What You Don't Know

by David Belbin

  ‘This is a friend,’ she said, turning to her aide. ‘Mike, go outside, butter them up for me. We’ll be really quick.’

  She gestured that Nick should sit down. ‘I’m sorry to be so rushed. A lot of very angry single parents, who are about to lose a chunk of benefit.’

  ‘Good of you to see me when you’re so busy. You’re looking great.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Sarah said, holding on to her professional manner until her words stumbled out, displaying her unease. ‘You look well, too. I’m sorry we haven’t … you know the way it is. How have you been?’

  ‘I’ve been fine,’ Nick said, drinking her in. Sarah had perfect hair, brushed back but fuller than it had been a few months ago, and immaculate make-up. Soberly dressed, in grey jacket and skirt, she looked, if anything, older than her thirty-six years. ‘How is it, being a minister?’

  ‘Exciting. Thrilling, when you feel history’s breath on you – if that doesn’t sound too soppy. But I don’t get much spare time.’

  ‘You’re on the board of the Power Project,’ he pointed out.

  ‘I had my arm twisted. They only need me for the occasional meeting. And the project’s a good thing. You’ve applied for an advice worker job?’

  ‘I’ve already put in the application. Deadline’s Monday. I hope that’s okay. The bloke I spoke to, Hugh, said –’

  ‘I can’t think of anyone better,’ she interrupted. ‘Only …’

  He could still read her mind. ‘Am I clean? Yes. Unless you count the odd spliff.’

  ‘Nobody minds about that, long as you don’t indulge at work.’

  Their eyes met and he thought of the things he wasn’t saying, stories he could tell her that weren’t his to share.

  ‘You’re still working as a tutor?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘Yeah, and I’ve been volunteering …’ He rattled off his good works and Sarah took a few notes.

  ‘I’ll give you a strong reference. I won’t be on the interview panel, but I’d say you have a fighting chance.’

  ‘Thanks. I mean that more than I can say. Thanks a lot.’

  Sarah’s agent, Winston, opened the door, keen to hurry Nick out. Sarah’s eyes met Nick’s once more, in what seemed a sad acknowledgement of the distance between them. But perhaps he was only projecting this.

  ‘Take care,’ she said – that one-size-fits-all, kind but meaningless injunction.

  ‘You too.’

  Outside the library, Nick unlocked his bike. Or, to be more precise, his brother’s bike, which he had borrowed several months before and not returned. Joe, still only thirty, was running to fat. That was what happened when you stopped playing football and sat in an office or behind a wheel all day. The only exercise Joe used to get, chasing after women, was off limits since he became a dad. At least, that was what Nick assumed. Caroline, Joe’s wife, had just gone back to her teaching job, so could no longer keep tabs on Joe’s every spare minute.

  Nick was halfway down the street when he heard someone call.

  ‘Hey, Nick!’

  It took him a moment to locate the source of the voice, outside Stoneywood Fruit and Veg. Nancy Tull, in jeans and leather blouson. She was arm-in-arm with a dopey-looking bloke her age or younger. He had a square jaw, shaggy hair and a combat jacket.

  ‘What are you doing in my neck of the woods?’

  ‘Out for a bike ride,’ Nick lied.

  ‘This is Carl. Carl, this is Nick, who I used to work with.’

  Carl grunted something and went into the greengrocer’s.

  ‘He doesn’t talk much,’ Nancy said, with a coquettish shrug.

  ‘Are you two living together?’ Nick asked, cutting to the chase.

  ‘He has his own place, but spends a lot of time at mine.’ She smiled, as though the guy was doing her a favour, rather than the other way round. Which was probably how Carl thought of it, too. In Nick’s experience, most rock musicians were arrogant sods, who got away with taking people for granted. ‘I enjoyed the other night,’ Nancy went on. ‘We ought to do it again.’

  There was something different about her, Nick thought. She wasn’t wearing much make-up, if any. Her hair was ruffled in the late-morning breeze. She had a lazy, triumphant air, redolent of sex. Nancy looked around. Carl was being served. She leaned forward and whispered in Nick’s ear.

