A Serving of Scandal

by Prue Leith

  Today she is still good looking, but she is drawn and thin: she has lost a stone and a half. Her business is in ruins, her former colleagues either avoid her or blame her for the loss of their jobs, and she has been abandoned by her friends in high places. Only six-year-old Toby is as he was.

  ‘I cannot let Toby see the wreck I am,’ she says, blinking to hold back the tears. ‘He is only six. He still thinks his mother is perfect and wonderful.’ She smiles a hesitant, wobbly smile.

  Kate has agreed to an exclusive with the Evening Standard and she is obviously nervous. ‘I’m not good at this,’ she says. ‘I don’t like talking about personal stuff.’ I ask why, then, has she agreed to speak to me? After all, I am the journalist who first broke the story of the suspected affair between her and Oliver Stapler, the then Foreign Secretary. She replies that she wants to set the record straight, that although the settlement paid by Scandal Sheet appears to exonerate them both, she still feels a victim, punished for something she did not do.

  ‘I’ve lost most of my business,’ she says, ‘and not one government department has booked a single job since this all started. And not one of the people I dealt with all the time, the secretaries who booked the dinners, the facilities managers who agreed the costs, the party organisers who worked with me to plan the events, not one of them has texted or emailed or rung me, never mind booked another job.’

  We are sitting in Kate’s enormous kitchen, made by knocking two ground floor rooms together to accommodate her then-thriving catering business. But today the huge oven range is cold, the hob bare. The place is spotless, ordered, but apart from the kettle used to make our coffee, there is no action. More than half Kate’s business came from government departments – everything from small business lunches for ministers, to grand international events at Hampton Court Palace. All contracts were cancelled at the first whiff of scandal.

  The house was once a council house, but her parents bought it in the Thatcher years of council house sales, and, since they now live abroad, Kate has made it her own, converting it to efficient business premises and a cosy family home for a single mum and her little boy. The old garden shed has become a storeroom and larder, the downstairs bedroom is her office. But upstairs the big bed, which she and young Toby share, is covered with cuddly toys, the bedside tables piled high with children’s books and games.

  Kate is very proud of Toby. He is doing well at school, and has lots of friends who come to bounce on his trampoline in the garden. He is mad about any ball game, loves music, reads fluently at six years old, and he will play or read by himself for hours.

  ‘He’s such a well-balanced happy child,’ she says. ‘I like to think he’s living proof that what matters is love and attention, not how many parents you have.’

  I ask her what happened to Toby’s father. ‘Oh, he took fright when I announced I was pregnant. Hot-footed it to Australia.’

  She smiles as if this was a joke, but then admits she was desperately unhappy at the time. ‘But I have mellowed since then. I’m more understanding I suppose. We were young. We had no money. We weren’t planning a baby. It was all just too scary for him.’

  Her parents left soon after, to live near her brother in Arizona. I ask if she did not feel abandoned.

  ‘Well, yes, I did, and in a way I still do. You have to wonder if there is something the matter with you when your entire family goes to Arizona, and your boyfriend scarpers to Australia.’ She looks rueful, making light of her woes, and then says, bitterly, ‘and then the man you think of as a friend hangs you out to dry.’

  I ask if she means Oliver Stapler, and she nods.

  ‘I just don’t understand it. I still don’t. We were not lovers, but we were very close friends. I never did a catering job for him when he didn’t come into the kitchen with a glass of wine for me at the end of the evening. And we would talk. He was so kind to me, and interested in Toby. I guess he was lonely in London without his family.’

  When the story broke Kate had an email from Stapler’s office cancelling all the jobs she was to do for them. His PA refused to let her speak to him, and indeed said she herself was under instructions not to speak to her. Overnight Kate McKinnon had become a pariah.

  Kate still cannot believe that Stapler could be so hard-hearted as to ignore her calls, and not ring her up himself. ‘And why, when the government decided to sue Scandal Sheet, could they not include me? I was as injured as Oliver. More actually. And if he is innocent of an affair, then so am I. The government suing to clear Oliver’s name but not mine makes it look as if somehow he was the victim, and I don’t count.’

