A Place To Call Home (Willowbury)

by Fay Keenan

  Although it was blurred, being a fax transmission, he could just about make out a series of figures.

  ‘These are payments that Miles made to your predecessor Hugo Fitzgerald when he was alive and in office,’ Tom said. ‘Don’t ask me where I got hold of them; I can’t tell you or someone in the Town Hall will lose their job. They show that Miles was paying Hugo off to give his blessing for planning permission for the bakery extension, even though that building was ineligible for a hot food licence. And still is.’

  ‘So Miles was greasing Hugo’s palm to get the licence approved, using his clout, in return for quite a substantial cut of the projected profits.’

  ‘Exactly. Of course, all that went out the window when Holly came into her inheritance and gazumped Miles in the sale. She probably didn’t even know she’d done it. She gets the building, and he ends up out of pocket, having paid off Hugo for nothing.’

  ‘As a result, he’s trying to discredit Holly, ruin her reputation and take me down because I’m connected to her and, thankfully unbribeable.’ The irony of that statement, given his own career ambitions, was not lost on either of them.

  ‘Exactly. Miles has been keeping tabs on you and Holly, the odd photo here, the odd exchange there. After you two split, it was easy for him to pretend to be a "concerned friend", feed the story about you taking advantage of a local business owner sexually to AllFeed, who, unlike a lot of the more reputable online news sites, don’t tend to look too closely at what they publish, and make it look like you’re a sleazebag and unfit for office. People already think most of Willowbury is absolutely insane; it wouldn’t be so great a leap to paint Holly as a vulnerable, misguided woman.’ Tom raised an eyebrow. ‘Unless they’d actually met her, of course.’

  ‘That bastard!’ Charlie brought his fist down on the desk. ‘I’ll bloody kill him.’

  ‘Wouldn’t look good for your reputation, especially not at the moment,’ Tom said. ‘You’ve just publicly distanced yourself from Holly’s campaign after supporting her a few weeks ago. It looks like you got the publicity you wanted, and then dumped her to pursue your own career interests, plain and simple. It really doesn’t matter what story Miles fed to AllFeed; you’ve done enough to ruin your own reputation. And if there’s one thing the voters round here won’t stomach, it’s a lack of integrity.’

  Charlie walked over to the chair in front of his own desk and slumped in it, utterly defeated. ‘You’re right,’ he said bleakly. ‘I screwed it up myself. This thing with Miles is just the icing on the cake. If you’ll pardon the pun.’ He turned his gaze back to Tom. ‘So, what do you suggest I do, Tom? How do we get out of this mess?’

  ‘You have to learn something first,’ Tom said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘This is an important job you’ve got, Charlie. Everything you say, everything you do, every time you speak to a constituent, make a statement to the media, speak in the House, it matters. You can’t just go freestyling your way through it, especially not when you’re dealing with emotive issues like the CF medication one.’ Tom sighed. ‘Ten years ago, before social media and people getting their news from the Twittersphere, it wouldn’t have mattered so much, but now the traditional media outlets are often the last to pick up on a story. It’s usually trending on Twitter before it’s even a twinkle in a newspaper editor’s eye. You’re under scrutiny the whole time.’

  ‘I know that, Tom, and I’m sorry,’ Charlie muttered. He felt like he was standing in the head teacher’s office from his old secondary school in Yorkshire, getting a massive bollocking. Which, in a sense, he figured, he was. Although he was the Member of Parliament and Tom was his agent, he now realised that the titles meant nothing; not when it came to toeing the party line and being seen to do the right thing.

  ‘So, in summary, not only has the media made you look like you were using Holly and her family to boost your own profile, but now you’ve split up with her and gone against her campaign, you look like a callous, heartless bastard for choosing your career and selling them out. Add that to Miles trying to discredit your tenure here and you could not be in more shit if you’d fallen in the slurry pit of George Barker’s dairy farm.’

  ‘Governments make U-turns all the time,’ Charlie muttered stubbornly.

  ‘And get called out on it by the press and the voters,’ Tom retorted. ‘You’re not going to just be able to walk away from this.’

