26

It transpired that even the little Ralph Hall knew about Davina Owens was false. She was not in marketing: she was a former model. It was not her house she had taken him to, but one that had been rented for the night. She worked part-time for a freelance press agency which specialised in undercover scams. They had been put on to Ralph by the Sun who sometimes used freelances in these kind of operations in case things went wrong and they could have a little bit of deniability.

Who had put the Sun on to Ralph, he could only imagine, but he clearly had an enemy out there. Not for the first time he kicked himself for indiscreet phone calls made from the car when he knew his London driver was a man who nurtured a grievance. But he couldn’t believe his driver had the initiative to set up something like that. No, it was someone with more clout. Someone after his job perhaps.

Once Ralph had summoned the energy to pick himself up off the doormat of his house, he had a shower, shaved and dressed, and then went to phone Sandie. Then he changed his mind and called Number Ten instead. He told the PM’s private secretary the facts – that he had got very drunk last night, he had been targeted by a woman and he had slept with her. The Sun had interviewed the woman and he feared the worst. He asked whether the PM had been told anything. ‘Yes,’ the private secretary had said, curtly. He asked how he had reacted. ‘He just wants to know the facts before he can decide anything.’

‘But he didn’t say it was curtains per se?’ asked Ralph, conscious of how pathetic and pleading he sounded.

‘No, he didn’t. As I told you, he’s waiting for the facts.’

Ralph said he was heading back to London, he would be saying nothing to the paper, and he would keep in touch.

‘Yes,’ said the Number Ten official. ‘Let’s keep in touch.’

He bottled out of the conversation with Sandie and decided to text her from the train instead. If he asked her to collect him from the station in the car, he thought, he could get her away from the reporters who would be sure to gather on his Pimlico doorstep as soon as he got back, and also use the short drive to tell her what had happened.

There was another photographer waiting at Newcastle station. ‘Damn,’ said Ralph, realising he should probably have got the cab driver to take him all the way to London. It meant they knew what train he was on so there would be more than Sandie to the welcoming party. Once the train had pulled out of the station, he texted Sandie to say his driver was ill and he couldn’t get an ordinary cab because of the nature of some government papers he was carrying. It was lame, he knew, but the best he could think of given his hangover and his general state of mind. ‘I’m jetlagged,’ she texted back. ‘Can’t you get another driver?’ ‘Please xxx,’ he replied. ‘OK,’ came the response, her reluctance clear.

The train was due in just after half past two. He spent most of the journey staring out of the window and trying to avoid conversation with the couple at his table. The man had nudged his wife and motioned towards Ralph as he sat down. She had looked a little perplexed, then her husband whispered, ‘Ralph Hall, the politician,’ and she said, ‘Oh yes,’ and smiled.

‘Just telling the wife,’ said the man. ‘Recognised you.’

‘Like it’s a fucking quiz game,’ Ralph thought of saying, but instead he just smiled.

‘You must get used to it. Sorry,’ said the man.

‘It’s fine,’ said Ralph. ‘If you can’t stand the heat and all that.’

He thought ahead to tomorrow, and the conversation his travelling companions would have when they learned they had sat on a train with a man whose sexual shenanigans would be all over the news, and possibly lead to his demise as a minister.

He studied the woman’s thin lips and imagined her leaning on a garden fence telling the neighbours, ‘You’d never guess for a second he was in trouble. Like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.’ Now she was looking at him, smiling.

When the food and drink trolley came round, Ralph bought a small bottle of white wine, a cheese sandwich and three bottles of water, which he drank so fast the woman opposite appeared mesmerised. As the trolley went into the next carriage, he pretended to be going to the toilet, but actually followed it in order to get three miniatures of whisky. Then he did go to the toilet, to drink them.

Another reporter and photographer greeted him as he stepped off the train on to the platform at King’s Cross. The couple from his table were just behind him. ‘What a life,’ said the husband to his wife. ‘Having the press turn up wherever you go.’

‘Do you have anything to say, Mr Hall, about the claims made by Ms Owens?’ asked the reporter.

