should have been more careful. ‘I depend on you,’ he said.

‘Do you?’

That acid tone again.

Irritation rising, he thought, that’s it, I give up. She, of all people, should know how burdened he was by work and responsibility. She certainly did know that the Home Office was the most perilous of all the great ministries of state, never mind the dangers attached to trying to unseat his Leader. And yet here she was playing her own petulant games. He had no patience for it. Not any more. If she wanted to tell him what was bothering her, she should come out with it. In the meantime, he would hold his tongue. He turned his head away from her to look out of the window.

Uniform blue sky. Women in skimpy clothes lying on brown grass. Roses that had flowered and withered before their time. Bloody heat. He found himself wishing for the end of summer even before the real summer was properly underway.

‘Are you having an affair?’

‘What?’ Of all the things that might be bothering her, this was one that had never occurred to him. ‘An affair?’ Ridiculous echo. Must do better.

‘Just answer the question, Peter.’

‘I will. If that’s what you want. But before I do, do you happen to have a suggestion as to who I might be having this supposed affair with?’

‘As a matter of fact, I do. I’d say it was your Special Adviser.’

‘With Patricia?’ Incredulity hyped up his voice.

She was in contrast very calm: ‘Do you have another Special Adviser?’ When he didn’t say anything, she continued: ‘I thought not. So, Peter, tell me, are you having an affair with your Special Adviser, Patricia Diaz?’

‘Is that why you phoned Patricia this morning? Were you checking up on me?’

He caught his driver’s eye again. He hoped the soundproofing worked, especially when Frances raised her voice to say, ‘Answer the question. Are you and Patricia Diaz having an affair?’

‘No.’ He lowered his voice. ‘We are not.’

‘Is that the truth?’ She was looking at him fiercely, as only Frances could.

‘Yes, it is the truth. Cross my heart and hope to die.’ He did it. He crossed his heart. ‘There. Does that satisfy?’

He could see, by the softening of her expression, that it did.

He reached across for her hand. Thank goodness she gave it to him. ‘Whatever made you think I was having an affair?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Your early rising. Your late returns. The way she looked at me when you both stepped out of the lift.’

‘The way she looked at you.’ Echo again, but needs must. ‘Come on, darling, that’s absurd. As for the hours I keep: the House is your second home and has been for most of your life. You know how extreme the demands are, especially when one becomes a minister, never mind a secretary of state.’

‘Yes, I do know. And I also know many MPs play away from home. Daddy led the hunt, if you remember.’

Not that he or, come to that, most of the country could forget. Her father (thankfully now deceased) had been a notorious philanderer. His womanising, played out in public, had caused his wife, and his four daughters, awful misery.

‘I would never do that to you.’

‘You had better not.’

He squeezed her hand. ‘I need you, Frances, by my side. I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardise that.’

‘Wouldn’t you?’

So plaintively asked, her question both warmed and annoyed him. ‘You have to trust me.’

‘I do. I will. But if you betray my trust…’

She didn’t complete her threat because by then they had arrived.

3 p.m.

The Lovelace was subdued. Doors open and people outside on the landings to escape the heat, but even the smallest of children, who couldn’t know what had happened, didn’t seem to have the heart to play. As for the adults, what conversation there was, was carried out in voices too soft to be overheard.

If it had been me, Cathy couldn’t help thinking, if it had been me. She kept checking her watch, wondering whether Lyndall should already have arrived home from school, and this despite that she knew it was too early. If it had been me…

She kept an eye out for the fox, but even that proved no distraction. Had it been real? And if it was, had it been sick? Or worse, rabid? Perhaps she should go home and phone the RSPCA.

She didn’t feel like going home. With the meeting due at her place later, she needed provisions. She counted the change in her purse: if she was careful, she could manage.

It was so humid that her skin was moist with perspiration and her throat raw. She needed water and she needed it now. Since she was just then passing the local Londis, she stepped in.

It was a small outlet, run by one of the Somalian newcomers to the area whose daughter went to school with Lyndall, and it was usually a relaxed place. But what she heard when she stepped in was a voice raised in anger.

‘What the fuck do you mean you can’t?’

She knew that voice and the man who, with his back to her, banged a fist against the counter: ‘You’ve got no right to refuse.’

‘Banji?’

He whirled round, looked at her and then looked right past her.

‘Banji. It’s Cathy.’

‘You think I’m such a fucking muppet I don’t know who you are?’ He turned back to the counter behind which Mrs Sharif was standing. ‘Just sell me a can — I’ve got the money — and I’ll get out of your fucking way.’

Mrs Sharif shook her head.

He slammed both hands down on the counter and pushed on them: he was about to vault over. And would have done so had not Cathy run up to grab him by the arm and pull him away from the counter.

‘What the fuck?’

She could smell his breath, sour and stale. ‘Mrs Sharif can’t sell you alcohol.’

‘Why the fuck not?’

‘Because she hasn’t got a licence.’

‘Oh.’ Fury mutating into something closer to confusion. ‘Hasn’t she?’

She could see Mrs Sharif inching along the counter. She was heading for the telephone at its far end.

The last thing anybody needed was more police. ‘Come on.’ She tugged at Banji’s arm. ‘Come, let’s get some air,’ and to Mrs Sharif: ‘Don’t worry. I’ll make sure he doesn’t come back.’

He let her lead him out of the shop, but once they were outside he shook her off. ‘Call this air?’ He seemed unsteady on his feet.

‘Are you drunk?’ But he’d given up all intoxicants. Or at least he’d told her that he had. ‘Are you?’

‘Are you?’ he said in imitation of her voice.

Walk away, she told herself, and not for the first time.

She did not walk away.

He looked awful. His trousers and dirty white T-shirt were what he had been wearing yesterday, and they were both now so crumpled he must have slept in them. Or not slept at all, which was probably the case: the whites of his eyes were pink.

‘What happened?’ The last she’d seen of him he’d been let off by the police with a caution.

The fury seemed to drain out of him then. In its place: a misery that crumpled his expression as he said, ‘They killed him.’

‘Yes.’ She felt herself relax. ‘They did.’

‘And I didn’t stop them.’

She reached out a consoling hand.

He jumped as if her touch could burn. ‘I was watching out for him.’

‘You did what you could.’

‘Well, it wasn’t fucking good enough, was it?’ His face was screwed up in rage, an unaccustomed sight coming as it did from a man whose manner these days was a non-committal containment that made him seem almost devoid of emotion.

Not so in the past. Then he had been quick to anger. And then he had also drunk a lot and taken other things besides.