The Division Bell Trilogy

by Rachel McLean

  Jennifer went downstairs, picking up her feet in an effort to energise herself. She didn’t like going grovelling to her successor. He was only twenty-nine and had won the by-election with a majority of just 225 votes, compared to the quadruple figures she’d enjoyed in her three terms. She couldn’t be sure if the drop in the Labour vote had been because people preferred to vote for her, or because they were angry with her.

  Yusuf was waving a piece of paper at Hassan. “You can’t just roll up to school and tell them you didn’t have time to do it.”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “With what? Playing video games? Watching YouTube?”

  Hassan shrugged.

  Jennifer stepped into the room. “What’s up?”

  Yusuf was breathing heavily, working hard to keep control of his exasperation. “Hassan’s got English homework due this morning. He only just realised, or so he told me.”

  “Have you looked at the website?”

  “Of course I have.”

  “Does that say when it was set?”

  Yusuf was still glaring at Hassan. “Two weeks ago.”

  Hassan’s eyes were on the floor. “Sorry. Can you write me a note?”

  “What for?”

  “Dunno. Tell them we’ve been busy. Mum coming back. Samir.”

  “Hassan, this homework was set before Mum came back.”

  “I’ve been stressed.”

  Yusuf dragged his fingernails through his beard. “You’ve had two weeks to do this. That’s plenty of time.”

  There was a pause as Yusuf considered what to say next. He’d been dealing with all this in her absence. She couldn’t butt in now.

  He turned to her. “You look smart.”

  “Going to see Tom Hamilton. Remember?”

  “Oh. That.”

  “Who’s Tom Hamilton?” asked Hassan.

  “Don’t change the subject,” Yusuf snapped. “Get ready for school.”

  “But my letter—”

  “Uh-uh. You can get a detention again.”

  “But Dad—”

  “No. You have to learn that your actions have consequences.”

  “Like Samir?”

  “Don’t you dare compare yourself to Samir.”

  Hassan bowed his head. “Sorry.”

  Jennifer stared at Hassan, her mind jumbled. He’d been such a cheerful little boy. And she’d never seen Yusuf this angry with him.

  Hassan brushed past her, muttering under his breath.

  “Hassan,” she warned. “No swearing.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I heard you.”

  “I said—”

  “Just don’t do it again, alright?”

  He shrugged. “Alright. Sorry.”

  She smiled and gave his hair a tousle. He pulled back with a grimace. “Good,” she said.

  He ran towards the stairs. She went to join Yusuf.

  “Sorry about that.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. Nothing I’m not used to. He’s nearly a teenager now, and he’s making sure I know it.”

  “We.”

  “Huh? Oh yeah, sorry. We. Come here.”

  She stepped into his arms. He was wearing a t-shirt she’d first seen on him maybe thirteen years ago, and a pair of faded jeans. He smelt of washing powder mixed with aftershave. She’d missed that smell.

  She hugged him tighter for a moment then pulled back, anxious not to crumple her suit.

  “So,” he asked. “What’s the plan?”

  “I’m going to go to his office. Try and get him alone. He’ll help me, I’m sure he will.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “Things have changed, Jen. They hate us. Muslims. After the New Street bomb it was impossible to go out in public without being shouted at, or worse.”

  She leaned into him. “Was it really that bad?”

  He nodded, his chin jabbing into the top of her head. “Worse. Hassan was spat on at the bus stop. The school’s become split along racial lines; white kids hanging out with each other, and Muslim kids the same. Black and other Asian kids stuck in the middle.”

  “I didn’t realise it was that bad.”

  “You saw that woman at the station, didn’t you?”

  She sighed.

  “Well, that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” Yusuf said.

  She’d been hiding herself away in the days since she’d got back. Partly it was the need to reconnect with her family, to work her way back into their lives. But she knew she was scared, too. She didn’t want to be recognised.

  Today that would change. She couldn’t help Samir, hiding away like this.