  ‘I think of you when I’m with him.’

  She turned away before he could react and joined her boyfriend in the shop.

  7

  Sarah briefed her boss carefully, thoroughly, with none of the passion she’d expended on Commons speeches covering this subject when they were in opposition. She’d waited months to set up this meeting about her pet project. The Home Secretary heard her out without any change in his languid expression.

  ‘We’re still in the business of first impressions,’ he said when she was done. ‘Tough on crime and its causes. Not soft on condoms.’

  ‘HIV isn’t part of their punishment,’ Sarah argued.

  ‘Then they shouldn’t share needles, or bugger each other. Can you imagine what the Daily Mail would say if we put this forward?’

  ‘We’re in power. We got a landslide. We don’t need to keep the right-wing tabloids on our side.’

  Her boss rose slowly from his red leather chair. ‘This isn’t a four-year project,’ he told her, not for the first time. ‘The next election campaign is already underway.’

  He was showing her out, but Sarah remained seated. ‘If we’re sticking to the last government’s spending limits and not offending the Tory tabloids, it feels like we didn’t win the last election.’

  ‘The whips are putting pressure on you about the lone parent benefits vote.’

  Sarah nodded. She’d had several phone calls. Tony Bax, her constituency chair, had been phoned by the party whips. He, in turn, had called to ask how she intended to vote. She’d told him she was undecided.

  ‘We’ll support you,’ Tony Bax had said, ‘whatever you do. It’d be a pity for you to throw away a ministerial career so early on but, personally, I think the government is dead wrong.’

  ‘I’m not clear,’ Sarah told the Home Secretary, ‘whether this is about us keeping to Tory spending plans or whether it’s part of something bigger that I’m missing.’

  ‘I have another meeting,’ her boss said. ‘Maybe you’ll find that you have a meeting that can’t be moved on the night of the vote.’

  Sarah got the message, but wasn’t sure if she dared act on it.

  Nick was expecting the kind of formal interview he was used to from teaching: a panel consisting of the boss, members of the management committee. Instead he found himself on the first floor of an old Lace Market building, in a narrow, dusty space with frosted windows, the kind you get in a bathroom. Or a toilet. The Power Project manager sat at a table covered with files and cardboard coffee cups, neither opposite nor alongside Nick.

  ‘This MP, minister, whatever. How well do you know her?’

  No pussyfooting around Nick’s drug counselling experience, which Bell seemed to take for granted.

  ‘We were at university together. Belonged to the same political groups. I managed her campaign to be student union president.’

  The look on Bell’s face said that he had never set foot in a university his whole life and regarded such institutions with suspicion. Nick played his only card.

  ‘We won the election, so I suppose you could say she owes me.’

  The information registered with a slight narrowing of the eyes. Then Bell turned to the back of the form, where Nick had made his criminal record declaration.

  ‘You served just over five years on an eight-year sentence. That’s not full remission. What did you do wrong?’

  ‘Failed a drugs test,’ Nick confessed.

  ‘Spliff?’

  Nick nodded, then fibbed. ‘I haven’t used anything stronger since 1992.’

  ‘You got a problem with anything else? Booze, pills?’

  ‘No.’

&
nbsp; ‘You’re okay with the unsocial hours?’

  The job information hadn’t spelled out what the hours were, but now was not the time to ask.

  ‘Suits me fine. I did unsocial shifts working as a taxi driver. I’m used to being alert in the early hours, if you need me to do outreach work.’

  Bell re-examined Nick’s application form. ‘The taxi driving, that’s not in your application.’

  Nick decided to risk the truth. ‘I was off the books. My brother runs a cab firm.’

  ‘Cane Cars? That your brother?’

  ‘Joe, yes.’

  ‘You don’t mind doing a little driving, then?’

  ‘Not at all. I don’t own a car, but I can borrow one when I need it.’

