Seven
Past Failures
January 2028.
Westminster, Central London.
Mike held his head in his hands, his elbows on the table. Unwilling to lift it, his face red and tear-streaked. He wanted to be angry, but it wasn’t there. It was just sadness, a deep well of sadness.
“Mike, I’m so sorry. I’m really, really sorry.” Cass had brought them another round, everyone around them in the pub definitely assuming she had just broken up with him. He wished it were that.
“How long has it been going on?” She’d been mercifully light on detail, giving a very awkward, clumsily-described account of her time with his wife. And eventually he’d asked her to please stop. But now he felt like he needed the rest.
“It’s, no there’s, there’s nothing.” Cass was making herself as small as she could on her side of the booth. “It was just the once.”
He picked up his head, his face a total mess. She handed him a napkin, and he tried to pull himself together. “Okay. Okay. Thank you for telling me.”
Cass shook her head a little, then nodded. “Uh, right yes, of course. I’m just, Mike, I’m so sorry. I think I just thought, you were, separated, or…”
He put his hand up. “I can’t.”
“Right no,” she quickly replied. “Of course.” She took a huge swig of her pint. “Mike, I didn’t tell you that entirely out of guilt. I need you to know that so I can tell you the rest of it.”
Mike sniffled hard and wiped more tears from his face. “The rest of it?”
Cass looked around. The pub had really started to fill up now that it had gotten a bit later in the day. And the news was still running the story wall-to-wall. They loved it when a minister imploded.
“We need to get out of here.” She hopped up, tossed her phone in her bag and tapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s go.”
A short walk later and Mike was once again piping up in desperate confusion. “What’s here?” Cass had charged up some steps and was headed into a small boutique hotel.
She turned and smiled delicately. “Come on, in you come.” He followed her inside in a daze, the woman his wife had cheated on him with. They went up the elevator and into a cramped room. “This is us, then.” She tossed her bag down, then fumbled for the mechanism that opened the bathroom door. Mike looked down and saw a button next to the bed, glowing white, with a little toilet and faucet icon on it. He tapped it, and the door slid open. She looked at it confused for a second, then went inside and somehow shut the door. He heard the shower come on and the glowing button turned red.
He desperately wished to know why he was still with this person, now together with her in this terrible room. He refused to let himself draw his own mind onto the topic of why Elizabeth would do this. Or whether Cass was even telling the truth. That was something he hadn’t fully entertained, and it might well fit. He and Elizabeth had their problems, but it wasn’t so bad that she’d cheat. But what would Cass gain from lying to him?
He might be able to think about it if the room wasn’t distracting him. It was a wildly over-designed, tacky mess, made to look like the bed, desk, chairs and cabinetry were all carved into one huge chunk of plastic. A 2000s vision of clean-room futurism. Also, he could see the seams all over the place.
Mike paced around the room like a caged animal. He stared out the tiny window at the brick wall of the building next door. He sat on the weird curved chair jutting out from the ridiculous laminated MDF desk. It was so slippery he nearly slid off. More doodling then, he supposed. The hotel stationary was equally fucking dumb, he noted, ruled but with lines that got all wavy and went off in weird random directions. It said “write outside the lines” at the bottom in a bad font.
Everything about this place screamed that it was designed by an AI. Well, “tool-assisted” was the preferred nomenclature to avoid offending both the interior designer who had used it and the engineers who had made the AI. The magic was that it could take all of the variables into account and make what were once laborious changes extremely quickly, including the most dreaded part of this sort of work – all of the client feedback.
Once properly calibrated, a designer with a good pipeline was just pasting the client feedback into one AI model, trained to reformat it in a way that the architecture model could understand, then pasting that result further across. Yet another model could turn the plans into a material breakdown, and if you were good, you were taking this flow all the way across to an industrial fabricator, which would machine the MDF. That fabricator might be downstairs in your factory, or it might be up in the Midlands while you were sat at your desk in Brighton looking out at the seaside. What once took a dozen people hundreds of person-hours could now be done in a week by one person. Minus the installation of course, which was still fully human powered.