  How, I wondered, does she feel about Oliver now? ‘Well, I don’t feel anything. Except disillusion. I had really thought he was wonderful. He seemed so honest and sincere. I was so proud to think that the next prime minister (because back then I believed that’s what he’d be) was a friend of mine. And he was a real friend. He liked my company. He would tell me all sorts of things …’

  I ask her what sort of things, but Kate is uncomfortable. ‘It’s true he is no friend of mine now, but he was then. I can’t tell you things he told me in confidence.’

  Kate protests she feels nothing for Oliver, but she is very bitter. ‘While he was protected from the press by switchboards and secretaries and officials, with policeman preventing the press getting near him, I could not get out of my house for the newsmen outside the front door. The photographers used long ladders to peer in the bedroom window. They would invade the garden and take pictures through the windows. They hounded me when I took Toby to school. Poor boy, he found them really frightening.

  ‘Once they broke into my house and copied files on my computer. Of course I can’t prove it but it’s obvious from what was copied – emails and a file called Personal Correspondence – that they were hoping for evidence of an affair. And this was after the court settlement so they obviously think there is no smoke without fire, even though they invented the smoke.

  ‘People I thought of as friends gave the press snaps of me and Toby, and one of the butlers at the Foreign Office – no, I can’t name him: that would make me as low-life as him – leaked everything he could to the press: that Oliver had given me a lift home; that he’d been at my son’s birthday party; that he chatted to me after dinners – all things that could look bad but were in fact totally innocent.’

  Kate was weeping now and said through her fingers, ‘I could have shrugged it all off if Oliver had not been such a bastard.’

  I ask her directly, ‘Kate, are you in love with Oliver?’ and she says, ‘No. No. I hate him.’ Then she looks up and says, ‘But maybe. Maybe I was, just a little bit. I was very drawn to him. Attracted to him, I admit. I’d have done anything for him. Was that love? Anyhow it doesn’t mean we did anything. We didn’t. And I certainly don’t love him now.’

  She had never told anyone, not even her closest friends, how she felt about the Foreign Secretary. I ask her why she is telling me, a journalist, now? She says, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I just want to tell the truth. I want people to understand. I did not do anything wrong. I wouldn’t have. I didn’t even tell Oliver.’

  ‘You never told Oliver?’

  ‘Good God, no! I’d have died of shame. He’s happily married, kids, wife, ponies, position, the lot. Why would he want me?’

  Kate wipes her eyes and looks out of the window. ‘I feel such a total idiot. To me his friendship was a big deal. To him it was obviously nothing. A cat looking at a king. “Stupid cook falls for the boss”. Big deal.’

  Kate folded the paper and tucked it back in her briefcase. And here am I, blubbing again, Kate thought. What the hell is the matter with me?

  The pictures were bad enough, but the text was worse. She recognised that Jarvis had not invented anything, that he had recorded her remarks and faithfully reproduced them. But almost every paragraph made her cringe in mortification. All that stuff about love. How could she have said those things? She’d made it clear, she
knew, that she was not in love with Oliver. But Jarvis had only used the bits that made it look as if she was. The headline was the worst. She’d never said ‘I loved him.’

  The truth was she bitterly regretted agreeing to the article. She had crucified Oliver, and found that revenge was no consolation. Even paying down her overdraft had not relieved the guilt.

  She climbed out of her car and headed for the Ladies at the back of the building. It was mercifully clean and tidy, and she splashed her face under the tap and dried it on loo paper.

  She was walking towards her car when she saw that the man heading for the Gents, and yards from crossing her path, was the biker man – the chap she’d almost knocked down at the petrol pump. Her heart in her mouth, she kept on walking, deliberately looking away from him.

  But as they drew level, he stopped. ‘Good, you look a lot better,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I gave you such a fright. I just wanted to see if you were all right.’

