by Susan Lewis
Now, as he and his team walked alongside the famously controversial trees in the limestone lobby of Portcullis House, heading towards the coffee bars and eateries at the far end, Miles was briefing him on the rest of the day’s schedule. Though David was taking it in, at the same time he was recalling how uncomfortable he’d felt while the camera was on him. He never used to be publicity-shy, quite the reverse in fact – if he had a cause to fight he’d instruct his media people to marshal as many cameras, microphones and notebooks as the city could offer. And he couldn’t say he was exactly leery of the limelight now – or was he? Certainly he no longer got the same buzz from it, if anything it seemed to make him edgy and even irritable that the press were paying more attention to him than to those he felt to be more worthy.
After offering some words of support to a fellow MP from the north who’d recently been accused by the News of the World of engaging in three-way sex in his Westminster office, David assured him he believed it was a set-up, and stepped into the lift Miles was holding open for him.
‘Do you really believe him?’ Miles asked as he pressed to go up.
David eyed him levelly. ‘About what?’ he asked.
Miles looked surprised. ‘The sex thing.’
David shook his head impatiently, making it clear it was a subject he didn’t want to discuss. ‘Excuse me,’ he said as his iPhone bleeped with a text. With any luck it would be from Edith at the Foreign Office, letting him know what time the Secretary was due back tonight. However, it was Lisa’s name that came up, and experiencing the rush of pleasure he often felt when remembering she was back in his life, tinged with an unwelcome and unnecessary residue of guilt, he decided to save the message until he was alone.
As they walked into his compact suite of offices where Karen, his PA, was at her desk and piles of dossiers, letters and reference books were stacked around all available surfaces including the floor, Miles was once again relaying information from the clipboard he was carrying. ‘… and Tom Walker wants to know if you’ll consider taking over from Bill Wainwright when he steps down at the end of this term,’ he was saying as David hung up his jacket and went to sink into his large swivel chair.
‘Remind me what that is?’ David said, loosening his tie.
‘Communities and Local Government.’
David appeared thoughtful.
Miles allowed a minute or so to pass, then said, ‘Shall we get back to him on it?’
David’s eyes came to his. ‘Yes, let’s do that,’ he replied.
Miles made a note. ‘Remember, you’re also considering heading up two other select committees. European Scrutiny and Home Affairs.’
David arched an ironic eyebrow. Miles didn’t really think he’d forgotten, did he? No, it was just Miles’s way of spelling out how in demand his boss was. It made the highly ambitious lad feel good to know his fortunes were yoked to someone deemed to be on his way up again, and no doubt it was supposed to inflate David’s sense of importance too.
‘David,’ Karen called out from the next room, ‘I’ve got someone on the line from the Beeb. They want to know if you can be in the line-up for Question Time the week after next when they’re in Bristol.’
‘Can I fit it in?’ he called back.
‘I can make it work, if you’re up for it.’
David’s eyes went to Miles again. How would he react if he said he wasn’t? Badly, was the answer, so David said, ‘Then give them a yes. And make sure,’ he added to Miles, ‘that we’re up to speed on everything before I go on.’
‘It’ll be there,’ Miles assured him. ‘Actually, that brings me to the feature you’re doing for The Times next week? They’re asking if your er … lady friend would be willing to take part too.’
‘Her name is Lisa, as you well know,’ David retorted crisply. ‘I’ll talk to her. Now if that’s all, close the door on your way out.’
It wasn’t often he was brusque with his staff, particularly Miles, of whom he was extremely fond, but in this instance Miles had deserved it. David’s daughter taking exception to Lisa was one thing, for Miles to do the same was wholly unacceptable. However, for the time being he was willing to believe that Miles was far too sensible, not to mention caught up in the machinations of Westminster, to allow his concerns about the haste of his boss’s new relationship to continue being an issue for long. If his attitude persisted, Miles would be likely to find himself out of a job.
Knowing how much it would hurt him to let Miles go, he gave a troubled sigh and swivelled his chair to stare out at the spectacular view of New Palace Yard with its grand carriage entrance (out of bounds to the public), soaring tower of Big Ben and Jubilee Fountain. There was a time when this reminder of how privileged he was to be sitting at the heart of the nation’s powerbase had given him such a high that Number 10 had seemed almost as attainable as his own front door. Today, he could feel the tension of a headache starting to bite, along with the uneasy restlessness that overcame him more often than he’d care to admit these days.
He was baffled by it, and anxious about how he seemed to be losing touch with his usual ebullient self. Obviously Catrina’s illness had had a profound effect on him: watching the life drifting slowly and painfully from someone he loved and had been so close to for so long was the most arduous and heart-rending of ordeals. And it wasn’t as though he was expecting to be over it yet, of course he wasn’t, but having Lisa back in his life should, surely, be making him more upbeat and positive about the future than he seemed to be. He kept wondering if it would make a difference to the way she felt about him if he were to confess that he might no longer have it in him to get to the top. Since she was something of a high-flyer herself, she was presumably expecting the same from him.