  ‘Again, Tom, I know that, and I’m sorry.’ Charlie rubbed a hand over his eyes. ‘The question is, how do I get myself back out of it?’

  Tom slumped back down into the office chair. The man looked exhausted, and Charlie appreciated, not for the first time, just how hard Tom worked behind the scenes to keep the Charlie Thorpe show on the road. The hours of preparation that went into every event obviously took its toll on him, and managing the fallout from each one, too. His majority might be safe now, but that could very swiftly change. Especially in the light of a scandal or perceived poor decision. Constituents might be forgiving of certain things, but, as a more senior Member of Parliament said to him shortly after he’d been appointed, echoing Tom’s warning, integrity was all.

  ‘So, what do I do?’ Charlie asked again. ‘There’s got to be a way out of this mess somehow.’

  Tom glanced back up at Charlie. ‘It depends what you’re prepared to lose.’

  Charlie’s heart went through the floor. On the one hand, he could keep quiet, hope Cora Mellish remembered his sacrifice and aim for promotion. It would be the first rung on a ladder that he’d aspired to for most of his twenties. It would be a challenge to brazen this all out; to move on and forget Holly and the campaign. He’d have to wash his hands of them, and focus on climbing the greasy pole to greater ministerial responsibility, in the hope that, when he got there, he’d be able to wield more influence. On the other hand, there was Holly and her family. And Harry, whose time could be limited if he didn’t get access to the life-altering CF drugs. He could throw himself wholeheartedly behind their campaign, go against the warning from Cora and put his job not just at risk, but also perhaps lose it all together. It was a politician’s worst nightmare; head versus heart. Passion versus pragmatism.

  ‘Honestly, Tom?’ Charlie said, shaking his head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I can’t help you make that decision, Charlie.’ Tom spoke gruffly. Charlie knew he was a man unaccustomed to making spontaneous physical contact, so he was jolted when Tom put a hand on his shoulder. ‘But I will help you, whichever way you decide to go. Just remember that this is more than just a game. There are people’s lives at stake with every decision you and your colleagues make. The question is, how best can you do your part to help them? And that’s up to you to decide.’

  As Charlie left the office that night, he knew he had a lot of thinking to do, and not a lot of time to do it in. Never more had he ached for Holly.

  45

  Holly returned to Willowbury feeling more than a little bit confused. How could it be that, while her heart was still breaking, she felt so elated by the coverage from the demonstration? Although the media attention had, at first, been unsettling, she saw it as shining a much-needed light on a very important issue, and she was pleased that, through the media, she’d been able to reach out to so many people. What Charlie had been unable to accomplish, perhaps she and the other campaigners, through more grass-roots action, could achieve.

  As she let herself back into her flat that evening, she allowed herself another quick search of Twitter to see if there were any more developments on the case. Alongside the usual hashtags, and the cringe-inducing #GreenGoddess one, she noticed a couple of links to a story on one of the more sensationalist so-called news websites, AllFeed. With growing incredulity, she read the story, heart thumping faster and faster as she took in the full extent of it.

  ‘What the hell…?’ she murmured. She saw the same blurred photographs, obviously pinched from some tourist’s Instagram feed, and felt a rising sense of horror and out
rage. How dare they say those things about her and Charlie? Damsel in distress, indeed! The thought of selling herself to Charlie in exchange for his political help was sickening and would do absolutely no good for the CF medication campaign.

  Re-reading it carefully, to be absolutely sure she wasn’t misunderstanding anything, she wondered, finally, who the ‘concerned source’ had been. Could they even get away with printing something like this uncorroborated? Even in these days of so-called ‘Fake News’?

  She sat down in her armchair, head spinning, and not just because she hadn’t eaten since lunchtime. What should her next move be? A small voice told her to call Charlie; they needed to talk about the full implications of a story like this, for both of them. But what, reasonably, could they do? A denial would just fan the flames, and they’d split up anyway, so it wouldn’t bring them back together. But who else could she talk to? Rachel would just tell her to laugh it off, to forget about it; it was a non-news story. But it damaged her credibility, as a woman, a campaigner and a business owner. She had to find out who’d fed AllFeed the story and she needed to do something about it. But how could she?