But it was real work, Mike admitted to himself as he drew a spiral pattern. Any random couldn’t just rock up and start doing this, you really did need to understand it all. You needed some sort of background in it. And the technology was pricey to deploy, just in royalties and subscription fees alone. Which led him to wonder what so-called expert green-lit this shithole. There wasn’t even a television. He slid off the chair and kneeled on the floor, looking under the desk for any sort of indication of who built this. “Ah, right,” he muttered to himself as he spotted the Magenta Group logo laser-etched into each part.
His keeper was still holed up in the space bathroom, doing god knows what. Mike sat on the floor under the desk, a cosy spot in which to think more clearly. Across the room, which wasn’t at all far, he saw Cass’s bag. His phone! He stared at it. In his mind he replayed himself stretching across the room and opening it. And again, and again. Each time would’ve been enough time to get it before she came out. But what if she came out right now? But, she didn’t. That would’ve been enough time. And, again. And again! He sat motionless. He couldn’t bring himself to do it, to take the risk. What if… what if he could lock her in the bathroom? Not forever. Just long enough to grab his phone.
His eyes now went to the control panel. The light for the bathroom door had gone red. Did that mean locked? Or just occupied? Sometimes you could lock these things by holding the button, rather than pushing it. He’d absolutely search how this worked right now, if his phone were accessible. But the worst that could happen was probably nothing. It obviously wasn’t going to let him open a bathroom door locked from the inside. But maybe it would let him re-lock it, from the outside. He shimmied over to the control panel next to the bed. The shower/faucet icon glowed red. He put his finger on it and held. The door dutifully popped open, and the room was filled with the sound of both running water and Cass’s scream.
“What the fuck!”
“Sorry! Wrong button!”
Mike panicked and hit the button again as fast as he could. The door apparently had to finish opening before he could shut it. Pushpushpushpushpush, until he finally heard it start to slide back closed.
Okay, so red means occupied, not locked. That’s noted. His original plan had been so stupid. His heart started to thud as he became hyperaware of his surroundings. The sound of the shower was noticeable now, even through the door. He hadn’t heard it before. He leaned his back against the side of the bed, staring up at the brick wall out the window. It was dark out, but he could still see it clear as day. Security lights, maybe? He squeezed his hands. They felt tingly. Was it both, or just his left one? He couldn’t possibly be having a heart attack. He tried to manage his breathing as his heart went a mile a minute. He pushed his fingers into the weird shag rug on the floor. His vision closed in and he shut his eyes.
“Oi! Where the fuck did you—oh.” He heard Cass’s voice from behind him. “Why the fuck are you bursting in on me in the bathroom?” He kept his eyes squeezed shut. He pushed his hands through the carpet again and again. “Oh Christ, you get panic attacks yeah? Do you take anything for that?”
“No,” he managed.
“Well you fucking should. Sorry, I’m sorry. What do I do?” He could hear the genuine concern in her voice, with a slight hint of annoyance. He tried to breathe in, and out.
“I’ll be fine. I’m okay. I just need to sit. It’s just anxiety.”
Cass sat cross-legged on the bed quietly on her laptop, while Mike sat on the floor next to it, feeling a bit better, regaining his calm. He’d decided to just act as if, do whatever he could to get what he needed, then regroup with Elizabeth at home as soon as he could. Then he’d simply ask her what was true, what wasn’t, and what they could do next.
He leaned his head back and looked up at Cass on the bed. “Can I get my phone back?”
“How are you feeling?” Her tone was much softer than it had been. He noticed she had a glass of red wine. “I sent Lizzie a note to let her know where we are. That’s all I said.”
“How is she?”
“She hasn’t read it yet. Or anything I’ve sent since mid-day, actually.”
“You mean in the Parliament.”
“It’s not the Parliament, it’s just Parliament. And even that sounds stilted.”
“Don’t deflect.”
“Oh who the fuck are you, anyway? Like, who are you?” She was more tense than she seemed. “Look, I told you the other thing, so I could tell you something else. I need to tell you now.” She put her laptop down and got up, then poured a second glass of wine, finishing off the bottle. She set it on the desk near him. He clambered up onto the slidey chair and took a sip, then looked at it, and looked at her.
“What is this? Are we in for the night?” Oh dear. His composure faltered so much faster than he expected. “I obviously need to get home and see my wife, and see how she is, and you know, sleep in my own bed.”