Closing his eyes, he let his head fall back against the chair and took several deep breaths. These moments of self-doubt didn’t usually last long, so he should try to ignore them because experience had taught him that within a few minutes, half an hour at the most, he’d be back on form and just about ready to fly Lisa to the moon if it was where she wanted to go. He wondered what Rosalind, his fellow astronaut until now, would make of that, and almost groaned aloud.
The last thing he needed, or wanted, was a rift in his family. He loved his daughter more than his own life and wasn’t willing to tolerate even the thought of becoming estranged from her, but how on earth was he going to persuade her to accept Lisa when she’d got it into her head that he’d been cheating on her mother while Catrina was ill? However, he had to admit that contacting Lisa again so soon after Catrina had gone probably hadn’t been the wisest decision he’d ever made. It was too late to go back on it now though, and even if he could he knew he wouldn’t, because Lisa already meant as much to him, if not more, than she had when they’d first been together almost twenty years ago.
They’d been at Bristol University then, he as a switched-on young lecturer – or so he’d liked to consider himself with his anarchic views on the Establishment, passion for rock music and MPhil/PhD in Government – and Lisa as a second-year student, not one of his because she’d been reading French and Spanish while he was tutoring Politics. They’d met during a Fairport Convention concert at the Colston Hall where one of the university rock bands had managed to get themselves a gig as a support act – no small achievement considering Fairport’s line-up, and one that had to be recognised as such by students and staff alike.
He couldn’t remember now who’d introduced him to Lisa, he only remembered the crush of the crowd and the throb of the music and the overpowering intensity of the attraction that had leapt up between them like an electric charge. It had been so unexpected and consuming that he’d been unable to get her magnificent eyes, or lips, or the tantalising creaminess of her skin out of his mind for days afterwards. Had he not been married, and a father, he knew he’d have gone out of his way to find her again, but as flirtatious as he could often be back then, his wife and daughter had always meant everything to him. So even if he’
d been willing to risk his career for Lisa, he certainly wasn’t going to risk losing them.
This admirable resolve might never have faltered had Catrina not descended into one of her depressions around that time and taken herself and Rosalind off to Ireland to stay with her parents. It wasn’t the first time she’d abandoned him while in the grip of a black despair, and on both previous occasions he’d allowed no more than a few days, possibly a week, to pass before flying out to Dublin to persuade her to come back. This time, angered by her continued refusal to seek professional help, or to recognise that eight-year-old Rosalind wasn’t just his daughter too, but the very essence of what gave his life purpose and meaning, he’d told her to stay where she was until she’d damned well sorted herself out.
It was hard to know now, so long after the event, whether his uncharacteristic cruelty had been a shameful and ludicrous attempt to clear a path – and his conscience – for an affair with Lisa, but looking back from this level of maturity and honesty he had to confess that it probably wasn’t wholly unconnected. He’d become almost obsessed with Lisa by then, was constantly going out of his way to catch glimpses of her, and spent endless hours fantasising about how it would be to make love to her. Weeks, possibly even months went by after Catrina left – or what had felt like weeks and months – before he persuaded Lisa to meet him, in secret, but even then they’d kept everything on what, in retrospect, seemed a farcical intellectual level, their discussions ranging from the merits of modern film techniques to the justification of violence in the ongoing miners’ dispute, to the barriers of language between cultures. It was only when Catrina completely blindsided him by instructing a lawyer to start divorce proceedings, shocking him into a stupor and Lisa into – as it turned out – a false sense of security, that Lisa had finally agreed to sleep with him.
Recalling that magical night now, he could almost feel himself floating in the sublime sensuality of it all over again. She’d been so young and beautiful, almost ethereal, yet so alive with passion and a need to learn that even from the distance of all those years, it still seemed as though she’d cast some kind of a spell over him. At the time it had felt as if nothing else mattered any more. He belonged to her, and she to him. They would never be able to get enough of one another, even if they spent an entire lifetime trying.
He hadn’t realised that he’d lost all sense of how he felt about Catrina, because apart from Lisa all he was really aware of was how desperately he missed his darling little bossyboots and Bo Peep of a daughter. Even so, being with Lisa had felt so right and so necessary that it just didn’t seem to make any sense to fight to save his marriage.
Since there was no way he could continue at the university while conducting a relationship with a student that he wasn’t prepared to give up, he’d resigned his post at the end of the following term without any regrets at all. Or none that he could recall now, but why would he have had any when he’d gone straight into the property-development side of Catrina’s faltering interior-design business? Everything had been laid out on a plate for him there, and to his surprise he’d found the intensely competitive world of commerce and high finance a far greater challenge and stimulus than he’d ever expected.
When Catrina had found out that he was rescuing her company she’d immediately offered to sign everything over to him, since she had no intention of coming back, she claimed. For reasons he’d never been able to explain then, nor could he now, he hadn’t accepted. He supposed it just hadn’t felt right for her to give everything up so easily – or maybe, in spite of feeling certain he wanted to marry Lisa as soon as he was able, he’d been uncertain about her committing at such a young age. Then again, he simply hadn’t wanted to let go of Catrina and Rosalind. Speaking to his daughter on the phone most days and spending only brief weekends with her, when he flew over to Dublin to find her mother in a slump and her looking lonely, was breaking his heart. He still felt wholly responsible for them and wanted, more than anything, to be able to see Rosalind every day so he could get involved with what had happened to her at school, and take her out for treats and read her stories at night the way he always had. Though he did his best to hide this longing from Lisa, he clearly hadn’t been successful, because he still recalled the night she’d whispered to him, her voice full of tears, ‘One day we’ll have children of our own, and if it’s all too much for Catrina by then, coping with a child and her depression, perhaps Rosalind can live with us too.’
