Polls Apart (6 page)

M
onday, 6
th April,
2009
, UK Newswire – The Social Democrats’ election campaign was said to be in disarray last night following the publication of an explosive interview with leader Richard Williams’ wife in a Sunday newspaper.

Anna Lloyd told the
Sunday Echo
that Williams had left her over claims she previously worked as an escort girl, despite having already been fully aware of her past, including a troubled childhood in which she was convicted of the manslaughter of her abusive stepfather.

The actress revealed she had killed her stepfather at the age of fourteen following years of verbal, physical and sexual abuse of both her and her then sixteen-year-old sister, Libby Howarth, now thirty-nine. The pair spent two years at Wellinghurst Juvenile Centre before being released.

Lloyd described spending years in poverty trying to support herself through drama school and her early years as an actress. During this period she admitted to working for the Mademoiselles escort agency for just six months. Lloyd told the
Sunday Echo
that she never had sexual intercourse with her clients and felt “deeply ashamed” of her past employment.

Most damaging to the
SDP
is the actress’s claim that Williams had been aware of her work for the escort agency and had been fully sympathetic to her plight until the allegations interfered with his political career.

Prime Minister Kelvin Davis last night said he was “deeply disturbed” by the way in which Williams had treated his wife and called for the Social Democrats’ leader to “do the right thing and stand down to support Anna at this distressing time”.

Last night Williams refused to comment to reporters waiting outside his Highgate home.

“
I feel like I’m finished here Henry. We’ve backed ourselves into a corner we can’t get out of.” Richard sighed deeply as he looked around the meeting table into the faces of his closest colleagues. Once again, another Monday morning planning meeting had been completely dominated by the negative headlines over his marriage. But today’s front pages were beyond anything they had previously feared. Even in their worst nightmares.

“She’s certainly left us with egg on our faces, that’s for sure,” Henry replied, in a typical understatement.

“I thought you said Joy had briefed her before the interview?” Sandra snapped at Henry. “Just what exactly is your wife telling Anna these days? Surely allowing her to plaster her darkest secrets all over the front pages isn’t good
PR
– even in showbiz terms.” Sandra shook her head to emphasise her dismay.

“Look, all I know is that Joy spoke to Anna before the interview but had no idea what she was intending to say. Until today, none of us knew Anna even had a conviction for manslaughter. Well, none of us except Richard,” Henry pointedly turned his gaze on his boss.

“There’s no point in us sitting arguing over the facts here,” Bob said, wiping a large bead of sweat from the side of his forehead. “We need to work out what we do next. I’ve felt very uncomfortable right from the start about Richard being advised to distance himself from Anna and I think now justifiably so. We have absolutely no chance of influencing her actions now. We’ve cut our nose off to spite our faces.”

“Well thanks for the ‘I told you so’, Bob,” sniped Henry, “but, actually, it’s not too common to have escort girls for first ladies at Number
10
. A little voice inside tells me that, were Richard to get back with Anna, the public might just have a little wobble about that one too.” Henry presented a self-satisfied smile in the direction of Sandra who gave a small nod in non-committal agreement. But Henry had managed to rouse a more forthright response from Richard.

“You talk about Anna like she’s someone I barely know, Henry. She does actually happen to be my wife so I’d thank you to have a bit of bloody respect if it’s not too much to ask,” Richard eyeballed each of his colleagues in turn. “What Anna suffered in her childhood is unimaginable to the rest of us and I never, ever want to hear another bad word said against her. Right now I have to live with what has happened and I need support from both of you.”

“Can I suggest that we see what the next couple of days brings,” Ray volunteered. “Things may well have calmed down by then. This could just be a little bounce for the Alliance Party in the immediate wake of the furore so let’s not be hasty. Are we agreed?”

“It’s certainly the most sensible statement to come out of your mouth in recent memory so, on that basis alone, I’ll agree,” said Sandra before breaking into her half-smile, half-grimace that had become the stuff of political legend.

