Sheer Abandon (27 page)

She said how much she liked the Centre Forward philosophy of people before politics, that she felt that a revived sense of community could help solve many problems in society, and promised to run a fortnightly free legal advice service if she was selected.

Still no reaction: increasing panic. What on earth was she doing here? The toughest argument in court was easier than this. Well, no way back now. Just keep going, Martha.

Somehow she got to the end of her speech: “I would dearly love to work for the people of Binsmow and to give back something of what they gave me.”

When she had finished and sat down, there was a silence in the room; it was unnerving. She hadn’t expected applause, but she had hoped for some reaction, some questions. Everyone looked down at the pads of paper on which they were scribbling notes.

I was a disaster, she thought miserably, and looked at Chad; he winked at her.

“Right,” he said, “well, I think you know a little about Martha and her—and
our
—philosophies now. Would you like to ask her some questions, find out some more?”

There were several. Would she move down to Binsmow? Did she, as a single and clearly well-off young woman, really understand the financial pressures and problems faced by families? If she did marry and had a family, would she see herself continuing as an MP? What had drawn her to the Centre Forward Party, what had she against the traditional Tories? (Careful on this one, Chad had said, there are sure to be at least a couple of doubters on the committee who will be opposed to you on principle: don’t knock the others, just say you feel instinctively, as a young, ambitious person, that this is the party for you.) What were her views on primary education? How would she go about re-creating the sense of community she spoke so emotively of? What did she think about the bypass? At this point, Geraldine Curtis clearly felt the questions were becoming too specific and she rose rather majestically and clapped her hands.

“I think that will do for now. I wonder if we could have tea, Betty, and then we can talk to Miss Hartley more informally? I would personally love to hear about her childhood in Binsmow and her education at the grammar school.”

Betty, the downtrodden placer of chairs, disappeared into the back of the hall, followed by a couple more members; they returned with a trolley laden with cups of tea, and plates of biscuits. Martha decided that this was the one time in her life when calories wouldn’t count, except in her favour, and ate several biscuits. They were all very soggy. She stood there, smiling endlessly, answering questions, charming the men with ease and the women, particularly the younger ones, with more difficulty, expressing huge interest in housing schemes, playgroups, the possibility of a local radio station, youth clubs, and realised, with a sudden thud of excitement, that everything Chad had said was true, that it really wasn’t rocket science and that she could—if they gave her the chance—probably do it. And she realised she wanted that chance—very, very badly.

The worst thing, Clio thought, was the feeling she had nowhere to go. That she was, temporarily in any case, homeless. After some thought, she had driven herself to a motel on the edge of the town and booked herself in for the night. Settling herself into the anonymity of her small beige cell, she had felt it was extraordinarily suited to her situation, a place with no past and no future, only the present. To her great surprise, she slept for a few hours, and woke at six, with a sense of dreadful panic and loneliness.

Now what?

She realised that she had very few close friends. Actually, she had
no
close friends. Not anymore. Couples, yes, halves of couples, even, but only on a rather superficial level. Jeremy had most effectively driven a wedge between her and her previous girlfriends, expressing first hurt and later irritation if she wanted to spend time with them rather than with him. And she had never had a soul-baring kind of friendship with anyone; she supposed it was all to do with her emotionally starved childhood, her sense of failure, her comparison of herself with her brilliant sisters. She could certainly never go to them for help; her major ambition, from the moment she left to go travelling on that fateful August day, had been to show them that she could manage on her own. She would starve to death before admitting she had failed. Her father, too, would never be a source of comfort or strength; he had always made it clear that she was a worry to him, more demanding and distracting than her sisters, and clearly destined to be less successful. She was simply an anxiety that he didn’t want.

What she couldn’t understand was that she didn’t feel more unhappy. Scared, yes; lonely, yes; and desperately worried, yes. But not actually unhappy. She supposed that would come; she was still anaesthetised by shock.

She got into her car and drove—for some reason—along the A3 towards London. It seemed as good a route as any. She felt a need for coffee and turned her car into a Little Chef; the coffee was good and she suddenly wanted some toast as well. She was biting into the second slice when her mobile rang.

Jeremy? Worrying about her, wondering where she was?

