by Carys Jones
‘Eggs Benedict,’ Charles said the words aloud to his empty living room. It was Lorna’s favourite breakfast and she would order it each and every morning after they had spent the night together. She had tried it for the first time when they stayed at The Ritz and instantly loved it and would eat nothing else. Charles loved to watch her delight over the meal, savouring each bite. Lorna had a genuine love for life, from the food she ate to the movies she watched and the music she listened to. She was so passionate about everything and it was contagious. Charles was the happiest he had ever been, simply from having her in his life. But the reality of his situation was beginning to encroach upon their fantasy. One rare morning when he was at home, his wife got up and served him eggs Benedict, which promptly made Charles retch. The horror of who he was, of what he had become, was too much to bear. But Lorna was like a drug which he just could not get enough of. Away from her, he pined and longed for her; with her in his arms, he felt complete, content. He felt like he was home.
It was Faye who noticed. How could she not, with the affair being conducted right beneath her nose? She had remained silent for the best part of six months, turning the other cheek when Charles would request that Lorna work late for the fifth time that week. But as the months passed, she grew increasingly worried that her boss’ extra-curricular activities would cost him dearly if they were exposed, and that ultimately she too would be scalded when news of the affair boiled over. Her own reputation would become tarnished for having stood so close to a scandal. Faye couldn’t afford for that to happen; she had worked too hard for a rampant young intern to ruin things for her.
‘Your coffee.’ Faye placed the black coffee with a side of daily newspapers down and Charles looked up at her, surprised. Faye never entered his office uninvited, even to perform her usual duties.
‘I presume that Lorna will be working late for you this evening.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ Charles answered, frowning in bemusement at the statement.
‘You work her very hard.’
‘Mmm, yes.’ Charles’ interest had already begun to wane as he started to peel back the front page of a newspaper.
‘Or is it the other way around, and she is the one who works you hard?’ It was a tacky comment, Faye was aware of that, and her crass approach was the culmination of months spent biting her tongue. Charles’ eyes grew wide with horrified understanding.
‘Thank you Faye, that is all,’ he said coldly, eager to dismiss his assistant.
Alone he contemplated the reality of his situation. People knew of his indiscretions, or if they didn’t they soon would. He could potentially lose everything, and more than that, he had let so many people down; Elaine to whom he had vowed to forsake all others and Lorna, who deserved more than a man who was already married. She was beautiful and vivacious; she should be treated like a princess not hidden in dark corners like a dirty whore.
Charles felt shame wash over his expensive suit and sink down to his skin. He felt filthy with it. He wanted to shower, to purge himself of his sins but he knew they would never wash away. He had been so consumed by his infatuation with Lorna that he had forgotten who he was. Charles Lloyd was the Deputy Prime Minister andhe was married. The relationship with Lorna had to end, else the two things that defined him would be gone. He sighed in despair and felt his heart ache within his chest. Running his hands across his desk, he recalled how he had held Lorna there, naked and damp in his arms; how his entire body had pulsated with desire. He remembered the words his father had once uttered to him; ‘passion has no place in politics’. How right he had been.
The evening unfolded as it always did. Charles would steal away to a suite at a fancy London hotel; shortly after Lorna would join him, always girlish and giggling, enjoying the way their rendezvous felt akin to espionage. Normally, his lust would overwhelm him and they would be making love even before the door had fully closed, but not this night. Charles stood, watching his beautiful temptress with sad eyes. Lorna regarded his unusual behaviour with confusion, before her own angelic features dropped. She’d had this conversation before; she knew how it went.
‘Your internship is almost up,’ Charles noted solemnly.
‘Yes, yes it is.’ Lorna hovered near the door, still wearing her black trench coat, unsure whether or not she should make herself more comfortable.
‘And you’ll be moving on to new things.’ Charles had to force his words as his throat attempted to seal them in.
‘Yes.’
