David Belbin - Bone & Cane

‘Think this still works?’

Nick’s hi-fi had been in Joe’s attic since he was sent down. Time was, the first thing he’d do on moving into a new place was set up the stereo. Nick looked at his CD player. The machine was state of the art six years ago but now appeared bulky, with far more buttons than was currently fashionable. Nick couldn’t remember how much money he’d paid for it. A fortune, in cash. He never put much money in the bank, in case there were questions about where it came from.

Caroline was due in five weeks. Once they had everything inside, Joe hurried home to her. Nick moved boxes around, unpacked his meagre supply of kitchen equipment, turned on the fridge. He needed some stuff to fill it: milk, a pizza maybe, a couple of beers for when he got in tonight. He’d been scrounging off Joe and Caroline for so long, he’d forgotten what it was to provide for himself. The two grand Andrew had given him wouldn’t go far, and there would be no more, Nick suspected.

‘Gotta keep moving on, Nick. It’s the only way to do business,’ were Andrew’s farewell words, after handing over what amounted to little more than his walking round money. ‘Move on to where?’ Nick failed to ask. Despite the distance between them, the first call he made on his new phone was to Andrew. Nobody home. He left his new address and number on his old friend’s machine.

The Co-op on Alfreton Road had closed down, leaving Nick to try a minimart on the opposite side of the street. It sold newspapers. Before Nick went away, only newsagents sold newspapers. He saw the Evening Post and was intrigued by the headline. THE MINISTER, THE HOLIDAY AND THE UNDERAGE GIRL. It wasn’t the usual sort of Post headline. Beneath it was a photo of Sarah’s opponent, Barrett Jones, the paunchy minister for whatever was being privatised this week. Alongside was one of Sarah. ‘Distressing if true,’ she was reported as saying.

Nick bought a copy. Barrett Jones was alleged to have had sex with an unnamed fourteen-year-old girl, the daughter of friends he was on holiday with in Southwold. The Minister was thirty-five and between marriages at the time. He now had a daughter aged thirteen and a nine-year-old son with his second wife. The underage girl and her family weren’t named. It seemed the father had made strong protestations when, only a few months after the affair, Jones became an MP.

If she’d been fifteen and looked older, Jones might get away with it. But Jones knew the parents. That made it worse. What kind of man went on holiday with a couple and their kids, unless he had an unhealthy interest in the wife or daughter?

Maybe Sarah had a chance in this election after all. Nick would like to help her. He used to enjoy working on the elections. They’d canvassed together in 1983, even though it was just before her finals and he’d had loads of teacher training work to do. They’d worked hard for the Labour candidate in Nottingham South, Ken Coates, a veteran left-winger whom they admired hugely. The canvas returns were promising. Ken seemed to have a good chance, but lost by several thousand votes. That election campaign, when Labour was nearly overtaken by an alliance between the SDP and the Liberals, was the last time the two of them had been really happy together. It was the last time that Nick had been really happy, full stop.

Winston drove Sarah to the campaign headquarters, a three-bedroom council house on the outer edge of one of the constituency’s better estates. The canvas team were watching East Midlands Today on BBC1. Barrett Jones was the lead item.

‘The MP insists that the story has been hugely exaggerated and will answer the charges at a special meeting of his constituency party tonight.’

‘Like hell he will,’ one of the canvassers said. ‘According to the main news, the girl’s already hired Max Clifford to sell her story to the papers.’

‘Splendid,’ Winston said. ‘Nothing like a tasty tabloid interview to keep the story bubbling away for days.’

The local news report concluded with the chairman of the local Tories.

‘We’ll see what he has to say,’ John Pike told the reporter, tight-faced.

‘Wanted a go at the seat himself,’ Winston said. ‘Maybe he can still get one.’

‘Come on,’ Sarah told the others. ‘Let’s get out on the knocker.’

Much of the canvassing this time was being done on the phone, but voters still liked to know you’d been seen on their street. Tonight, most of the ones who wanted to talk wanted to talk about Jones.

‘I wasn’t going to vote for him anyway, but now I know he’s a kiddy-fiddler, he’d better stay away from our estate,’ said one of the fancy-front-door-to-show-she’d-bought-her-own-council-house brigade.

According to the dossier that Jasper had given to Sarah, when the Conservative party investigated the allegations made by the girl’s father, they discovered that no report had ever been made to the police. The girl, who had been studying for O levels, did not want to make a statement. The father had been warned of the dangers of libel and told that if somebody wanted to nominate him for an OBE for his charity work, the application would be approved. The girl’s name wasn’t in the letter Sarah had given Brian Hicks, but the father’s was. Brian had found him easily enough. The OBE had been relegated to an MBE without a by-your-leave. His daughter’s seduction still rankled and the father had been happy to confirm the story as long as her name was left out of it.

Sarah rang the journalist when she got in at eleven. There was nothing on the evening news about the Tory party meeting.

‘It’s just broken up,’ Brian told her. ‘They didn’t reach a decision. Word is, Barrett denies sleeping with the girl but the tabloids are having a bidding war over a kiss and tell, so the constituency can’t stand by him until it sees what she says.’

‘But nomination papers have to be in by Friday.’

‘Exactly. So they’re meeting on Thursday night to decide whether to select a new candidate. Central office want to take over the process but John Pike put his foot down. I’ve got to go. Cheers.’

Sarah poured herself a brandy. The flat was cool, but not cool enough to justify turning the heating on. She went upstairs for a sweater, warming the brandy glass in the palm of her hand. She thought about ringing Dan, inviting him over for a drink. It was late enough for him to be pretty sure what she really wanted.

She and Dan had been fine until he moved in with her, upsetting the equilibrium of what had been a casual, low-maintenance relationship. They were not quite in love with each other and didn’t want quite the same things, not in the long run. Dan, for instance, wanted children. She didn’t. Bed was fine, but, after two years, bed wasn’t enough. Tonight, though, bed was all she cared about. They hadn’t even had a farewell fuck. The thing with Ed Clark had put her off that.

Sarah checked her watch. Dan would already be asleep, most likely. If she put in a booty call, there was a distinct possibility that he’d say no, in which case, her pride would never let her call him again. So, instead, she got the vibrator out of her underwear drawer.

For Sarah, masturbation was always about memory. There’d been a big evening party at her grandad’s, the last one he’d had and the first that, not quite sixteen, she’d been invited to. She’d bought a push-up bra and was experimenting with hard contact lenses and hard liquor at the time. There were no boys her age so she’d flirted with a married man. Around midnight, she’d found herself in the bathroom, being felt up by this handsome, inebriated Scot twice her age. She’d gone further with him than she had with the boys who’d taken an interest in her. She might have gone all the way. Only, when he’d said ‘I’ll bet we could find an empty room upstairs’, she replied foolishly, ‘My room’s got a lock on it.’ Her randy Scot swiftly ascertained that he had a hand down the knickers of his host’s granddaughter and hurried back to his wife.