‘I don’t,’ he said. He was aware of how ghastly he must have looked leaving Davina Owens’s place, so he agreed to stop and pose for a photo in the vain hope the paper would use this one rather than the shots of him emerging bleary-eyed and half dressed from what the paper would call the ‘love nest’, not to mention the shot of him throwing orange juice at a reporter. He also hoped that if they got a picture now, and got the message he wasn’t talking, they might leave him to walk to meet Sandie alone. He had no such luck.

He didn’t know how to begin to tell Sandie what a mess he was in. All these years, she had supported him and now he was about to put her to the kind of test no politician could wish for his wife. He knew how humiliating it would be, for both of them. But at least it would be more humiliating for him, and he was hopeful that she would see the whole sorry episode as a twisted way of getting his problem out in the open, and stand by him. Clearly, he would have to say something when the story broke, and he thought that Sandie would want to as well. He imagined her in one of her smart dark suits walking calmly down the steps from the front door at home, standing absolutely still until the media had settled and were listening politely, then telling them it would take much more than one drunken night and a newspaper set-up to destroy their marriage and their family. Then she’d hire someone to run the business for her and take six months off to help him fight the demon drink. Telling her about last night would be tough, but though he was almost sick with nerves, he retained confidence in her and confidence that, together, they’d get through this.

The reporter and the photographer followed him all the way to the car park, the photographer walking backwards and so drawing unwelcome attention to Ralph holding his suit carrier and his red box. Sandie was parked just round the corner from where a little queue of tourists were having their photo taken by the Harry Potter wall, Platform 9¾. Ralph was desperate for her to stay in the car and not get out to meet him. He hurried to the car, opened the boot, threw in his bags and jumped in. The photographer was crouching over the bonnet getting shots of both of them, Sandie looking confused, Ralph looking flustered. As he tried to shut the car door, he found the reporter’s body in the way.

‘Mrs Hall, has your husband told you about Davina? What do you have to say?’

Ralph banged the door hard against the reporter’s hip, three times, and eventually he was able to force him away and slam the door shut.

‘Go, go, go, Sandie. Go. Fast.’

But she was going nowhere.

‘Who is Davina? Who are these people? What is going on?’

The reporter was tapping on her window, asking if she realised she had a rival. The photographer had a fantastic shot of Sandie looking thunderstruck as Ralph put his head in his hands.

‘Please, Sandie. Please drive. I’ll tell you what’s happening when we’re away from these animals.’

Reluctantly she started the car and sped off. After a quarter of a mile, she turned off York Way, and parked up opposite a little hotel.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘What’s happening?’

‘I don’t know where to start.’

‘Start with Davina.’

‘Can I start earlier?’

‘OK. Start earlier, and end with Davina.’

‘I haven’t wanted to worry you but I’ve been seeing a psychiatrist for a while. About my drinking. I met him through a policy review and when I realised I had a problem I asked for his help.’

‘And he suggested Davina as a cure?’

‘Please, Sandie, don’t make this even harder. He suggested I try to stop drinking. But I can’t. I have been drinking quantities like you wouldn’t even imagine.’

‘You seem to think I’m blind, Ralph. I have seen a few signs.’

‘It’s worse than you think. Far worse. Anyway, it’s been going on for a while and getting worse and worse and last night I’m afraid I got absolutely smashed, and I seem to have been targeted by this woman and it turns out she was doing it for a newspaper. So the top and bottom is I’ll be all over the Sun tomorrow, and it will be absolutely humiliating and I will probably get the sack.’

Sandie had both hands on the steering wheel. She sighed and her head fell forward, almost hitting her hands. Then she sat up and looked at him. He was trying to read her eyes. There seemed to be more understanding than hurt or panic.

‘You know, I’ve been expecting something like this, Ralph. You’ve been slipping away from me.’

‘Sandie, I promise you it’s not what you think.’

‘Do you really know what I think? Do you ever take the time to consider what I might think?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘No, Ralph, you don’t, because you never take any initiative unless it’s to do with you, your work, your career. Things just happen to you, as if it’s not your creation – like this woman who “targeted” you. I suppose that’s your way of saying you had sex with her.’