‘So I think …’ The Deputy Prime Minister failed to finish his sentence, probably because he didn’t want to. His feelings for Lorna had not changed, he cared for her now more than ever.
‘You don’t have to say it, I understand.’ Lorna’s eyes grew heavy as she spoke, as past pain began to surface. Charles realised how little he knew about the woman who had successfully stolen his heart. He wanted to take his words back; he didn’t like seeing Lorna like this, so subdued. She wanted her as she was; bubbly and effervescent.
‘I have a wife,’ Charles choked on his words now and pinched his eyes closed, willing his tears not to fall. He was anguished by his betrayal to Elaine but also to the handcuffs which his marriage had placed upon him. As a single man, he could have taken Lorna out to meals, to the theatre. They could have dated properly and one day … who knew? Instead, their courtship was resigned to hotel rooms and had worn an expiry date ever since their first kiss.
‘It really is okay.’ Lorna took a deep breath before placing a delicate hand on the door handle behind her, preparing to leave.
‘We both knew what this was, that we wouldn’t be walking off in to the sunset together.’ She hesitated before suddenly walking over to Charles and gently placing a kiss upon his cheek.
‘It’s been a great six months,’ she smiled at him sadly.
‘The best.’ Charles watched her leave the room, his cheek still warm from the touch of her soft lips.
In the confinements of his lounge, Charles raised his hand and touched the cheek where Lorna had placed her last kiss to him which was now wet from his own tears. Their goodbye had been bittersweet. Lorna was accepting and dignified, he had no reason to believe that she was hurting. Could his ending their affair have driven her to take her own life? Charles wouldn’t believe it. Lorna Thomas was a happy, stable young woman. Whatever made her so desperate that so no longer wanted to go on living, it couldn’t have been him.
Charles finished his glass of scotch and felt it drop down into the hole which had formed inside him. A hole so cavernous and empty that he knew he would never be able to fill it. He now lived in a world where Lorna did not exist and he felt inside that a part of himself had died with her.
Chapter Three
And these wounds won’t seem to heal
Charles awoke as he always did, hot and panting, staring sightlessly in to the empty darkness of his bedroom. The sheets around him were soaked from his sweat.
With his heart pounding frantically in his chest, he tried to remind himself that it was all just a nightmare, that everything was fine. But in his dreams he saw her, falling away from him and no matter how hard he tried, how far he stretched, he couldn’t catch her.
Six months had passed since Lorna’s tragic death. Charles Lloyd had watched the seasons change twice over with an indifferent eye. He felt detached from the world around him, lost. Not that anyone could notice; outwardly he appeared his usual charismatic self, smiling for the cameras, shaking hands and continuing to represent his country as best he could. Internally, he was a mess.
Physically, Lorna was gone, but she haunted Charles’ dreams as she had done since he decided to end their affair. However, she now plagued his sleep with more ferocity, meaning that Charles was robbed of the little rest he managed to get. The moment he closed his eyes and felt blissfully transported from the reality where he felt constant pain, she would come to him through the darkness. It was always the same dream; Charles forever trapped in the moment when she kissed hi
m goodbye on the cheek in a hotel room. However, in his dream she then doubles over in pain and collapses to the floor, dying right before his eyes. Unable to witness her demise, he tries to force himself to wake. Just before Lorna gasps her last breath he awakens in his bed, the sheets sodden from his sweat.
Elaine had grown so tired of his ‘night terrors’ that she had relocated him to the spare bedroom, which suited Charles just fine. He felt like a fraud around his wife, mourning for another woman and struggling to even look her in the eye when they talked.