  She pulled back. “It’s going to get better, I know it is.”

  “Why? What makes you think that?”

  “We’ll make it better. Somehow.”

  She gave him a dry kiss on the cheek and turned for the front door. She looked up the stairs. As an MP, she’d frequently snuck out early to catch the London train, creeping around while everyone else slept and not being able to wish them goodbye. That had to change.

  She took the stairs two at a time and pushed Hassan’s door open. His room was a mess; dirty school uniform mixed with clean on the floor, sheets of paper scattered on his desk, dirty plates littering the surfaces.

  She resisted the urge to tell him to tidy up. “Bye, love. See you later.”

  He was rooting through his schoolbag. “Bye.” He didn’t look up.

  She took a shaky breath and headed downstairs. This was going to take time. Her family was messed up enough as it was. Would bringing Samir back help them, or throw yet more chaos into the mix?

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Rita spent the night tucked into the hollow beneath a railway bridge. It was littered with discarded beer cans, used syringes and small mounds of human waste. She arranged her body so as not to touch any of it, but the tension kept her awake for most of the night.

  Waking up was an unsettling experience. At first she thought she was back in prison, then at the centre, in that bathroom. She imagined Tim the orderly waiting outside, ready to come in and give her a beating.

  After patting her body down and rubbing her sore eyes, she realised she wasn’t in either of those places. She was outdoors. For a cool moment she felt relief, a nanosecond of hope. Followed by realisation, dread and despair.

  It was still dark. She could hear animals scuttling in the bushes behind her, and the low sound of men’s voices.

  She didn’t hang around to find out whose voices; instead, she darted into the trees ahead of her, running in zigzags until the park spat her out onto a busy street.

  She looped round to pick a route through wasteland; industrial estates and scrubby grassland. In front of her was water, and a canal towpath.

  The path ran below the motorway, the lights of Spaghetti Junction beckoning. Jennifer had mentioned Spaghetti Junction, the fact that she could see it from her house.

  Could she find that house?

  She came to a junction between two canals. There was an area of concrete, a barren place speckled with graffiti. The motorway roared above her head. She called out, her voice echoing in the empty space.

  It was getting dark. She spotted a structure at the far end of the space, an abandoned Portacabin. Could she get in? Did she dare sleep there? It would be a local gathering place, somewhere the homeless knew about.

  But she was exhausted. If she didn’t stop soon, she would collapse where she stood.

  She edged towards the Portacabin. For now, the area was deserted. Could she barricade herself inside, stay safe until dark?

  She caught movement from the corner of her eye. She stopped walking, her heart thumping.

  She looked sideways, slowly, her senses stretched. There was a depression in the metal fence fifty yards away, a shape wedged in it. She squinted, trying to distinguish the shape from its surroundings. It was a sleeping bag, or rather a pile of them, draped ove
r a human form. The shape shifted again, the owner of the sleeping bags getting comfortable maybe. Or maybe moving to get a better view of her.

  She looked at the Portacabin, closer now. Could she run?

  Then she heard barking. A dog emerged from under the sleeping bags, yapping at her. Small and grubby, a terrier of some sort. In normal circumstances, the kind of dog she’d stop to pet.

  The dog advanced, baring its teeth, then came to an abrupt stop. It was on a lead. She let herself breathe again, ignoring her desperate need to find a toilet.

  The person under the sleeping bags sat up, rubbing their eyes. They wore a purple woolly hat and their face was streaked with dirt, impossible to tell the age or gender.

  “Who’s that?” a voice snapped. Female, thought Rita. Not young.

  “Sorry. Just passing.”

  “Yeah. Bugger off. This is my patch.”

  Rita swallowed and said nothing. She eyed the Portacabin, wishing she had the nerve to head for it and shut herself in. But even if she got inside she’d be unable to rest.