‘Look, Sandie, I can barely remember meeting her.’

‘Did you have sex with her?’

‘I think so.’

‘You think so? That sounds like a yes to me.’

‘I honestly can’t remember, Sandie, but she will certainly say I did and much else besides.’

‘And what do you expect me to do in this situation?’

This was a question Ralph had not anticipated. He had expected Sandie to intuit what was expected, without him having to tell her, and regardless of how hurt and angry she might be. He remained silent, trying to make himself look as penitent as possible.

‘I suppose you want me to pose with you in front of the world’s press and talk about all the terrible pressures poor politicians are under, don’t you?’ she said. ‘Well, I’m sorry, Ralph, but I’m not going to be humiliated. I’ve given my life to your job, and now I want to do something for me.’

Ralph felt as if he was going to be sick.

‘Sandie, please don’t do this to me. I am going to lose my career in a matter of hours. Don’t take away my marriage too.’

‘You should have thought of that when Davina seemed to be targeting you.’

‘One chance. Just one chance. It might not be as bad as I think.’

‘Ralph, I don’t care how bad it looks in the papers. I care how bad it is. And it is bad.’

‘What if I give up the job, and I get proper help, and we try to make a new start of it?’

‘I just can’t see it happening,’ she said. ‘I can’t see it.’

Ralph could feel tears welling up behind his eyes. He hoped that if he cried, she might think again.

‘Please, Ralph, don’t cry,’ she said, looking as if she might break down herself. For a moment she hesitated, then she got out of the car and started removing his bags from the boot.

‘I don’t think I can take you home with all that’s coming our way,’ she said. ‘I suggest you find a hotel. That one over the road might do. I will put together some stuff for you and your driver can collect it when he’s feeling better. We can talk about lawyers in a few days’ time when the dust has settled. I will talk to the children and if they want to speak to you, they will. Now, in the name of God, go.’

He was stunned. He had imagined every possible reaction, but not this, not straight away, as soon as she heard. He stepped out of the car, retrieved his bags from the pavement and watched as Sandie drove off at speed. The road was empty apart from a bus making its way towards him. For a few moments he thought about jumping in front of it, but decided it was not going fast enough to guarantee killing him, so he watched it go by then waved down a cab and asked to be driven to the Health Department in Whitehall.

The call from Number Ten came five minutes after he got there. The switchboard operator, polite and friendly, said, ‘Good afternoon, Secretary of State, I have the Prime Minister for you.’ He then had to wait almost a minute as she linked up the various officials who would listen in to the call.

He knew from the tone of the Prime Minister’s very first syllable – ‘now’ – that his instinct had been right. He was about to be sacked.

‘Now, Ralph. I’ve made a couple of calls about this situation, and I’m afraid it’s not good. I think people might just about understand the sex thing, though it’s not exactly what they want from their ministers. But they will rightly worry about the judgement attached to getting into this situation in the first place. So having thought about this carefully, I’ve decided I am going to have to ask for your position.’

Ralph tried to protest, but the Prime Minister wouldn’t let him. The b in ‘but’ had barely left his lips when he was shut down.

‘You are more than welcome to pop over to Number Ten but I’m afraid there is no discussion about this. I’ve decided. It is tough, I know, but sometimes leaders have to do tough things.’ As he spoke, Ralph could picture the Number Ten officials scribbling that down as they listened, ready to brief the media on how tough and decisive and moral the young twenty-first-century Prime Minister had been.

‘Ralph, this does not mean that one day you cannot come back, and I will say some very nice things about you in the exchange of letters. What I advise you to do is try to save your marriage, work hard in the constituency and, though it pains me to say this, I think you need to see someone about your drinking. We’ve had a number of reports to the effect that you have been the worse for wear in public places, and I think you need to sort that out.’

Ralph was shocked that the PM knew about the drinking. He even wondered whether his reference to ‘seeing someone’ was made because he knew he already was.

