What Will Survive (14 page)

‘Plato? Not recently.'

‘Remember that bit in the
Symposium.
Someone, I think it's Aristophanes, says we all start out as a single entity but the gods cut us in half. To punish us, though I don't necessarily go along with that bit. Anyway, the idea is
we spend the rest of our lives looking for our other half, to regain a state of — of completeness. Shrinks would have another word for it, no doubt, but that's how I feel without Aisha.' There was a pause and he added, emphasising each word: ‘Cut — in — half.'

Amanda moved in her seat, leaning into the arm of the sofa. ‘That must be... hard to live with.'

‘Ask me in a year's time and I'll tell you.'

Her glance slid towards her watch. Plato? She could just imagine the editor's expression if there was much of that in the interview. She said, ‘Let's go back a bit. This was when? Can we do a chronology, starting with when you met?'

An hour later, her notebook full of dates and — she hoped — half a dozen usable quotes, Amanda was rescued by the arrival of the photographer. She introduced Emma to Tim, who seemed surprised when the photographer accepted his offer of coffee but left them alone while Emma set up her equipment. As soon as he was out of the room, Amanda gave her a look which Emma had no difficulty interpreting.

She pushed back her long blonde hair. ‘Hard going?'

‘You bet.'

‘Hmm.' The photographer's eyes narrowed. ‘This is my day off, I'm only doing it as a favour for Mark. I need to be out of here by five.'

‘Got everything you need?' Tim came back into the room carrying an earthenware mug. He had changed his shirt and his hair looked as though it had been plastered down with water.

‘Me?' Amanda asked, not sure which of them he was addressing. ‘Yes thanks.' She held out her hand. ‘You've been incredibly patient.'

Tim shook it, exchanged a word with Emma and followed Amanda into the hall. She opened the front door and a shaft of late afternoon sun fell on his face. In spite of the warm golden light, his features were once again as inert as a statue.

Amanda said, ‘I'll let you know when it's going to appear.'

He lifted a hand in mock salute. ‘Drive safely.'

She walked quickly to her car. Sliding into the driver's seat, she switched on her mobile, checked for messages and found one from Sabri,
asking if she was free for lunch the next day, Sunday She immediately returned the call but his phone was turned off.

‘Sabri, it's Amanda. Lunch would be great. I'm just leaving Tim Lincoln's house. God, what a day. Let's speak in the morning.'

She had been listening to opera on the final leg of the journey to Somerset, what Patrick had once referred to dismissively as Verdi's greatest hits. She ejected the tape, replaced it with something else — mindless pop, to shake off the bleak atmosphere of Tim Lincoln's house — and reversed so she was facing the gate. Half a dozen cellophane-wrapped bouquets were propped on the grass bank beyond the garden wall, already beginning to liquefy after two or three days in the hot sun. Barely glancing at them, Amanda waited for a gap in the traffic and turned left on to the main road.

PRESENTER
: With me in the studio is the Opposition spokesman on Foreign Affairs. Thanks for coming in. I'd like to start by asking you whether this latest crisis in the Party —

SPOKESMAN
: Look, I know you media people get in a feeding frenzy about so-called splits and things, it's your job. But I talked to the Leader of the Opposition this morning and I have to say he's totally relaxed, I mean totally —

PRESENTER
: With respect, you may not want to admit it's a crisis, but let me read out the headline in yesterday's
Observer —
‘Opposition on edge of nervous breakdown, admits senior backbencher.' That's pretty uncategorical, isn't it? Or this morning's
Daily Telegraph,
which is usually regarded as being in your camp: ‘Party in wilderness for decade, MP tells sixth-formers'.

SPOKESMAN
: It's not for me to comment on headlines —

PRESENTER
: The fact remains that Stephen Massinger, one of your party's most senior backbenchers, openly admitted last week that you haven't got a hope in hell of forming a government for the next decade.

SPOKESMAN
: Since I haven't had a chance to speak to Stephen myself, I can't tell you whether he's been reported accurately or not. What I can tell you is that we're united behind a new leader and look forward to giving the Prime Minister the close scrutiny he most certainly deserves.

PRESENTER
: In that case, it seems slightly odd that you were offered to us for this interview as soon as we contacted Central Office.