  There was nothing about needing to own a car in the job spec, but Nick would act as Bell’s chauffeur if that was what it took to make fourteen grand a year and get Probation off his back. He waited for the questions about the skills he could bring from school teaching, what he had learned about addiction in prison. But they didn’t come. Kingston didn’t give him an opportunity to shine, or to ask questions of his own.

  ‘I’ve got all I need to know,’ Kingston said, standing. Nick stood too. The interview had lasted barely ten minutes. When Kingston didn’t offer his hand to shake, Nick decided not to offer his. Nick had no idea how he had done. Best, perhaps, to risk one question.

  ‘When will I hear?’ he asked, as Kingston led him out into reception, the one area of the first-floor office that was fully carpeted and painted.

  ‘You start next Monday. There’ll be a contract in the post.’

  Nick didn’t know what to say. ‘Thanks. I’m …’

  ‘Thank your minister friend. She pays people back. That’s good to know.’

  Nick stepped out into unanticipated sunlight that made him sneeze. After seven months on the out, he had a job, a good one. It paid only half what he might be making if he’d been able to teach again, but it was enough to live on. Decently. He was only qualified for the job because he had served a prison sentence for drugs offences. His luck, magically, had turned. He wanted to tell someone. His first thought was Sarah, but he would never get through to her. Then he thought of Joe, but at this time of day he would be driving. Nancy Tull would be teaching.

  So Nick went home and smoked a single-skin spliff to celebrate.

  8

  Nick rang Nancy’s number, hoping that Carl wouldn’t answer. ‘I was just thinking about you,’ she said.

  ‘Can you talk?’

  ‘He’s in the bath. I’ll give you my mobile, if you’re paranoid about him picking up.’

  He wrote down the number. Mobiles cost a fortune to ring, but Nancy was worth it. He told her about his job. ‘I thought we could celebrate.’

  ‘I can’t do tonight, but he’s playing a gig down south tomorrow. Late ones, I always make him go back to his so he doesn’t disturb me. Why don’t you come here, bring a takeout?’

  ‘Chinese or Indian?’

  ‘Indian. Anything but prawns. I’m allergic. I’ll get some booze in. About eight.’ She told him where to find her.

  Next, Nick rang his brother.

  ‘Excellent,’ Joe said, when Nick told him about the job. ‘Who did you say your boss was again?’

  ‘Kingston Bell. Know the name?’

  ‘Not that I recall. We should have a drink to celebrate. Tomorrow?’

  ‘I’ve got a date.’

  ‘Not Sarah, by any chance? Bet she had a hand in your being hired.’

  ‘She’ll be in London,’ Nick said, not denying her help. He’d planned to call Sarah at home on Friday, when she’d be back in Nottingham. She’d know about the job by then. He could call before, but didn’t want to speak to her snotty secretary. What was he called? Hugh. Same as her revered grandad. Nick wondered if the name was why she’d hired him. Also, what the guy looked like. These casual jealousies did him no good, no good at all. Sarah was out of his league.

  At Prime Minister’s Question Time, Diane Abbott ambushed the prime minister about the lone parent benefit cut. Surely, the Campaign Group MP argued, there would always be mothers who were not able to work. Why should they suffer?

  ‘I have to say frankly to you,’ the prime minister began, a trace of irritation undermining his oh-so-sincere expression, ‘we were elected as a government because people believed we would keep tight control of public finance and we said that clearly before the election.’

  That was rubbish, Sarah knew. They were elected because the previous lot were unelectable. There was no need to water down socialist policies, but they had done.

  He went on. ‘What is important is to get as many people as possible off benefit and into work.’

  The prime minister sounded no more convinced by these arguments than Sarah was. People said he was distracted by the Formula One affair. But this debate wasn’t going away. Over the weekend, the whips had begun to spin a new line, that the cuts weren’t about keeping to Tory spending limits, as previously suggested, but were part of a wider welfare reform initiative. Sarah would find this easier to believe if it weren’t for the rumours she’d heard from the cabinet. Word was that the two ministers in charge of social security couldn’t agree on a single policy.

  ‘Sarah, have you got a moment?’

  Sarah turned to see Ali Blythe. She remembered the brief conversation about the benefits cuts they’d had two weeks ago.