“You don’t want to be there tonight,” Cass said. “She won’t be there either, most likely, if she’s smart. It’s mad with reporters. And they know who you are, what you look like, where you work. If they can’t find her, they’ll try to find you. So this is where we’re at for now.”
Mike shook his head angrily. “This is absurd. It’s absurd. I can get past reporters without saying anything.”
“Great! You’ve got something to hide, they’ll go with that.”
“I can say no comment, or that I don’t know where she is.”
“A government minister has gone missing! Even her own husband can’t find her.”
“Fine. I take your point.” He leaned back and sipped more of his wine. “This is that bad? It’s that bad that people are going to be looking for her?”
“I said reporters are looking for her. The people who are actually making this bad know exactly where she is and they’ve known since the moment she left the floor.”
“You make it sound like some sort of terrifying cabal.”
“It’s worse. It’s the Conservative Party.”
Mike chortled. “I don’t much care for any of the political parties, to be honest.” Cass shot him a look, then decided to let it go. Instead she walked him through the plan they’d come up with. Elizabeth had some information, some rather damning information, and Cass had a plan to raise a written question, which is a very common thing that happens loads of times per day. In her question she’d say a ‘source’ had told her this damning information. And Elizabeth would reply with shocking honesty. And then, they’d feed all that to the press.
Mike looked a bit doe-eyed, and said nothing.
This was not normal for Cass. Almost everyone she knew was either in government, in Parliament, or was an obsessive political wonk either for business or pleasure. Yet she found herself in a hellish post-modern nightmare of a hotel room at 10 p.m. explaining basic Parliamentary procedure.
“Okay, stay with me. So. Well. Mike, somehow The Guardian got that information and ran a story. They just ran it. And so another member of my party swooped in and demanded an urgent question.”
“And what’s that?” Mike was genuinely trying to hold all this in his head.
Cass pinched the bridge of her nose. “Mike, you were there.”
“Right.”
“So, we thought, this will be bumpy. But it’ll still give us the right outcome. And then I got this.” She opened her phone and pulled something up, then showed Mike. It was a text from an unknown number.
“WOULDN’T DO THIS IF I WERE YOU. HAVE THEM WITHDRAW THE QUESTION. I HAVE THE REST OF THEM. THE SUN VERY INTERESTED IN THESE.”
Underneath it was a photo. Mike reached forward to tap on it. Cass pulled the phone back.
“Mike, I don’t think you—”
He grabbed it, tapped the photo and zoomed in. It was a woman, heavily tattooed, standing with her naked back to a window, in front of a sofa. It had clearly been taken through a long lens from the opposing balcony. Mike shook his head, confused.
“I don’t get it.”
“Mike, please.” Cass’s voice was desperate, pleading.
“What? What is this…? Is this… you?”
Cass reached out to take the phone back. Mike held onto it. “This is just a photo of you then? So, what?”
“There’s another.” She looked down at the bed, her voice meek. “I wouldn’t.”
Mike swiped his finger on the screen to the next photo. He only caught a slight glimpse, a figure lying on top of another on that same sofa, before turning the phone away from his face. He smashed his lips together and closed his eyes, letting the phone drop to the bed. Cass picked it up.
“I’m so sorry, Mike.”
They sat silently for some time, Mike occasionally nodding, looking around. He inhaled and exhaled slowly. “Okay. Okay.” It was all he could do to put it out of his mind. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“You said it. You thought we were separated. I, I can’t be angry. I can’t be angry.” He kept repeating it under his breath.
“Mike! Focus. They’re blackmailing her with these photos.”
“And you told her this? Or told the other man from your party? And everyone still went through with this?”
Cass tilted her head back and finished her glass of wine. She stared at Mike, her lips pursed, still holding the empty glass, gesturing it around. Finally she shook her head, almost imperceptibly. “No, no, I didn’t.”
“You what—”
“No, Mike, I didn’t fucking tell her, okay? Because I didn’t want to distract her. So I didn’t tell her. I didn’t ask, I didn’t check with her. She believes in what she’s doing. She wouldn’t have wanted the distraction.”
“You had no right to keep this from her. You had no right!” Mike was suddenly shouting at her. “You’re just… you’re just using her to get what you want! You talked her into this in the first place, didn’t you?”