Charles assumed that his nightmares were just his way of exorcising any guilt he was harbouring about Lorna’s suicide. Surreptitiously, he had gotten hold of the police report from Lorna’s crash. She had driven her car into a tree and died immediately on impact. Charles wanted to believe that it was an accident, but the words were there for him to see in stark black and white, cold and devoid of emotion in their summary of the situation; verdict, death by deliberate means. Suicide. As Deputy Prime Minister, Charles wielded certain powers; he could alter the law, distribute the national budget as he and his Cabinet deemed fit, but he lacked the power he truly needed – the ability to turn back time. He wanted to return to that moment in the hotel room and not hide behind his cowardice. He wished he’d had the strength to be truthful with Lorna and to tell her that he loved her.
What troubled Charles more than Lorna’s passing was the fact that he had never uttered those three immortal words to her. Their love for one another was assumed but never vocalised and regret hung heavy around the Deputy Prime Minister’s neck. He felt as though he wore the missed opportunity like a scarlet letter and Lorna continued to visit him at night, reminding him, tormenting him, about what could have been.
‘Another bad night?’ Elaine asked over breakfast one typical Sunday morning. Despite the early hour, her hair was already tidied into a bun, a fresh coating of lipstick on her lips. Her question was delivered tersely from behind her artificially crimson lips.
‘Yes,’ Charles said wearily, rubbing his eyes with his hand.
‘We really need to do something about it, it simply can’t go on. Look at you, you look a fright! You need to be projecting a certain image and haggard isn’t it!’ Elaine berated him as she would a naughty child; there was no concern in her voice.
‘Perhaps I’ll call in a doctor.’ Charles didn’t even look up as he spoke, instead stabbing half-heartedly at the boiled egg his wife had prepared for him.
‘That sounds like a good idea; I’ll call and arrange for them to visit you first thing tomorrow.’
Charles’ relationship with Elaine reminded him of his relationship with Faye. Both were formal and restricted. His conversations with Elaine resembled those he had with his assistant at work, detailing things that needed to be done, events which required his attendance. They didn’t discuss their feelings as though it were forbidden to do so. Both Charles and Elaine came from families who frowned upon displays of affection as ‘frivolous’. To them, a marriage was very much a business partnership and should be approached as such. You did not marry for love, you married to better yourself, or so Charles had always been led to believe.
For many years, he assumed that love existed only in Hollywood movies. When an actor would declare to his on-screen love that he couldn’t live without her, Charles would look on, bemused by such passionate feelings. He had never felt like that towards Elaine. He cared for her, certainly, but not to such extremes that his very existence would end if she were to leave him. He had a platonic marriage, as his father and his father before him had. It was considered normal and Charles had never questioned it. Until Lorna.
‘Charles!’ Elaine exclaimed in shock when her husband suddenly smashed the egg upon his plate with his fist.
Charles looked at her, his face contorted with anger and droplets of yellow yolk falling from his hand which was still clenched in a fist.
‘I’m sorry darling,’ he suddenly shook his head as if clearing away the demon which had briefly consumed him, and began wiping his hand clean with a nearby napkin. He went through the motions, apologising, claiming that he didn’t know what had come over him, attributing it to his lack of sleep. But Charles knew what was wrong.
Charles Lloyd was angry. He was angry and he was hurt. The great love of his life was gone. Like the Shakespearian tragedies which existed in his school books, he had found true love and it had ended in tragedy. Left alone in a world without Lorna, he felt trapped and disillusioned.
‘Look at the mess,’ Elaine berated her husband and his sudden impulse to destroy his breakfast. ‘Honestly, Charles, these past few months I don’t know what has come over you but I do not like it.’
‘I’m sorry, darling, really I am. The stresses of the job, they can be most trying.’
‘I’m aware that with great power comes great responsibility. You forget that I was bred from a family where all the women marry great men. Though none as great as mine,’ Elaine smiled fondly at her husband, who, even with bags hanging beneath his eyes, was still handsome. She loved how when she hung on his arm at events she was the envy of most women and she enjoyed gloating to anyone who would listen about his job and all the trappings that came with it. His job became her calling card, to the point where most of her sentences began with, ‘Oh my husband, the Deputy Prime Minister.’ It was with a mixture of pride and arrogance that she so often divulged information about his position. But she hid behind his job, as did Charles.