“Clio? Hi, it’s Jocasta. I just wondered how you were, hoped that story hadn’t done you too much damage.”

“Oh,” said Clio lightly, and was astonished to find she could be honest, indeed wanted to be, “not really. I’ve left my husband, as a result, don’t have a home anymore, that sort of thing. But don’t worry about it, Jocasta, not your fault.”

“Oh my God! You
are
joking, aren’t you?”

“No, actually. I’m in a Little Chef on the A3 with no home, and nowhere to go, and only the clothes I’m standing up in. Oh, and no job, either.”

“My God! Oh, Clio, I’m so, so sorry. And how inadequate is that? Jesus. What happened, was it really my fault?”

“No, not really,” said Clio with a sigh. “I mean, you might have been the catalyst—well, the story might—but it was all there, really.”

“What was all there?”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Jocasta. Sorry.”

And then her calm and her bravado suddenly left her and she started to cry, huge heavy sobs; the three other people in the Little Chef stared at her. She cut Jocasta off and fled to the ladies’, where she shut herself in one of the stalls and sat on the loo, her head buried in her arms, weeping endlessly.

Every so often, her phone rang; she ignored it. After about half an hour, she couldn’t cry any longer; she felt strangely calm. She washed her face, combed her hair, and walked as nonchalantly as she could manage back to the restaurant, where she paid her bill and then went out to the car.

“She was marvellous. Really marvellous.” Chad smiled at Grace Hartley. They were, inevitably, in the vicarage drawing room, using the best china, with enough cakes on the tiered wooden cake stand to feed the entire Centre Forward Party. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Hartley, that lemon cake looks wonderful. Go on, Martha, have a piece.”

“Martha never eats anything,” said Grace with a sigh, “and certainly not cakes.”

“She was tucking into the committee’s biscuits. Weren’t you, Martha?”

“Well, I thought I should.”

“And so you should eat your mother’s lemon cake. Go on.”

Martha held her plate out resignedly; she could see that politics could make her fat.

Chad was saying how well she’d done, even better than he’d hoped, that they wouldn’t know for a while, probably not for a week, “Just to show us at Westminster who’s really in charge.”

His phone rang and they all jumped. He went out of the room, closing the door. It was obviously someone from the committee: so swift a decision must mean bad news, Martha thought miserably. It felt very bad. She had failed at something important. Something she really wanted. And very publicly. Everyone would be so disappointed in her. She was even more disappointed in herself. It was going to take a long time to—

The door opened; Chad was smiling. “Well,” he said, “very good news. That was Norman Brampton. It’s unofficial but—Martha, they want you! Geraldine Curtis called him. They were very impressed indeed. They accept your inexperience, but they feel you’ll appeal to young people, which is important to us. And there’s the local card, of course, which you played so well.”

“Oh my God!” said Martha. She felt extraordinary. In that moment she could have flown. She felt completely inviolate. She hadn’t failed. Hadn’t made a fool of herself. She’d done it. She had succeeded. She—

“Oh, that’s wonderful, darling,” said Grace. “Well done. Let me give you a kiss.”

“Marvellous,” said Peter Hartley. “What a clever girl you are. It’s absolutely wonderful. We’re so proud of you, Martha. And how lovely it will be to have you down here—”

“Now, you must keep this under your collective hats,” said Chad. “Norman really shouldn’t have told me. But he was quite certain—you’ve definitely done it!”

She went back to the pub with Chad to collect her car and realised that it was practically out of petrol; she’d fill it up on her way back to her parents’, maybe even go for a little drive. She needed to unwind.

There was something wrong with one of the pumps; it required a lot of jiggling about to get the petrol running and then it suddenly spurted out. Damn! That wouldn’t do her suit any good. And she was going to be wearing it a lot, it seemed. She finished filling the car, paid for the petrol, and then went to the lavatory to wash her hands.

It was predictably filthy, paper towels and some fag ends littered the floor, there was an oily rag in the washbasin, and a tabloid newspaper balanced on top of the hand dryer. As she switched the dryer on, the paper slithered onto the floor. Martha, deciding it was in its rightful place, was about to unlock the door to leave when her mobile rang; as she fumbled for it in her bag, one of the neat leather gloves that she had brought to complete her new persona fell onto the floor.