SPOKESMAN
: If you'd just let me finish, I was explaining that I haven't had a chance yet to ask Stephen whether he's been quoted correctly at what was, I'm told, a private meeting with sixth-formers from a neighbouring MP's constituency.

PRESENTER
: At which at least one reporter was present. Most people wouldn't consider that private.

SPOKESMAN
: That's something we're still trying to establish. All this has been blown up quite out of proportion after a Sunday newspaper, which
certainly wasn't invited to the meeting in question, picked up a piece of gossip from a local freesheet. The point I'm making, which is more important than some piece of mischievous tittle-tattle, is that since I joined the Opposition front bench three months ago, I have met ordinary party members up and down the country and been hugely impressed by the enthusiasm and dedic —

PRESENTER
: Once again, with respect, that isn't the point. What has happened is that one of your own MPs has broken ranks and admitted with quite extraordinary candour that the Party is a busted flush. And if someone as highly regarded in the Party as Stephen Massinger has no faith in you, aren't you a dead duck electorally?

SPOKESMAN
: You say highly regarded, which was certainly true until Stephen began having, um, personal problems.

PRESENTER
: I have to ask you, in that case, when these ‘personal problems' began to manifest themselves.

SPOKESMAN
: Colleagues I've spoken to who were present at the meeting have expressed concern about his — his emotional state.

PRESENTER
: Hang on, these are very serious allegations. Mr Massinger is not just a senior Opposition backbencher — his wife Carolina happens to be the daughter of Lord Restorick, a former Party treasurer. And the new Leader of the Opposition had sufficient confidence in Mr Massinger to offer him a job in the Shadow Cabinet after the general election — which he refused. That was only three months ago, as you've just reminded us —

SPOKESMAN
: Look, Stephen has for some time been regarded as at best a semi-detached —

PRESENTER
: This is starting to sound like classic smear tactics of a kind we were told your leader would not toler —

SPOKESMAN
: I am now terminating this interview. (Thump. Noise of chair scraping across floor.)

PRESENTER
: As we are on air, I should just explain to listeners that the Right Honourable Gentleman has left the studio...

Carolina Massinger was sitting at the kitchen table, turning the pages of a glossy magazine. The kitchen was long and narrow, fitted with cupboards of limed oak and blue ceramic tiles. To her left, on the end wall, a notice-board recorded the minutiae of her life: the flower rota for St Michael and All the Angels, a picture from the local newspaper in which she was posing with Stephen at a bring-and-buy sale, telephone numbers for the Neighbourhood Watch scheme, a list of dates when Stephen would be abroad with the Foreign Affairs Committee, the next three meetings of Family Concern, a letter from Nicky's head teacher about after-school activities and the mobile phone number of Carolina's hairdresser. There was also a menu from a new Thai restaurant, pinned up by one of the boys, and a couple of photos, one of a family picnic — Francis was standing up, pretending to eat a whole pork pie — and another of her leaving the flat in Charles Street with Stephen for a Buckingham Palace garden party. In the latter picture, Carolina was wearing a summer suit and an off-white hat with a wide brim, trimmed in pale green tulle; she glanced up from an article on fashion mistakes and saw it with new eyes, taking little comfort from the fact that, according to the journalist who had written the piece, even Princess Diana occasionally got it wrong. Carolina sighed and fiddled with the buttons on her shirt, which kept coming out of her waistband. She had caught Stephen giving her an appraising look when she was dressing that morning, and he'd asked her why she wasn't having breakfast — as if anyone would have much of an appetite in present circumstances.

The phone was on the table, next to a pile of newspapers tied with string. Carolina reached for it, stopped in mid-air and rested her hand on the bundle instead. She had reminded Nicky to collect them the night before and she saw now that the string was stretched across a picture of that poor woman, Aisha Lincoln, who had been killed somewhere in the Middle East. It was a fashion shot, showing Aisha turning towards the camera, shoulders bare and her head thrown back, in a midnight-blue fish-tailed dress. She looked so vivacious, Carolina thought sadly, remembering that Aisha had two sons a bit older than Nicky and Francis. How must they feel,
she wondered, and then she remembered a conversation with Stephen the previous week, not long after she heard about Aisha Lincoln's terrible accident on the radio. Naturally she asked if he'd heard the news — they were in her car at the time, on their way to dinner at her brother Georgie's — and Stephen had given her the blankest of looks. She sometimes thought he was so bound up with Westminster that he barely noticed what was happening elsewhere, and she'd had to remind him of the occasion a year or so ago when he had invited Aisha to the Commons, causing a mild sensation in the tea room. ‘Those poor boys,' she said, slowing down for the level crossing near Georgie and Henrietta's house. ‘Maybe I should write to their father,' she said as an afterthought, determined to be generous in spite of her regret that Aisha had not, as Carolina had secretly hoped, become a friend. ‘You barely know her,' Stephen snapped, then laid his hand on her arm, apologising and saying something about problems at the office.