‘No, we don’t have time for children,’ she would tell family and friends. ‘Charles is simply too busy, he’s the Deputy Prime Minister after all. And when he’s done ruling the country it will be too late to start a family of our own. It’s a price I’ve had to pay for being married to a man at the top.’ People would roll their eyes, not knowing that Elaine was actually barren and could not bare children. The revelation had nearly destroyed her at the start of her marriage to Charles. But, ever the gentleman, he told her that they would be enough for each other, that children did not matter. And they didn’t. Elaine was more than happy to be the godmother, the aunt, but she had a constant niggling feeling at the back of her mind which rose up every time she drank or spent too many moments alone that she had failed Charles. Her end of the bargain was to give him children whilst he went out into the world and made the money. Beside her famous husband Elaine felt like dead weight. Charles and his career were all she had.
‘I’ll be fine, I’m sure. Perhaps I’ll try those sleeping pills again,’ Charles said as he rose from the table.
‘Whatever is troubling you, I’m sure that we will get to the bottom of it,’ Elaine smiled reassuringly.
‘Indeed, dear.’ Charles took his plate and the remains of his egg into the kitchen and Elaine sat contemplating her husband’s odd behaviour, as she had taken to doing most mornings. Whatever the matter was with him, she vowed to discover the cause of his distress and solve the problem. She mentally ran through a list of people she knew who might help, from sleep therapists to tarot card readers. Elaine couldn’t stand seeing her husband so miserable. If sleep was what he needed, that it was her job to ensure that he slept. She would do anything she could to help him.
It was a myth that time healed all wounds. Half a dozen months had passed since Lorna’s suicide and Charles’ pain had only intensified. Everywhere he went he was reminded of her, bar his home, which was off limits because he was struggling to face Elaine, sure that she could see through his work façade and knew deep down of his deceit towards her.
But his work offered some solace. He threw himself in to his role as Deputy Prime Minister with more gusto than ever. He accepted every invitation, attended every meeting. His face had never been more seen by the people of Britain. Little did they know that behind the beaming smile lay a cracked and broken heart.
As he undertook his sacred morning ritual, Charles would pause and regard himself in the mirror and pull his face into the Cheshire cat grin he wore for the media. Whilst his smile appe
ared warm and friendly, his eyes belied his inner turmoil. They sat lifeless in his head, without their former sparkle. A few of the tabloid papers had commented, attributing his saddened eyes to his inability to cope with current political issues such as the potential collapse of the National Health Service. But Charles was dealing with those issues easily – they were nothing compared to the battle he faced each and every day when he had to sit in his office, alone, his palms on his desk, unable to think of nothing but Lorna’s naked body writhing upon it.
‘Remember you have that press conference at ten,’ Elaine poked her head around the bathroom door, ever the eager assistant. She perused his appearance with interest before entering the room and realigning the blue tie he had just been securing into place. Charles stood, lifeless and submissive, and let his wife alter his collar and tie.
‘There – much better,’ Elaine declared triumphantly, patting down the collar with her freshly painted nails.
‘Come on now, dear, try and look less tired. What did the doctor say?’
‘More tablets,’ Charles said absently. He had tried every medicine known to mankind in his attempt to sleep through the night but Lorna’s ghost was persistent, being able to penetrate through the thickest drug-induced fog to find him and torment him; forever placing her last kiss upon his cheek before collapsing to her untimely death.
‘What are your plans for today?’ Charles asked, wanting to divert the conversation away from his ongoing fatigue, wary that his wife might continue to pry. He would have enough awkward questions to answer at the press conference; he did not wish to answer them in his own home.
‘Today,’ Elaine said with a hint of grandeur, clearly excited by her impending plans, ‘today I shall be choosing colours for the dining room as we are redecorating it, remember?’