Cass got to her feet. They were squared off at opposites sides of the bed in this very cramped room. They paced in their respective patches of rug. “No, Mike, no. She’s idealistic. She’s more politically minded than you’ve ever given her credit for. But I thought she’d struggle to go through with it if it might become a scandal, or if it might make…”
“…make what?”
“…make my life harder,” she whispered. “But now I don’t know if she even cared about that, honestly. I realise it would really because she’d worry about losing you. Losing her perfect little life.”
“But now, what,” Mike yelled. “Okay! So, she’s gone and done it. She’s gone rogue, as you people keep saying. So what’s going to end her career? The going rogue? Or the photos?”
Cass screamed. “Fuck! Mike! It doesn’t fucking matter!” She slammed her wine glass down on the table. It shattered, sending glass shards all over the nightstand and floor. “God damnit. Fuck.” Her hand started bleeding, a large gash on her palm.
“Shit! What the hell!” Mike dove backwards and was sitting on the desk, the only way he could put any more distance between him and the situation. He took a second, staring, able to take a wider view now. “Ah, shit, are you okay?”
“No, I’m not bloody okay, my hand’s cut.” She stomped off to the bathroom, reached in and grabbed a towel. She wrapped her hand in it, and it was almost immediately starting to soak through with blood. “Fuck.” Mike put his hand up as she started to walk back.
“Woah, woah. Glass on the carpet.” He climbed onto the bed and looked over the edge, spotting a decent sized shard. He carefully picked it up and dropped it on the nightstand, then grabbed the rug from his side of the bed to cover any stray bits on her side. Cass put on an awkward smile.
“Thanks.” She gingerly stepped back over to the bed and sat down on the edge, tying her bloody towel tighter onto her hand.
“You’re going to need to get that treated.”
“Fuck, I know. Can’t wait to see that on social media.”
Mike returned from the hotel lobby with a miniature first aid kit and two more bottles of wine. Cass tilted her head.
“Have I lost a lot of blood, or do you seem to think we need this much alcohol at 11p.m. for two people?”
“I asked for one. The second one is a gift from the management. They apologise for the inconvenience and do hope you’ll consider staying with them again in future.”
“I will not.” Cass got to work putting a proper treatment on her wound, which was not nearly as bad as it first seemed. She heard the distinctive sound of a screw-top bottle opening. “Look out, a classy gentlemen has entered the room.”
Pretty soon it was midnight, and they were finishing another bottle, lying next to each other, crowded onto the double bed. Much of that time had been spent in silence, or with Cass repeatedly denying his requests to see his phone, or with Cass explaining and re-explaining the differences between government and Parliament, or with Mike making fun of every little thing about himself, or gallows humour about his crumbling marriage that made Cass extremely uncomfortable.
But by the end of their second bottle of the night, with one more to go, he felt like he’d try to move past all that and into an actual conversation.
“So. Tattoos. You keep those to yourself.”
“I do,” she deadpanned. “I suppose that’s over when the photos get released.”
“I’m sorry.”
It got quiet again. Mike figured he’d give it another go.
“So do you have kids?”
Cass snorted. “Fock no! Ha! First of all, how old do you think I am?”
He looked her up and down. “37?”
“Christ, bang on. Has she told you? You already knew that.”
“I have literally never heard of you until today.” Cass’s face fell, even as she’d clearly tried to hide it. “How long have you two been friends?”
“We met at a cocktail party I’d say, two years ago, maybe three? Now we’re thick as thieves.”
“So right after the election.”
“God, you’re right, it was yes, she’d just been elected to her first term and I was on my second.”
“Your second term? So you were, what, 24 when you were elected? That seems unlikely!”
Cass cackled. “Oh, I was elected in a by-election. My first term was around 6 months. Then I had to get re-elected. Honestly humiliating. What if I’d lost?”
“What’s a by—”
She put her finger to her lips and made a shhhhhhh-ing sound. “No more civics lessons for tonight, please. Take a course!”
Mike shrunk back. He took a gulp of wine and they sat quietly for a bit. “So, husband? Boyfriend?”