  While she was mulling all this over, her phone pinged with a message. Heart thumping, she swiped the screen. She’d deleted Charlie’s number from her phone when they’d had their last face-to-face conversation, so for a moment she didn’t realise the message was from him, but as she read it, there was no doubt.

  I know I’m the last person you want to see right now, but I think we need to talk. Are you at home?

  She sighed. He was right, of course, but that didn’t make the prospect of it any easier. And after two full on days in London, she really couldn’t face seeing him tonight. Should she reply, or just ignore the text? With some messaging apps, it was possible to see if someone had opened a message, but, thankfully, Charlie had sent her an old-fashioned text message so he had no way of knowing if she’d read it or not. That, at least, gave her a few minutes to think about how best to respond.

  But what was the point? It wasn’t as if they were going to go on record and respond to what was, essentially a Fake News story, fed to a scurrilous news website to discredit them both. Getting together to talk and agonise about that wouldn’t make a scrap of difference. And, actually, seeing Charlie would be far too painful.

  Before she could think twice about it, and to make sure that he didn’t just rock up at her door, she sent him back a swift response.

  Not much to say, really. Better to just ignore it and get on with things. Nothing we can do.

  As she sent it, she knew she was avoiding another confrontation, but she also knew it was far better for her own mental health to put some distance between herself and Charlie. And it was definitely better for them both not to be seen together.

  ‘Hey, gorgeous,’ she called as Arthur came strolling through his cat flap and jumped onto her lap. ‘I hope Isabella remembered to feed you before she shut up shop tonight.’ Since he didn’t seem to be complaining for his dinner, Holly assumed that was the case.

  Leaning back in the armchair, she soon found herself becoming drowsy. As she drifted off, she was assailed by dreams of herself as a medieval maiden in a long, flowing yellow dress, and Charlie as some kind of Black Knight, flinging her over the rump of his horse and absconding with her. If the AllFeed news story hadn’t been so offensive, the dream would almost have been funny.

  The next morning, it was a relief to open the door to her shop and get back to being the retailer she was by trade. So much of her attention had been distracted by Charlie, and the CF campaign lately, that she was losing sight of the passion that had driven her to open ComIncense in the first place. This place, and her family, were all that mattered. It was about time she focused on them. Harry seemed to be doing fine and she was looking forward to catching up with him one evening this week.

  The morning was beautifully quiet and sunny, so Holly busied herself in tidying up a few of the shelves, rearranging the altar candles into a more regular pattern, instead of the slightly random configuration that had grown organically as the range in one corner of the shop had expanded. She smiled sadly as she remembered selling the beeswax ones to the hesitant new Pagan, and Charlie’s suggestively raised eyebrow as she’d wrapped them. She’d loved his slightly schoolboy sense of the naughty.

  She had a look at the apothecary’s jars behind the counter, too, and made a note of which ones needed reordering. The lavender needed a top-up, and, so did the heartsease. She wasn’t sure what would ease her heart, though, no matter how busy she kept herself.

  As she turned away to her notebook again to add it to the reorder list, she didn’t notice someone coming through the front door of the shop. In fact, he made it all the way to the counter before she realised. Glancing up, she blinked in shock, then composed her face into a more welcoming smile.

  ‘Oh hi,’ she said quickly. ‘You startled me. I was just sorting out some order notes.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Tom Fielding smiled tightly but apologetically. ‘I wasn’t sure I’d find you here today. Didn’t know if the demonstration was still going on.’

  ‘No, not until next month now,’ Holly replied. ‘And I do have a business to run.’

  ‘Of course.’ He paused. ‘Have you spoken to our mutual friend?’

  Holly felt her cheeks start to burn as she shook her head. ‘I thought it would be better to put some distance between ourselves and that crappy news story. And, as far as anything else is concerned, there’s not really a lot to say now, is there?’