“All right,” Richard agreed. “Let’s sit tight for another couple of days and try and get on with business. Maybe if people see us keeping a level head then they’ll be able to get past the headlines.”

“And maybe they won’t,” said Bob, folding his arms to signal his dismay.

Sitting alone in her hotel room, Anna was reminded of her early days when she was just breaking into the more successful phase of her acting career. Her first major
TV
role saw her take the part of a young lawyer in a sitcom called
Eagles
, filmed in Manchester. She was on set five days a week, meaning she spent an equal number of nights staying in the nearby Sheraton. When she first landed the part, Anna thought the hotel stay was one of the perks of the job. She could order from room service, never had to cook a meal and didn’t have to wash her sheets. Within about three weeks, however, the shine began to fade and she longed to be back in her Clapham flat where she could make her own cups of coffee with real milk, spread out on a comfortable sofa in front of the television and be surrounded by her own familiar belongings which gave her the closest thing to security she’d ever had. She quickly began to associate her hotel room with the loneliness she had been trying to escape since childhood. Now here she was again, left alone to feel the despair of the fourteen-year-old girl whose mother didn’t love her enough to stop Graham, her pathetic excuse for a stepfather, from mercilessly abusing her. A fourteen-year-old who came to believe that in some way she must have done something to deserve the pain and humiliation inflicted on her so regularly. But one thing Graham hadn’t reckoned on was Libby’s inbuilt sense of justice. It was the uppermost trait that Anna had come to admire in human beings – and thus her enduring attraction to Richard.

She had told him about her troubled past just six months into their relationship. They had taken their first weekend break together to a hotel in Cornwall and, after a long and intimate dinner, they had ordered a nightcap to be sent to their room. Once settled into the sofa, clutching their cognacs, Anna had known the moment was right to bare her soul. He had listened silently, holding her hand as she poured out the full story. From her mother, Linda’s, depression and decline into alcoholism after their father left when Anna was just eight, to her unforgivable betrayal when she turned a blind eye on the abuse faced by her daughters by the second husband she married two years later. Sadly, for Anna, she was Graham’s “favourite”. In a hushed voice, sometimes crying, sometimes numb, she told Richard how her stepfather would wait until he thought everyone was asleep before sneaking into her and Libby’s bedroom to abuse her. He had told the sisters he would kill them if they made any sound or dared tell anyone. But they knew it would be futile telling their mother anyway – because on one of his late-night visits Libby had seen her pass their bedroom door, obviously wondering where Graham had got to. She stopped just a few feet outside, turned on her heels when she realised where he was and walked quickly back to her bedroom. Her mother, Anna had explained to Richard, couldn’t bear to be alone.

“Couldn’t bear to be alone, but sentenced her innocent daughters to the loneliest ordeal of all,” he had replied.

“That was my mother,” she mumbled.

“What happened to her?” Richard had asked, sweeping her hair back from her tear-streaked face.

“She drank herself to death when I was fourteen. Libby found her, face up, covered in vomit. She’d choked on it.”

“Anna,” he’d said. Shaking his head in disbelief. “Then you were left with him.”

“Not for long,” Anna had continued matter-of-factly as she worked through the story she had been desperate to tell for years. “Two days after my mother’s funeral, he visited our bedroom, but Libby and I were waiting for him. We had planned it on the day our mother died. Before he had even reached my bed Libby stabbed him in the back. He swung round and lunged for her but I hit him over the head with the bottle of vodka we had found by our mother’s body. Then we ran. Our plan wasn’t really to kill him. Just to escape. But he died, and we were found two days later. We’d had nowhere to go and hadn’t even left Bristol, so the police picked us up by the bus station where we’d been begging for money to get away. The most amazing thing was how kind these officers were to us. When we were sentenced to the young offenders unit, one of them said he felt so bad about it he had thought about leaving the police. He couldn’t get over the injustice of our being punished after everything we’d gone through. But Libby and I didn’t care where we were sent. We were finally free. Nowhere could ever have been as bad as the place we had called home. Wellinghurst was like Fantasy Island compared to where we’d come from. Cooked meals, clean clothes – and no need to sleep with your eyes open.”