She rubbed her eyes impatiently, as if waiting for some unseen force to please fix this conversation or get her out of it. “I’m gaaaaay, Mike. As my ex put it, my big ex, I’m a huge disaster gay. I am single, I am unmarried, I am unattached. I cannot possibly convey the depths of my dysfunction to a straight man, so let’s moooooove on.” Mike looked over in fascination, the kind of hot-faced, liquid courage-y fascination that comes when you’re stuck in a room and don’t really care if you bother people.
“What is that? A disaster gay? Why are you that?”
Cass groaned loudly and tossed her head back. “Miiiike, pleaaaaase. We’re not friieennnnds. I do not shaaaare this part of my life with yooooou.” He nodded and turned back to staring at the blank, oddly-textured wall, where no television was hanging. She finished her glass of wine and immediately turned to the nightstand and started pouring another. She kept facing away from him. “I get it wrong.” Mike smirked and looked back at her.
“You what?”
She turned around and flung her arms open broadly, splashing wine about.
“I get it wrong okay! I’m always wrong! I fuck up, I hit on my straight friends, I ruin friendships. I uh, uh,” she gestured to him, “you know.”
Mike nodded and grimaced. “I mean, I’ve always said to Beth—”
“—Mike! Don’t weigh in!”
“Sorry.”
She flapped her hands, continuing to spill as she shouted. “My life isn’t pride parades and glitter cannons, nobody’s sauntering up to me wearing a rainbow pin and holding out their phone number. My move is to spend a whole night hitting on someone right up until I go to get us another round and come back to see her arm around her boyfriend who’s just arrived.” She’d barely had enough breath to get it all out.
Mike tried to process this all as quick as he could. “God. That is a disaster.” She shoved him.
“Oi, it is! It’s a fucking Shakespearean tragedy!” Her voice had ascended to an exciting new octave. She threw her finger in his face. “Don’t you fucking repeat any of this, by the way. This is not Cass the MP, this is Cass’s personal life.”
“You should honestly put all this on your campaign flyer. I’m happy to design it for you.” Everything Mike said was now through barely stifled laughter. Cass’s face was beet red. She anxiously clutched her wine glass. “I don’t get it though, why can’t you just use apps? Aren’t there apps for this exact thing?”
“I can’t go on the bloody apps, I’m a public figure! My profile would leak immediately!”
“So? You don’t want people to know you’re gay? You can’t possibly be the only gay member of Parliament. And most people are totally fine with—”
“—What? No, there’s loads! I’m not closeted, you bellend! I’m in ParliOUT! I’ve walked in the London pride parade! I’m just a weirdo, that’s what I hide. I hide all of me. I don’t know. I feel weird. MPs aren’t allowed to be weird. I have to meet people privately in safe spaces. And it’s just all suits and sensible heels and terrible banter and jokes about housing policy. Everyone has their normal person masks on the whole time, forever. My life is a masquerade ball that never ends.” She let out an exasperated sigh and flopped back against the headboard. “I just want to pretend to be someone else, but that someone else is me, and I’m the someone else. You know?” Mike had a slight frown. He didn’t know.
“I’m sorry. That sounds complicated.”
Cass nodded. “Yeah. Well, thanks. Thank you.” She raised her glass to him and took a sip, and he did likewise. “Just, listen, okay. Remember. You promised to try. To be there for her. When this all comes out. Which might be in the morning. I know it’s proper roiling to hear this from me. I’m the last person you probably want to hear or see at all. But she means a lot to me and I fucked everything up. I can’t be there for her. She made a mistake, that’s all. You promised to try.”
Mike stared at the glass in his hand for a while, then nodded. “I did.”
The next morning Mike was startled awake by the phone on the desk above him. Not a mobile phone, but an actual phone in the room itself. Surely the last bastion of landline telephones was now hotel rooms. He pulled himself off the floor where’d been sleeping and answered it, croaking out a groggy, “Hello?”
“Cassandra Cooper?”
He peeked over the top of the bed. She wasn’t visible, but he saw the bathroom light on. She’d ducked in there to take a call at some point before the sun had come up.
“She’s in the bathroom.” The person on the other end hung up. Mike shrugged and dropped it back on the receiver. The bathroom door flung open.
“Mike?”