He hadn't elaborated but it occurred to Carolina that the conversation must have taken place shortly before the farcical meeting at the House with those kids from Val Greenhalgh's constituency. What on earth had got into him? Carolina hadn't known a thing about it until Saturday evening, when the early edition of the Observer went on sale and reporters called from other rags, trying to get a quote. Carefully averting her gaze from Aisha Lincoln's picture, she picked up the newspapers and carried them out to the porch, where the previous week's bundle was waiting for recycling. Returning to the kitchen, she filled the kettle, still lost in thought, and almost jumped out of her skin when the phone rang.

‘Not again.' Carolina turned her head and listened as the wife of another MP, whom she hardly knew, left a bracing message. ‘The BBC's got it in for us, we all know that. Bloody Trots — don't let the bastards grind you down.'

Carolina raised her eyebrows and poured boiling water on to crushed camomile flowers, stirring it until the liquid turned pale yellow. She hadn't felt like lunch so she added sweetener from a plastic dispenser and carried the cup to the table where, with a sense of foreboding, she dialled a number she knew by heart. The phone was answered on the third ring and she managed to get out only her sister's name before Mercedes was in full flow.

‘Where have you been, Carolina? I've been trying you all day. Are you listening to Radio 4? The
Today
programme was bad enough, and did you hear that awful man from
The World At One?
'

‘Mercedes —'

‘Is Stephen there? I've tried his mobile but it's turned off. My God, what Daddy will have to say —'

‘Daddy's out of the country.'

‘He's in Canada, for God's sake, not the Hindu Kush. I'm amazed no one's told him. It was all over yesterday's papers.'

‘Not all over. I know the
Observer
had a big piece —'

‘And the rest picked it up. Did you see the
Sunday Times?
As for this morning —'

‘Sadie, at times like this I don't —'

‘Darling, it's no good hiding your head in the sand. Hang on, someone's at the door. I'll call you back.' She cut the connection.

Carolina's shoulders sagged. She turned her head and experienced the same jolt she'd felt daily since the new conservatory was fitted, obscuring what had been a sweeping view of the valley — the sloping lawn had appeared to merge with the woods beyond — from the open back door. The building work had been completed during the general election campaign, when Stephen was trying to drum up support for friends in marginal seats, and the family had not yet got into the habit of using it. Now Carolina saw the striped garden chairs she had ordered from Peter Jones, looking just as they did when she had ripped off the clear plastic covering; their only regular occupant was the family's elderly cat, Ziggy, who left a grey fuzz on each seat in turn. Lifting her head, she could just see his ears, visible above the arm of a chair, and remembered that he was due to see the vet for his annual vaccinations — another chore she would have to fit in.

Carolina closed her eyes for a few seconds, bracing herself for Mercedes's return call. She pictured her sister at home in Berkshire, striding up and down her drawing room in slacks and a navy blazer, wearing the single string of pearls — an engagement present from her husband Adrian — which was the only jewellery she wore these days. Mercedes had
been very pretty when she was younger, prettier than Carolina, but she had thin skin and it had gone into a mass of fine lines around her eyes; their Spanish great-grandmother, whose striking face, just too long for beauty, gazed sternly from a portrait in Restorick House, had quickly been bred out of the line, as Adrian had tactlessly remarked on more, than one occasion. Mercedes still drew glances, from a distance, but she had cut her hair short and had all but given up wearing skirts. ‘We're middle-aged, let's face it,' she said when Carolina remarked on her new hairstyle. Stephen liked long hair, Carolina protested, immediately on the defensive, although if she was honest it was quite a long time since he had said anything about her appearance — apart from remarking on how thin she was, circling one of her wrists with his thumb and forefinger.