She swore, checked her mobile—it was Ed, wanting to know how she had got on—and bent down to pick up the glove. And there it was: the photograph. A very ordinary photograph, really, taking up about a quarter of the page; it showed a middle-aged woman, apparently in a hospital bed, and a young girl. The woman was dressed in a bed jacket and some rather incongruously large pearl earrings. The girl, who had a great deal of curly blond hair, was wearing a denim jacket and several studs in one of her ears. She had an arm round the woman’s shoulders, and was smiling radiantly at the camera.

WHAT KATY DID
, said the caption.

And Martha, crouching there on the floor, strangely compelled to read on, discovered precisely what Katy had done, which was care for her “beloved grandmother” as she became desperately ill, after spending twenty hours in Casualty on a hospital trolley.

But there was a very happy ending. Mrs. Jilly Bradford is now recovering fast and has nothing but praise for her granddaughter’s courage, as she battled with NHS staff to secure attention and treatment for her. Fifteen-year-old Kate Bianca—as she likes to be known—has ambitions to be a model. Why not a career in hospital management, Kate?

Martha leant over the filthy lavatory bowl and was violently sick.

Chapter 15

         “Of course I won’t tell anyone. Of course. My dear, if you knew how many confidences I have kept over the years, you wouldn’t even ask. But look—do you have anywhere to go?”

“Oh…yes.” Clio wasn’t going to tell Barbara Salter, so orderly, so nice, that she had nothing of the sort, no refuge of any kind; it was too humiliating. “I’m on my way to friends in London now. But, well, thank you so much for listening to me.”

“I’m only sorry I couldn’t do more. I’ll get Mark to call you as soon as he gets in. On your mobile, yes? Try not to worry, my dear. These things often blow over. It’s all part of the fun and games of being married.”

“Yes, well maybe.”

As if Barbara and Mark could possibly have had arguments over anything more serious than his tea being too strong. Everyone at the surgery hated making it for him.

“Yes,” she said again, trying to sound more cheerful, “yes, I expect it is.”

She had been surprised to find herself calling Mark; it was just that out of the panic and loneliness that had taken her over, she had suddenly realised that her work, her job, was the one stable thing that she could cling to and find comfort in. And yes, she had left the practice, but they had no replacement for her, only a locum for a couple of weeks and then another one, and neither had really pleased Mark at all. So maybe, just maybe, he would allow her back.

She had spent the second night in another anonymous motel-style place by the river in Battersea. When she got up to her room, she found herself with a breathtaking view of the river, and when she opened the window, she could hear tugs hooting and seagulls crying, and it was like stepping into another country. She had happened upon it completely by chance, driving listlessly into London, but it had seemed a happy accident. She wondered if Jeremy would ever phone her and see if she was all right; after a while, she got into bed and then lay awake fearful and tearful. In the morning she phoned Jeremy, simply to say she was all right. There was no answer except the answering machine. “It’s me, Clio,” she said, and then stopped, for what could she say? “I hope you’re not worried” or “I’m fine, don’t try and find me”? He was so clearly not worried, had no intention of trying to find her…She fell foolishly silent and then just said, “I’m fine,” and rang off.

She put the phone down and felt the tears welling again. It was at this point that her mobile rang and she answered it without checking: it was Jocasta. Yet again.

Clio stood on the doorstep, looking at Jocasta’s pretty little house and trying to pluck up the courage to ring the bell. What on earth was she doing here, at the worst hour of her life, paying a call on someone who was virtually a stranger? It made her feel more pathetic than ever. It was just that at this precise moment, in her acute loneliness, Jocasta had called. And had been so kind, so friendly, so genuinely concerned, it suddenly seemed quite a good idea.

She was considering running away when the door opened and a very tall, thin man dressed in running gear appeared, smiled at her and said, “You must be Clio. Go along in. I’m going for a run, so you and Jocasta can enjoy some girly talk. I’m Nick,” he added, holding out a bony hand. “Nick Marshall. Friend of Jocasta’s. See you later.”

Clio smiled up at him. “Thank you,” she said, and then worried that it might sound rude, to be thanking someone for going away from their own house. Or their girlfriend’s house.