  ‘How are you planning to vote tonight?’ Alison asked.

  ‘I still haven’t made up my mind. I’m under a lot of pressure to vote “yes”, but I may abstain and hang the consequences.’

  ‘Can you abstain and not be sacked?’

  ‘No, but I’m damned if I’m going to resign.’

  One junior minister had already resigned in protest against the cuts. Sarah admired him, but knew that in a year or two nobody would remember his protest. If she was going to have her ministerial career ruined, the least she could do was make sure everybody noticed. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I can’t bring myself to. You know I’m …’

  Of course, Alison had a child herself and wasn’t with the father. What was it called? Sarah, who had never wanted children, had trouble remembering the names of her friends’ and colleagues’ offspring, a deficiency in a politician.

  ‘Vote against,’ she told Alison. ‘You’ll be okay. Lots of others will, too.’

  ‘I had phone calls at the weekend. The whips told me my career would be finished before it was started if I voted against. They phoned my constituency chair and she phoned me, said they told her to threaten me with deselection.’

  ‘They phoned my constituency chair, too. It goes with the territory.’

  The whips were trying to prove a point, Sarah figured. Obedience was all. She was beginning to wish she’d taken her boss’s advice and found an urgent, conflicting appointment tonight, preferably one in another country. Then she could have got a civil servant to put in a slip and avoided this test.

  ‘You have to think of this as a blooding,’ she told Alison.

  ‘I don’t like hunting metaphors,’ Alison told her. ‘Pete Rugby told me it was time to lose my virginity.’

  ‘The whips shouldn’t talk like that,’ Sarah said, without conviction. ‘What do you think you’ll do?’

  ‘I won’t if you won’t.’

  Was Alison lobbying her for the ‘no’s’? The young MP wasn’t a member of the Campaign Group, but that didn’t mean she was willing to sacrifice her principles. Yet. Sarah shook her head.

  ‘I’ll decide after I’ve heard the debate. Maybe you should do the same.’

  They parted uncomfortably.

  ‘I won’t be able to come round as often,’ Nick explained. He’d gone to the hostel after knocking off work at five. ‘And we might have to make it later next time. After six.’

  ‘I was going to cut back a bit on the lessons anyway,’ Jerry said, crossing her long legs and smoothing down her navy blue school skirt
.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  Jerry gave him a frank look. ‘Less money coming in.’

  Nick didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to know where her money came from.

  ‘How frequently were you thinking?’

  ‘Every two or three weeks?’

  ‘That’s doable. If you’re sure you can keep up in the meantime.’

  Jerry gave him a what-choice-have-I-got shrug. They arranged a session in a fortnight’s time.

  ‘You did well today,’ he told her. ‘I’m not just saying that because you pay me. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t get a top grade.’

  ‘I want to go to university,’ she told him.

  That was a big statement for a girl in care.

  ‘You’re clever enough to,’ he told her, honestly.

  ‘D’you think? I was wondering …’ She hesitated. Then Alice knocked on the door. Jerry looked embarrassed, for some reason. He said goodbye and had a quick chat with Alice before cycling home.

  On his way out of Alexandra Park, Nick passed a four-by-four with shaded rear windows. Before he went inside, the only four-by-fours you saw were driven by farmers. The guy he glimpsed behind the wheel looked like Kingston Bell. Did King live round here? Alexandra Park wasn’t as posh as Mapperley Park, but it was fairly upmarket. Maybe Kingston lived in one of the big old houses they’d converted into flats.

  Nick cycled home and got changed for his date with Nancy. He walked to the Vegetarian Pot, further down Alfreton Road, and bought pakoras, aubergine bhaji, dal, chick-pea stew and chapattis, then flagged down a taxi. Not one of Joe’s. Those guys could gossip.

  Nancy’s maisonette was in one of the smarter streets in a shabby area dominated by seventies council housing. When she didn’t answer the door, he thought he’d come to the wrong place. Then a light came on and he heard footsteps. Nancy opened the door wearing a pale blue dressing gown.