By then he and Lisa had been together for more than a year, and were still as besotted with one another as they’d been at the start, possibly even more so. It never even crossed their minds that anything would ever come between them, because in spite of the difference in their ages and ambitions, nothing mattered more to them than the time they were together.
Then one day Catrina called, out of the blue, asking if he’d go over to Dublin. ‘We need to talk,’ she’d said, ‘and I think it should be face to face.’
Though there had been no more lawyers’ letters trying to bring their marriage to a conclusion, he’d flown out there feeling so certain that she wanted to make their separation official that when she’d told him she wanted to try again, it had come as such a shock that he simply hadn’t known what to say.
‘Rosalind misses you,’ she’d told him, her anxious blue eyes glittering with tears, ‘and so do I.’
He could only look at her, unable to respond.
‘I haven’t told you this before,’ she went on, ‘because I didn’t want to get your hopes up, or mine either, but I’ve been receiving treatment for my depressions and I think … Well, the doctor says the drugs are working well and that I ought to start living a normal life again now. And I feel ready to, David, I really do. It’s as though a huge weight has been lifted off me, and even my parents are saying that I’m like my old self at last.’
How had he replied? What words had he used to try and express how pleased he was for her, while at the same time letting her know that it was too late? Whatever he’d said, he guessed it hadn’t been forceful enough, or perhaps he’d said nothing at all, because the next thing he knew she was chattering on happily about Rosalind and how important it was for her, for them all, to be a family again.
‘But Catrina,’ he’d finally managed, ‘you know I’ve met someone else.’
Though her lovely face had paled, she’d tried to cover her unease with a shrug and a laugh as she’d said, ‘But it’s not serious, is it? She’s very young, and I’m sure she’s not expecting anything to come of it.’
‘I don’t think you understand …’
‘She’s just someone who’s been keeping you company while I’ve been sorting myself out,’ she went on. ‘I understand that. I mean, I’m madly jealous, of course, but I know it’s my own fault that you’ve been unfaithful so I promise I won’t ever hold it against you. We can start again, David, but this time it’ll be better. We can build the business together, watch Rosalind grow – and it’s time, don’t you think, that she had a brother or a sister?’
‘Catrina,’ he said wretchedly, ‘I don’t know how to say this without hurting you, but Lisa isn’t just someone I’ve been seeing to fill in the time. I love her. I want … We’ve talked about …’ The look of devastation that came into Catrina’s eyes turned his words to dust. How could he crush her now when she’d struggled so hard to get back on top?
‘Are you saying you don’t love me any more?’ she whispered shakily.
Feeling his heart tearing in two, he heard himself saying, ‘Yes, of course I love you. I mean … Oh God, I don’t know what I mean. I thought, when you asked me to come here, I was expecting you to …’ Realising he was about to mention divorce, he let the words fade into oblivion.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, seeming to crumble before his eyes. ‘I’ve obviously got everything wrong and now I’m making your life difficult all over again and it’s not what I meant to do. I swear it. If you love her, then maybe it’s best you forget about me.’
‘No, I can’t do that, and nor do I want to. You’re still my wife …’
‘But if you don’t love me …’
‘That’s not what I’m saying. I do love you, and you’re right, we have to think about Rosalind, it’s just that I can’t simply walk out on Lisa. We’ve built a life together, we have plans and …’
‘But the company is ours, remember, and it was you who insisted it stay that way. I thought it was because you were still hoping we’d run it together one day.’ She swallowed nervously. ‘I’m sorry if I got it wrong,’ she added quietly.
He’d been unable to recall then why he’d insisted the company remain in both their names. All he could think about was Lisa and how she was going to take it when he told her that in spite of loving her to within an inch of his life, he loved his wife and daughter too, and he was very sorry but their relationship couldn’t continue.
What happened over the following days and weeks was as blurred by time now as it was by the terrible guilt he’d tried for so long to suppress. He guessed that various snatches of memory would probably never be lost to him, or his conscience, such as Lisa’s quiet, yet somehow explosive, acceptance of his decision, followed by the sheer awfulness of her moving out of their flat. Then had come the news delivered by one of her friends that she’d dropped out of uni before achieving her degree. Realising straight away that this was because she couldn’t face staying in the same city as him and Catrina where she could run into them at any time, he’d considered moving the business and his family to London, or Plymouth or even Dublin – anywhere, just as long as he managed to give Lisa back something that was hers. However, the company was already established in Bristol, and Lisa, wherever she was, was refusing to take his calls or answer his letters. All he ever received was a curt note from her sister, Amy, telling him to honour his decision and think only about his wife and child from now on and let Lisa go. ‘She needs to get on with her life, and so do you,’ she’d finished.