  Kate, dismayed, turned to look at him. He was smiling. Kind. Solicitous. Not out to berate her, or attack her, or rape her. Just an ordinary citizen, who happened to have a lot of tattoos and a few earrings and necklaces.

  ‘I’m so sorry. I thought …’

  ‘Don’t worry, love,’ he said, grinning. ‘Happens all the time. I know I look a bit scary to some. But I’m harmless really.’

  She shook her head in apology, ‘I don’t know what got into me.’

  He touched her shoulder briefly. ‘Anyway, you’ve stopped crying which is the main thing. But if you want a good blub,’ he patted his leather jacket, ‘I’ve got a broad shoulder. We could have a cuppa? You shouldn’t drive when you’re upset, you know.’

  Smiling now, Kate refused the invitation with more thanks and apologies and made it back to her car, distinctly cheered.

  She sat in silence behind the wheel, thinking. Then she shifted her bottom purposefully in the seat and turned on the ignition. When she got home she would dispense with Rake Jones’s services. She would not make a career out of being a victim.

  Kate’s positive mood stayed with her. She rang Rake and gave him the bad news. She followed it up with an email asking him to cancel his planned interviews in two magazines and a talk show on Sky, and she told him to send her an invoice for whatever she owed him.

  ‘Right,’ she thought, ‘now for the big decision. Change of career.’

  She emailed the Head of St Thomas High School in Ealing, an acquaintance whose daughter was in Toby’s class. Kate liked her, she seemed bright, forward-thinking with a sense of humour.

  Dear Judy,

  I saw you were advertising for teaching assistants last term. Have you filled all the places?

  I didn’t apply then, because at the time I was in a bit of a mess – you will have read about the Oliver Stapler nonsense – but since then I’ve done some thinking and would like a change of career.

  My catering business has done me well over the years, and I love cooking, but with recession and one thing and another it is no longer giving me the pleasure or the security I’d like.

  I’m attracted to the idea of teaching because I’m good with children and young people, I think, and of course it would suit me to have school holidays with Toby while he is still in primary.

  I know teaching assistants are paid very little, but maybe there is a route towards professional teaching qualifications I could follow at the same time? Food Technology or whatever?

  I would love a job with you, but I know it is a long shot. Even if there is nothing you could offer me, could I come and see you, do you think? I need someone to give me the low-down on school life and an honest assessment of whether I would ever make a teacher. And who better than you?

  Kate McKinnon

  The next afternoon Kate was sitting in the living room, eating yogurt with a squirt of maple syrup, and flicking through the TV channels. She’d done little all day, just put in a couple of hours this morning for Amal, making sweet Indian desserts. She was filling in for one of his cooks who was off trying to sort out his immigration status. All day the absence of Toby had oppressed her. She missed him all the time. It was silly really. When he was at school, she hardly thought of him, just got on with her work knowing she’d see him within hours. But it was different now. The ache seemed constant.

  It would be another week before he returned. Pat and Hank would be bringing him back and they would stay a fortnight. Kate had mixed feelings about this. Of course she wanted to see them, and it was handy, and cheaper for her, that Toby was coming with them rather than her having to fly out to fetch him. But she would have liked him to herself for the little that was left of the summer holidays.

  When the telephone rang she jumped up, relieved at the distraction.

  ‘Kate, it’s Chris. I’m here.’

  For a split second she could not place the voice. And then her heart leapt into her mouth. Chris. Toby’s father.

  ‘Kate? That is you, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes … yes. Chris. Where are you? I thought you were in Australia.’

  ‘I was. But since you didn’t answer my letter I thought I’d better come in person.’

  ‘You are here? In England?’ Kate could not keep the distress out of her voice.

  ‘Yes. I’m here. In London. I want to see you, Kate. Will you give me a cup of coffee?’

  She swung her head from left to right and back again. No, no, no. She didn’t want, didn’t need this.

  ‘Kate, I’m on my way. You’d better say yes, because I’m coming anyway. I’ve got to see you.’

