Gillian Slovo: Ten Days

Taking the narrow stairs two at a time, he was soon out on the street. A few paces jogged before he began to run in earnest.

He liked running, especially when nobody was about. And although he’d slowed considerably since his record-breaking days, he still ran with the strength and agility of a much younger man.

He pushed his torso forward as if in a race, and then, feet pounding the pavement and sweat beading his forehead (no one being about), he vaulted the gate to the park and set off across the high grass, hearing it crackle as he mowed it down.

4.22 a.m.

Peter was sweating as he stepped into the shower.

He closed his eyes, tilted back his head and let the water wash over him. Might as well enjoy it now, because if this awful drought persisted showers would soon be replaced by queuing at standpipes and water trucks for rationed water.

But this was England: the drought could surely not persist. As a matter of fact, he’d yesterday heard a weatherman predicting an imminent reversion to the grey disappointment of an average summer. That would please the PM: one less crisis to fend off in these dismal times.

He dried himself vigorously before tossing down the towel.

Thirty years married and Frances was still offended by this habit. But he couldn’t rid himself of the superstition that the ritual brought him luck, and luck in great quantities is what he needed now. Courage, he told himself, and made to leave. In turning away, however, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. I look washed out, he thought, despite the sun. He sucked in his stomach and flashed himself a smile. He smoothed down hair that was only beginning to grey. Better.

Now for the finishing touches.

He pulled open the cedar doors of his dressing-room wardrobes and surveyed the rows of suits and shirts and ties. Not the fawn linen. Too flash for the House. Same for the beige. Not the dark blue either — he’d overused it recently — and certainly not the grey, which always seemed too lightweight. Black then, with a white shirt, and the mauve tie for a dash of colour.

It was an ensemble that, even as he put it on, felt heavy for a day that was going to break all records. But when it was this hot in the House, permission to remove outer garments was frequently granted and, having learnt the hard way how badly the thick dark hair of his forearms played on television, he knew better than to give in to the temptation of a short-sleeved shirt.

He sucked in his paunch before taking another glance, this time in the full-length mirror. Shoelaces tied; shirt tucked; trousers pulled up; flies zipped; socks smooth. Frances had trained him to carry out this check first thing and sporadically throughout the day. It was part of the game that politicians, even serious ones, had to play: cutting their cloth in obeisance to a world that judged them by standards they themselves would balk at. Another smile — looking good — before he went back downstairs.

There was a mug of thick dark tea waiting for him. He took a sip and grimaced. Nobody in sight, so he spooned in a couple of sugars. A few more gulps before he set the cup aside. He stretched up for Patsy’s lead while simultaneously holding out his other arm to ward her off: stray pieces of her brown and blonde hair on his suit would give the wrong impression.

‘Round the block,’ he said to her and to the policeman who, hearing him moving about the kitchen, had reappeared.

4.25 a.m.

Cathy’s galley kitchen was a wreck despite last night’s dinner having only been a takeaway. She managed to throw the cartons away, pile up the dirty dishes and pass a cloth over the melamine surfaces before the kettle boiled. She’d do the rest later; now she was desperate for a cuppa.

She opened the cupboard, gazing for a moment at the cluster of teapots before closing the cupboard and grabbing a mug that she rinsed out before making tea from a bag.

She took the mug down the narrow corridor. She went quietly so as not to wake Lyndall, but as she drew abreast of her daughter’s bedroom she was seized by an impulse to go in.

Don’t, she told herself. And then she did.

It was sweltering in there and Lyndall, who still slept with a night light on, had pushed off her top sheet to lie uncovered in her shortie-pyjamas. In the faint yellow glow from the floor, she looked uncharacteristically pale and deathly still. Cathy couldn’t even see if she was breathing.

She tiptoed across the room. Still no sign of life. Knowing that she shouldn’t, she lowered her hand to Lyndall’s forehead.

‘Geroff, Mum.’ Lyndall pulled up her sheet and turned with it to face the wall.

Embarrassed, Cathy went back to bed.

4.35 a.m.

When Peter came out of the house, one of the two waiting officers spoke softly into his radio while the other moved aside to let him pass. He opened the gate at the end of the path and let Patsy bounce through, even though this was against the rules, Patsy’s therapist having apparently decided that Patsy took Charles’s absences at school to mean that he was a discard and she the favoured child, which was why she kept trying to bite Charles when he came home. So now, apparently, they had to re-educate the dog into knowing her place in the family hierarchy, which meant never letting her lead the way.

‘Dog therapist!’ He might have said the words out loud, although the officers did not react.

They were good, this current team of SO1, the specialist protection branch, adept at keeping a low profile. He could hear them, a few steps back, their regular padding a companionable sound in this soft, dark night while Patsy sniffed the ground.

There was no light from any of the houses that stood back behind front gardens, just the shadows of the trees that lined this gracious street. Walking here he felt a sense of belonging and, yes, he was not ashamed to admit it, of comfort, especially when compared to the streets on which he had been dragged up.

Despite his irritation about this enforced walk, he did enjoy the quiet of the empty mornings. To move for once unbothered by what other people saw and thought and said — this was insomnia’s reward. Not that it was the smoothest of walks. The dog, having been fed, reverted to her usual irritating habit of setting off at such a brisk pace that she pulled him along (lucky there was nobody about to see or, worse, sneak a picture of him) until he grew accustomed to her pace, at which point she slowed right down so she could sniff at each and every tree they passed. She must have sensed that he was in a hurry because now she really took her time; they were halfway down the next block before she made her choice.

She stopped and squatted. He looked away (another of the bloody psychologist’s instructions) while she did her business and then, feeling a tug on the lead, reached into his pocket.

Damn — he’d forgotten to bring a bag. He couldn’t leave the pavement fouled; he’d have to go back. He glanced in irritation at his watch.

‘Here you are, sir.’

‘Thank you.’ He took the outstretched bag, wondering as he did what Joshua Yares, such a stickler for the rules, would think of that.

He scooped up the dog mess and, holding it at arm’s length, turned. ‘Your Commissioner’s first day.’

The officers nodded, all three of them simultaneously, although none of them smiled. They didn’t like Yares any more than Peter did.

5.15 a.m.

Forty-five minutes to the second and the new Metropolitan Police Commissioner Joshua Yares was back at his front door. He was sweating hard and, better still, had run out of his mind the worries that beset him before the start of any task.

No matter that he had landed the big one — chief of the Met — he was not going to expend energy worrying about the way they’d got rid of his predecessor or about the extent of the mess they were expecting him to clear up. Far better to begin with a clear head and an expectation that things would go right. And if they didn’t? Well, then he would deal with each problem strictly in the order in which it arose.