  She scanned the area beyond the structure; it was littered with rubble, concrete blocks and twisted metal. It was like a manmade boulder field.

  “Fuck off!” The woman shifted again, shrugging off the sleeping bag. She didn’t look as if she could move fast. But she might not be alone.

  Rita sped towards the concrete boulders, blood pulsing in her head. She felt her trousers go wet. She started to cry, hot tears flowing into her mouth. Her nose was running and she could barely see.

  Crying with pain and frustration, she threw herself behind the largest of the blocks. It loomed above her, its presence at once reassuring and forbidding. Above its bulk, the motorway roared on.

  She closed her eyes, wondering if she’d ever get up.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Tom Hamilton had continued using Jennifer’s old office. Situated at one end of a row of shops, it was typical of Labour Party offices; shabby, in need of a few coats of paint and a spring clean. Piles of leaflets spilled off tables and into every spare corner.

  She sat in the front office, watching his team at work. Penny, her old agent, was still working for him, but was nowhere to be seen. Two other women sat at desks, answering calls, drafting letters and trying their best to fit everything an MP was required to do into his diary.

  She knew one of them: Paula, a Polish woman in her late twenties, who’d been working here for just over a year now. Her companion was new. Jennifer wondered what had happened to Dan, the middle-aged party stalwart who’d spent most of the last thirty years working out of this office and had seen at least four MPs come and go. She hoped he wasn’t unwell; he was close to seventy, well past the age at which any sensible person should have retired. But political offices had never been staffed by people who were entirely sensible.

  She perched on the edge of a flimsy chair near the door, watching them work. Wondering if she could interrupt. They’d both looked up as she’d entered. Paula had smiled in recognition and stood up immediately, approaching Jennifer and welcoming her with a firm handshake followed by a hug. Her colleague had paled and returned to her keyboard.

  Paula was in the kitchen at the back of the building, making her a cup of tea. She pictured the cramped kitchen overlooking a dingy yard that had used to house Dan’s bike every day. The kettle was old and unreliable and the tea and coffee were kept in tins that had probably been there since the 1980s. The same rust marks would be there on the sink, impossible to scrub off, part of the fabric of the building now.

  Paula reappeared with the cup of tea, in a mug that Jennifer remembered from her own tenure. If the Tories had a soul, they’d sell it, it said.

  “He won’t be long,” Paula said. “He’s got a packed morning – you know how it is – but he said he’d squeeze you in before his surgery.”

  “Thanks.” Jennifer blew on the tea then sipped it. It was strong, made with UHT milk. So they still didn’t have a working fridge.

  Paula hovered for a moment, glancing between Jennifer and her desk. Jennifer put her hand to her chest, wishing she’d waited before swallowing the scalding tea. “How have you been?” she asked. “Where’s Dan?”

  A smile. “He retired.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.” Paula’s blue eyes danced. She had two small boys at home, both at the nursery Jennifer’s sons had attended. Their father had left when she was pregnant with the youngest, fed up with life in England. But Paula had never been the sort of person to let an anti-immigrant government thwart her ambition. She wanted her boys to go to good schools, to get degrees one day. And in the current system, they had the advantage of being white. Their lack of an accent helped, too; unlike their mother, they were easily taken for English.

  “So what’s he doing with himself? Volunteering, I bet. Pounding the pavements.”

  “That’s the thing. He’s not. He’s gone off round Europe on a long-distance bike tour.”

  Jennifer laughed. She relaxed in her seat and sipped the tea again. It felt good to see a familiar face, to indulge in gossip. Discussing other women’s Celebrations didn’t count.

  “Good for him,” she said.

  “You’ve got a new colleague,” she said, glancing at the woman who was peering intently into her computer screen as if it held the answer to life itself.

  Paula followed Jennifer’s gaze and nodded. “Kelly. Nice girl, good worker.”

  “I don’t remember her.”

  “No. She wasn’t a party member. Not until Tom recruited her.”