“Yeah, I’m up.”
“I’ll let you watch this.”
“Watch what?”
“Your wife is about to be on television, it turns out.”
Mike sat transfixed on the bed, staring at Cass’s laptop perched on the desk. Through his sleep-crusted eyes he could see his wife appearing on morning TV. Typically he would have worked hard to not see this – not just when his wife was on, but any time – such was his revulsion. But after a long, restless night asleep on the floor, in this bizarre sequestration, he figured he’d take Cass up on her offer to finally show him what was happening.
For her bit, she had retreated to the bathroom some time around 5a.m., and had been on some sort of war room Teams call ever since. He could make out vague snippets if he tried, but of course he tried not to try, due to fear of retaliation. He still didn’t have his phone, after all. She’d start taking his fingers next.
The bottom of the screen was a good indicator of the weight of what had happened next. “ROGUE MINISTER EXPLAINS HERSELF: Elizabeth Marsh MP appears after yesterday’s Commons calamity sends government scrambling.” None of this sounded particularly good, but he had a hard time focusing on what she was saying. He was still so angry. Why had she left him to this treatment? Why had she not gotten in touch with him to say she was okay? Why was this the first he was seeing her?
The presenter, Mahmoud Osman, was the BBC’s go-to morning political wonk. Mike had gathered this from years of hearing his wife curse his name from the other room. He was sat comfortably opposite her on a large orange sofa, and the screen behind them was a collage of irritatingly bright newspaper front pages.
“These are a few of the headlines you’ve made this morning. LIZ BITES THE HAND THAT FEEDS US ALL. WORKS BILL STUCK IN THE MARSH. MARSH LEADS INSURRECTION AS CORRUPT TORIES SELF IMMOLATE. Fair to say you’ve made quite a name for yourself overnight?” Every headline accompanied by an unflattering photo of Elizabeth, usually a blurry still from a video.
“I can only agree, though that was certainly not my intention.”
“But you understand why people think this was an attention seeking ploy. Here’s a message sent in earlier, and remember you can send those in yourself through our app. ‘I’ve been out of work for six months now after redundancies at my firm. Universal Credit can’t come close to covering food for myself and my two children. I’ve sent over 700 job applications and not a single call. And now the minister for Jobs is advocating against her own jobs bill in some sort of political gamesmanship. It’s beyond a shambles. This government is criminally negligent.’ And that’s from Thomas in Kent. Thanks Thomas for your message. What do you say to Thomas?”
“I’d say we hear you. And I personally apologise. As I’ve said, as I’ve been saying, this is a crisis unlike any we’ve seen in our lifetimes. And we won’t apologise for turning over every stone in our search for solutions to deliver for the British people. And we won’t apologise for moving as quickly as we possibly can. And sometimes moving quickly means you make a mess.”
“You’ve certainly made a mess here. Can we look at the original allegation – that the government has been meeting in private with a major corporation, one in particular, and that they’ve been personally shaping the text of the jobs bill. Now yesterday you said that was in fact true. The allegation and your subsequent admission both seem to have caught your party completely on the back foot. My sources were describing party leaders as apoplectic, talking of meltdowns and panic in back channels, pretty consistently calling for your head.”
“I think your sources may be overstating things a bit, Mahmoud.”
“One source quoted in the Daily Mail described a war-like footing, emergency meetings about how to play this into the wee hours. You weren’t confirmed as a guest for us until about an hour ago.”
“I will tell you we’re interested in getting this right. If we need to put the work in, to make sure that happens, none of us are afraid to pull an all-nighter. I’d remind you we are the youngest cabinet in British history.”
“So tell me, then, really. What is going on? Has the government colluded with this major corporation, I can’t use the name, nor should you, due to the nature of the allegation of course. But here, a day on from the urgent question. What’s the real story?”
Elizabeth cleared her throat. Mike leaned forward, staring at her on the tiny laptop screen. She felt so far away, her voice thin and artificial, coming out of the terrible speaker. It was like he was watching a stranger, just another infuriating politician spreading lies on morning telly. The past two days had been eye-opening for him, seeing what his wife actually did for a living. He was heartbroken. He was scared for her.