He had uttered not one single word in the entire call, just half a ‘but’, and he had very little to say now.

‘Very well, Prime Minister. I have made a mistake and I understand why you want to deal with this before the media creates a great frenzy out of it. Just one thing. Could I ask who will be replacing me?’

‘Daniel Melchett, so don’t worry. The department is in good hands. Now you take care and let’s keep in touch.’

The line went dead and Ralph sat holding the phone in his lap, not quite daring to believe that what he’d just heard was true. He looked around his vast office. By morning, Daniel Melchett would be here, master of all that Ralph surveyed. For one, horrible moment he remembered how friendly Melchett’s driver was with his own. Surely Melchett, his closest friend in politics, wouldn’t be capable of such treachery? He started to dial his number. But what would he say? ‘Congratulations on getting my job’? It would not be an easy conversation. He decided not to call.

As it was Sunday, he didn’t even have any staff to help him clear his desk or make a cup of tea. He opened the top drawer, took out the hip flask, and emptied it in seven enormous swigs. Then he picked up the phone to call Martin Sturrock. He wasn’t entirely sure what the psychiatrist could do to help him, but he felt an overwhelming need to see him. Unfortunately, Sturrock’s phone went to voicemail. He left a plaintive message. ‘Martin, it’s me, Ralph. Please, please, please call as soon as you can. I am desperate.’

Number Ten had wasted no time in announcing his ‘resignation for personal reasons’ and the media were gathering outside. He persuaded a weekend security man to drive him out of the back. The security man said he could not leave his post for long, but would get him away from the immediate area.

‘Is this OK?’ he asked as they reached the south side of Westminster Bridge, by County Hall.

‘Yes, it’s fine, thank you,’ said Ralph.

‘Take care of yourself, Secretary of State,’ said the security man.

Ralph stood on the pavement and muttered the words ‘Secretary of State’ to himself. One minute he was. Now he wasn’t. He was no more or less important than the tourists heading for a trip on the London Eye. He watched two nurses laughing as they walked towards St Thomas’s Hospital, and reflected that they were still part of the NHS, and he was not.

It was getting dark, and the lights from the cars and buses and buildings gave him a headache, not helped by the cold and oppressive air. But he thought the Houses of Parliament looked more glorious than ever, lit up against a gloomy sky.

He stood and stared at the building, remembering the first time he arrived there as an elected member, and how Sandie had taken his hand as the cab took them through the members’ entrance, and said he could go as high and as far as he wanted and she would always be there beside him. Then there was his maiden speech and the nice write-up in the Northern Echo. He could see the lights on in the room where he attended his first select committee. He recalled his first speech as a frontbencher and the nerves he felt, even in a chamber nearer empty than full. And he thought of some of the great characters he knew, and the friends he thought he had made. Yet he looked now at this beautiful building as though it had just materialised from an alien planet. It had nothing to do with him any more. He was finished.

He had no idea where to go, so walked south down Westminster Bridge Road. Through the windows of the Crown and Cushion pub he could see a TV screen and pictures of himself at the last general election, kissing Sandie as his increased majority was announced. He stood at the window and watched the tickertape box at the bottom of the screen where the words were changing every few seconds as the story was being told.

‘Minister Hall sacked over sex scandal.’ Then: ‘PM regrets “tough decision”.’ … ‘Wife stays silent.’ … ‘Tabloid about to expose drunken sex romp.’ … ‘Melchett takes over as PM acts fast.’

There were about fifteen people in the pub. Only one appeared to be watching the breathless reporter standing outside Downing Street.

Ralph walked on, then through a side street into a local estate where he sat on a bench overlooking a tiny children’s playground, and tried to think. There was no one he could turn to. His dad was old and frail – the news might give him a heart attack. And besides, he felt far too ashamed to call his father. As for his children, there was no way he could face them in this state. The thought of spending a night in some anonymous hotel, worried that the staff might tip off the press, and even more worried that he might empty the minibar, filled him with dread. He had to get help.

He tried Professor Sturrock again. Still voicemail.