“Anna,” Richard whispered, folding her into his arms. “I’m so, so sorry. I can’t believe what you’ve been through.” He held her so tightly it almost hurt. “I don’t want you to ever feel frightened again.”

She had felt so safe in that moment. So accepted. But sitting in her hotel room, now with only herself for company, she had been transported right back to those dark days. Betrayed by her husband now as well as her mother. She was frightened and she was alone. The ocean of life had spat her onto the rocks where she would have to wait and hope for rescue.

The phone rang in Kelvin’s office just as he was helping himself to another cherry which he gobbled quickly up, spitting the stone into the bin before picking up the receiver.

“Yup,” Kelvin said, still processing the remnants of the fruit skin.

“Reggie Winecroft for you, sir,” said the operator.

“Go ahead.” Kelvin reached for another cherry as he waited the few seconds it took to connect Reggie. “I thought you were supposed to be at a family wedding?” Kelvin asked teasingly. “Don’t tell me you’ve run off with the groom.”

“Very funny, Kelvin. I just thought you’d like to know that the murderess’s husband is getting a further kicking in the polls following this weekend’s revelations.”

“Fantastic. We in front yet?”

“Not quite, but the
Daily Echo
are running a poll tomorrow which gives only a five-point lead to the Democrats. That’s back from ten points two weeks ago.”

“Well, that’s moving in the right direction,” said Kelvin. “How do we get on top now, Reg?”

“We’ve got to keep homing in on Williams’ heartlessness. That’s got to be the focus of the interview tomorrow on
Today
with Lizzy and Paul
. You need to appear genuinely shocked and upset by his behaviour. I’ll have a full briefing with you before nine a.m.”

“What time’s the interview?”

“You’re on at quarter-past eleven and we’ll be at the studios for ten forty-five, so plenty of time to go through it in the morning.”

“And how do I play it with Anna? I mean, do I want to be seen to be sympathising with a murderess?”

“She was sexually abused, Kelvin,” Reggie said dramatically as if announcing it for the first time. “The media have been pretty united in their support for her. In fact, most are painting her as a heroine of our time. One editorial I read this morning compared her to Evita. So, I think you need to be sympathising with her big time.”

“Fine. Now get back to your wedding – and make sure you let them know that it’s been bloody inconvenient letting you off on a Monday. Hope they appreciate the sacrifice,” Kelvin smiled at his own joke.

“See you in the morning then, if I don’t speak to you before.” Reggie hung up and Kelvin got back to his cherries.

Richard slumped down onto the sofa and took a large gulp of wine. It had been a long day and he knew he should try and get to bed before midnight but he was savouring a few moments of normality in his own home. He turned to look at Anna’s empty armchair and felt the now familiar lurch of his stomach whenever he thought about her. He had been an absolute fool to announce a separation so quickly, that much he knew. It had been the act of a desperate and confused man who had his eyes so firmly fixed on the finish line he hadn’t noticed the large foot sticking out from the sidelines waiting to trip him up. Right until the moment he had made the announcement outside of the college, he had trusted Henry implicitly. Now, he couldn’t help but hold him more than partially responsible for all that had gone wrong. Shouldn’t Henry have known to try and ride out the first few days to see how things were panning out before making the rash decision of cutting Anna off? With his supposed wealth of
PR
and press experience, did he not realise such a move would play badly with the voting public?

Worst of all though, Richard realised Henry had treated both he and Anna as little more than political commodities. He hadn’t stopped to think for even a moment about the carnage it would cause in their personal lives. Henry was only interested in coming up with fast solutions and soundbites.

As he had stood before the press and Bristol students that day, Richard had known almost as soon as the words left his mouth, that he was doing the wrong thing. And when, on the journey home, Henry had revealed he hadn’t even had time to warn Anna about the announcement, Richard had felt sick to his stomach. But there was no going back. In politics, only the weak and vulnerable are forced to make U-turns – or obvious ones anyway. He knew he would be eaten alive if he tried to go back to Anna now.