  ‘He really is very sorry, Holly,’ Tom said quietly. ‘He knows that, in your eyes, and the eyes of pretty much everyone else, he’s acted reprehensibly. But you must understand that he had some quite significant pressure put on him from a higher power. He might have been a researcher for most of his career, but it didn’t quite prepare him for the machinations of Westminster life as an MP.’

  ‘So, someone put pressure on him. What about his principles, his beliefs? He told me he would help us.’

  ‘I know that, but you must know that things change very quickly in this game. What seems right one day can cause all sorts of problems the next.’

  ‘So that’s all me and my family are to him now?’ Holly could feel her temper rising, but, realising she’d be lashing out at the wrong person, she tried to quell it. ‘Harry’s just a problem, is he?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Tom replied. ‘Charlie’s very fond of Harry, and I know that he, well, as far as I can read it, he’s a bit more than just fond of you.’

  ‘Well, he’s got a funny way of showing it,’ Holly replied. ‘I suppose he asked you to come here and speak to me, did he? Is he hiding out at home, or has he buggered off back to London?’

  ‘No, he didn’t,’ Tom said. ‘He doesn’t know I’m here. And I didn’t come here to defend him. I know it’s difficult, Holly, but you’re both adults and you’ll work it out. I’m actually here about the source of that AllFeed story.’

  Holly’s head snapped up again from her order book. ‘Do you know who it was?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure it was Miles Fairbrother.’

  Holly sighed. ‘Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. He’s had it in for me since I bought this place.’

  ‘There’s a bit more to it than that,’ Tom said and, glancing behind him, showed her the piece of paper he’d shown to Charlie the day before.

  ‘I don’t understand…’

  As Tom explained, Holly’s face drained of all colour.

  ‘I had no idea he’d been paying off Hugo. No wonder he’s pissed off. And you reckon he wants rid of Charlie because of his association with me. What a toxic bastard.’

  ‘Of course, there’s no way to prove it, but this is pretty strong circumstantial evidence,’ Tom said. ‘My advice to you is to let it lie, though. Issue a denial and the story’ll keep running. Confront Miles and he’ll just deny it anyway. You’ve nothing to gain.’

  ‘Is this what it’s always going to be like for C
harlie?’ Holly mused, half to herself. ‘Having to watch his step all the time, be careful who he pisses off, careful who he… who he loves?’

  ‘I’m afraid it goes with the territory,’ Tom said. ‘There’ll always be someone who wants to either take him down or exploit him politically. He’s a good man, though, Holly, even though you find that hard to believe at the moment. And he does still want to find a solution to all this. The problem is, he’s learning all the time.’ He sighed. ‘I think it was one of the more recent Prime Ministers who said that you enter office at your least competent and get booted out when you’re the most capable. He’s not been in the job that long.’

  ‘I know,’ Holly said. ‘But I’m just so angry with him. I put my faith in him to support us no matter what, and at the first sign of difficulty he’s dropped us.’

  ‘Give him time, Holly.’

  ‘Harry doesn’t have time,’ Holly said bleakly. ‘That’s the one thing I just can’t afford to do.’

  Tom held her gaze for another moment and then shook his head and bade her goodbye. As she watched him leave, she ruminated on all he’d told her. She might have a few more of the puzzle pieces in her possession now, but she still had no idea how to put them together.

  46

  Charlie, unable to face a lonely weekend in Willowbury with no Holly to lighten his days, got back on the train to London on Friday morning. It was supposed to be his constituency surgery day, but he’d cried off, making his excuses to Helen, his office manager and case worker, that he had a cold. He was pretty sure she didn’t believe him, but at that point he didn’t care. He just had to get out.

  He spent the day hiding out in his office, but when he couldn’t face the four walls any longer, and still unable to endure being in the Farringdon flat alone, he headed to the bar. He wasn’t a habitual visitor to the bar, needing to keep a clear head in his first few months in the job, and feeling like an interloper at times in this very well-established club. Tonight, however, he didn’t want to go back to his poky flat and brood, yet again, on all that he had done, all that he had lost. So he figured he might as well do the brooding in the bar, instead.