  Kate made a conscious effort to gain control of her emotions and her voice. ‘Chris, this is a really bad time. I don’t think I can handle—’

  ‘Kate, that is why I’ve travelled ten thousand miles. I know you’re going through the pits. I want to help you.’

  ‘Help me? How can you help me?’

  ‘Look, sweetheart, I’m on my way.’

  ‘No, no, Chris …’ But he’d ended the call. How had he found her? And he’d called her sweetheart. What right had he to call her sweetheart, or to offer her help?

  But some deep instinct to be in control, not to give anyone cause to think she was incapable, or going to pieces, galvanised Kate into action. She had no idea where Chris was or how long he would be, but she ran upstairs and straightened the hastily made bed, rearranged Toby’s soft toys on the pillows, threw her towels into the laundry basket and replaced them with clean ones. Then she dashed down to the kitchen. It wasn’t too bad, but Kate liked things to be perfect. She stacked her lunch things in the dishwasher, wiped all the surfaces with a J-cloth, polished the swished-out sink with a dry tea towel. Then into the living room to plump up the sofa cushions, polish the glass coffee table and sort the newspapers and books: out of date mags and papers into the recycling bin, current ones in a neat pile, books back on the shelves.

  So far so good. Still no Chris. It was nearly six o’clock. She brought out the Hoover and ran it over the living room floor.

  The house now looked immeasurably better. Looking round, Kate was suddenly ashamed of herself. She had always been so organised, tidying stuff, dusting and polishing as she went, automatically cherishing her home. And that was when she was working long hours. But now, when she had hardly any work to do, there had been smears on the coffee table, crumbs on the carpet, the bed only just made. What was the matter with her?

  She opened all the windows to air the house and, feeling calmer, went into the garden and picked a bunch of Michaelmas daisies to stick in a vase. They looked good.

  She went upstairs, changed her T-shirt and pulled a comb through her hair. It was too long, and the dark curls round her head and over her forehead made her face look small. She examined herself in the mirror for the first time in weeks and noticed how thin her face was and how pale her skin, the freckles dark and numerous. Her eyes looked huge and shadowed, and her cheeks had lost their plumpness. I look old and washed up, she thought. Good thing too. Don’t want Ch
ris getting any ideas.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  For four or five days now, Ruth had not spoken to Oliver on his nightly calls. Mostly one of the girls answered, but if his wife did, she said at once, ‘I’ll call the children,’ and left the phone without another word.

  This time, as Oliver put the phone down after talking to Mattie (Andrea was in the bath and declined to get out of it) he realised that he had ceased to mind about Ruth. Technically, intellectually, he knew that he should understand her anger, resentment, or whatever her problem was. But in fact he no longer cared. He knew he was responsible for a lot of her troubles, but he’d begun to think maybe not all of them.

  And then one day when he came back from the village with his baguette and croissant, there was a thick envelope from her on the mat. He slit it along the top and pulled out a letter. It was short and to the point.

  Dear Oliver,

  I want a divorce. There seems no point in trying to keep a marriage going that is giving neither of us any satisfaction.

  I expect the girls will have told you about my relationship with the saddler in our yard, Ben. But in fact Ben has nothing to do with it. He’s on the spot, he’s sympathetic, and he thinks the world of me. But I am not such an idiot as to think it will last. I see my affair with him as essential therapy to help get over the failure of our marriage.

  I have spoken to Sargeant and Roberts and, if you agree, they can represent us both. I cannot see any point in worsening things by haggling over who gets what while two sets of lawyers get rich.

  I have not told the girls. I imagine we should do that together.

  Ruth

  Oliver read the letter twice, surprised and hurt at its brutality. He knew Ruth, underneath, was not cold, and he told himself that she was unhappy too, that her defence was an icy front.

  And Ben the saddler! He realised now that he probably knew about Ben all along. The children had included him in ever more of their bulletins, and he now remembered Andrea saying something about Ruth always being in the man’s workshop.