“I can tell you,” Elizabeth answered, “that we are indeed working with Magenta. Very closely in fact, to ensure that the day this bill passes, it is an oven-ready solution, a shovel-ready solution, as Magenta will be ready to begin putting Brits to work on projects for Britain. Day one. The mechanisms of government will be ready, our civil service will be ready, and Magenta will be ready. And we recognise our determination on this and the speed with which we’re moving has opened a chink in our political armour, and the opposition have found it. But I’m here today to bring this appeal straight to the public. Straight to Thomas in Kent. Straight to all of you. Trust us and we will put you back to work.”
Mike was overwhelmed, once again. Because he actually felt a stirring. What she was saying made sense. It was efficient, it was necessary. And it was the antithesis of the molasses-like bureaucracy that had exacerbated the problem to begin with. But it was the exact opposite of her position on this for so long. All those long nights arguing, shouting at him, at her laptop, at the wall.
The presenter seemed happy with that. “There you have it. Thank you very much Elizabeth Marsh, minister for Works and Pensions. One final question before I let you go. Can you speak to those who don’t trust you? Both in the public, of course, and to your opposition, perhaps specifically Alastair Mitchell from Labour who had some very strong words for you yesterday, referring to this jobs programme as, well, as tantamount to slavery.”
Elizabeth laughed quite hard. It was a very rehearsed laugh, Mike noticed. “Well, most people I know in Labour have quite a flair for the dramatic. Alastair isn’t immune. My dear friend Cassandra Cooper even used to be an amateur actor. Maybe that’s quite common on the opposite benches.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, she did some Shakespeare, I believe. But I shouldn’t talk out of school. I’ll leave that to you to look into if you like.”
The presenter had an awkward smirk. “Right! Well, once again thank you, Elizabeth Marsh.”
“Oh, fuck that!” The bathroom door burst open and Cass stormed out in a fury. She threw her phone angrily and it bounced onto the bed. Mike sat frozen. “Fuck her!” She was livid. Shaking. Her face a bright red. She slammed the laptop shut. “Your wife is a nightmare, she’s a focking nightmare.” She was wagging her finger in Mike’s face, very close to him. He leaned back with a blank expression.
“I’m not her.”
“I bloody know you’re not her! Why am I even here? Why was I even doing any of this for her?” She had started throwing all her things into her bag wildly, plastic and metal scratching and slamming around inside it.
“Can I get my—”
She snatched his phone out of the bag and flung it at him. He caught it, only just. It was dead. “Perfect.”
“I’m going home to shower and change before I go get my bollocking from about a dozen people.” She grabbed her phone and flicked through it quickly, then let out a groan. “They sent someone to get us and they’re saying there’s loads of media downstairs.”
“What?”
“Media? The press? They must know I’m here, or that both of us are here.”
“How?” Mike’s voice was full of desperation. He just wanted to be under a duvet. Away from all of these people. Away from everything.
“I don’t know, Mike. Sometimes front desk clerks sell you out, sometimes someone spots you randomly and posts about it online, sometimes they just start calling around and get lucky.”
Mike went white as a sheet. He nodded. “That’s wild.”
“It is Mike, it’s wild. Come on, let’s go. Car’s waiting.”
“How can we go? You just said…”
“It’s not the SAS, Mike. It’s some blokes with cameras. You’ll be fine.”
As soon as the elevator doors opened, he heard the commotion. Cameras began snapping, lights flashing. People calling out to Cass. Some polite questions, some just shouting her name, some shouting some rather offensive insults about her apparent prior attempt at a career. She smiled and nodded as she walked, but said nothing. Mike was not as adept at this, having mostly stayed off the radar. Nobody really cared about the non-political husband of the jobs minister. Until of course, they did. He froze like a deer in headlights.
Cass turned back and saw him just standing there, a camera or two trained on him. She turned and leaned back, then grabbed his hand and pulled him along with her. He tried to keep up lest he get dragged, and by the time they reached the car he felt like he was emulating her moves pretty well.
The door to the small black car shut behind them, leaving them sat in silence in the back seat, behind mercifully tinted glass. Cass let out a deep sigh.
Mike looked over at her. “What now?”
She shook her head. “Now their works bill will pass.” He stared out the window as the car pulled away.
“Right, but what now for us?”