  “OK.”

  “Don’t judge. She’s joined now.”

  Jennifer threw her hands up. “Hey, I’m not saying anything. The Labour Party can’t be the only source of talent, after all.”

  “Far from it.”

  Jennifer looked at Paula, who had adopted a wistful look. “How is the local party? How’s Penny?”

  Paula’s face clouded. “Not brilliant. She took what happened with you hard. Felt responsible.”

  “It wasn’t her fault—”

  “Not like that. She helped you get elected. There were people who said she shouldn’t have. Should have known what you were like.”

  “What I was like?”

  Paula blushed. “Sorry. But there was a lot of anger. It wasn’t nice. I stood up for you, but it lost me a few friends.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  A shrug. “I agree. But people want someone to blame. And it was easy to blame you, after—”

  “After what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Please. After what?’

  Paula drew breath. “John Hunter said some things that weren’t good. Distanced himself from you.”

  Jennifer felt her chest grow heavy. “John? Are you sure?”

  Paula turned to her. “Hasn’t Yusuf talked to you about it?”

  Jennifer shook her head.

  They felt the air stir as a door slammed behind Paula. She turned. Tom Hamilton strode towards them, a bulging leather messenger bag slung over his shoulder, a plastic bag full of paperwork clutched to his chest as if it were a baby.

  Paula squeezed Jennifer’s arm then stood up, heading back to her desk.

  Tom surveyed the room. “Hi everyone.”

  Paula and her colleague both looked up and smiled at their boss. Paula’s smile didn’t stray to her eyes. “Morning,” they replied.

  “Lovely day,” said Tom. Jennifer looked out of the window; it was cloudy, a dark sky heading their way, promising rain. The women said nothing.

  “Jennifer,” said Tom, stopping at her chair. “I see the girls have made you a brew.”

  From the corner of her eye, Jennifer spotted Paula wrinkling her nose. She tried to remember if she’d met Tom before. He wasn’t local; the party had wanted a fresh start and chosen a candidate from Leeds. He was young with ruddy cheeks that made her think of hockey and boarding schools. His blonde hair flopped over his forehead and he was making jerking moveme
nts to try and throw it back into place, unable to use his hands. He was tall and slim, dressed in a nondescript grey suit and the regulation red tie. His shirt was ever so slightly frayed at the collar.

  “Yes,” said Jennifer, standing. She put out her hand then withdrew it when she remembered his arms were full. “Thanks, Paula.”

  “Pleasure,” Paula called over. Tom nodded at her, grinning.

  “So,” he said, making the word sound like an explosion. “Drive with me.”

  “Drive with you?”

  “You don’t mind, do you? Only I’ve got surgery in ten minutes and haven’t got time to stop.”

  Jennifer frowned; according to his website, the surgery didn’t start for another hour.

  “OK,” she replied. “How will I get back?”

  “Ah.” He stopped moving, twisting his lip in thought. “Good question. I can get Paula to come out and give you a lift back. Alright Paula?”

  “Fine.”

  Jennifer pulled the front door open. Tom shuffled past, struggling to keep the papers inside the plastic bag. She wondered what it was that he had to carry around, and why he couldn’t work electronically. MPs’ constituency offices always housed plenty of paperwork, but more and more of it had been digitised in recent years.

  They stepped out into the street, Tom halting to let an elderly woman pass with her shopping trolley.

  “Good morning!” he breezed. She ignored him and carried on walking. He looked after her, his expression falling.

  Needy, thought Jennifer. Wants to be loved. He was in the wrong job for that.

  They crossed the road to the parking spaces. Tom strode over to a red Mini. He plonked the bag on the roof and fumbled in his pockets for keys. After searching through his suit pockets, emptying scraps of paper and bits of fluff onto the roof of his car, he slapped his forehead.

  “Bugger,” he muttered, and opened the messenger bag. He grinned at Jennifer and pulled out a set of keys.