“Cheers then.” He was gone, a long, loping figure.

“Clio, come on in,” said Jocasta’s voice, and she was not only in the house but held in Jocasta’s arms, and she was crying again, and Jocasta was stroking her hair, and talking meaningless, soothing nonsense and then leading her into a warm, chaotic kitchen where she sat her down and placed a large mug of coffee in front of her and Clio stared at her and thought, as she had thought so long ago, what an amazingly nice person she was, and wished she hadn’t let her go.

Chad would have been proud of her next day, Martha thought, half impressed, half ashamed of herself; after her feverish, fretful night, she got up early, took Bella the elderly Labrador for a walk (knowing she would meet other dog walkers she might be able to talk to about her political plans), and then attended family communion and the coffee-and-biscuits get-together in the vestry afterwards: saying that yes, it was true, she was hoping to be adopted as the local candidate for the Centre Forward Party, that she did indeed have the support of Norman Brampton, adding that she would be around all week, apart from Monday, that if anyone wanted to talk to her about it further, she would be at the vicarage, and she actually had some leaflets about the new party if they were interested. After that, she went to see Norman Brampton, who was clearly bored while his wife fussed around him.

“Give anything to be in your shoes,” he said, “going mad here. Anyway, I’m delighted with what’s happened—you’d certainly have been my choice and you’ve obviously impressed them no end. And what’s Jack Kirkland like? I always admired him, but he keeps one at arm’s length rather, doesn’t he?”

“He’s a bit of an enigma, actually,” said Martha. “He seems so forbidding and stern, but in fact he’s extremely kind and thoughtful. He’s wonderful in the Chamber—”

“I see you’ve picked up all the jargon,” he said, smiling at her. “Well done. Now, how about another coffee, while we discuss the next year or so?”

And so the day went on; Martha went home and managed to eat quite a lot of the lunch her mother had cooked—she must have put on pounds this weekend—and helped her clear away against a backdrop of Binsmow gossip. She took her for a drive out to the meadows and walked slowly along the tow path with Bella and then home again, where she helped her father sort out some flyers for a concert at the church in early June. And all the time doing what she had done all her life, suppressing the fear, denying the memory, struggling to control the uncontrollable.

She had sat for a long time the evening before, in a lay-by, staring at the photograph, reading and rereading the caption, calming herself by sheer willpower. Of course she was being absurd. Hysterical. The country was filled with thousands—millions—of fifteen-year-old girls. Several hundred of them undoubtedly called Bianca. It wasn’t that unusual a name now. Anyway, this one, the one with the beloved grandmother (would you be that close to an adoptive grandmother?—surely not) wasn’t called Bianca, she was called Kate. Bianca was just a middle name, an after thought. And what if she did have that hair? Millions of them had that hair, that long, wild hair. Blond hair. Probably carefully lightened by the newspaper to make her look more glamorous. And she was only fifteen. No—nearly sixteen. They would have said that if she was. In fact, Kate Bianca would have said she was
six
teen. All girls of that age wanted to be thought older than they were. No, the whole thing was ridiculous.

And she put the paper in a rubbish bin, very carefully and deliberately, and texted Ed—she didn’t dare speak to him just yet—then drove slowly home where she sat and watched television with her mother, while her father wrote his sermon.

First
Blind Date
, then
Casualty
, and then a murder mystery, an endless stream of mind-numbing rubbish. Only it didn’t numb her mind quite enough; when she went up to bed it was still throbbing feverishly.

There was a text from Ed. “All hail to the new PM,” it said. “Love you. Ed xx.” It made her feel suddenly, wonderfully better.

But not for long…

She stood at the window, staring out at the starry sky, wishing the night away. It would be better in the morning; everything was always better in the morning. And how often had she told herself that, almost sixteen years ago?

“I cannot believe this is still going on. Haven’t people got anything better to think about?”

“What’s still going on, dear?”

“Look for yourself. Half a page nearly. What’s this garbage doing here anyway?”

Jim passed a crumpled copy of the
News on Sunday
across the supper table to Helen.
IS THE NHS RIGHT OFF ITS TROLLEY
? it said right across one of the inside pages.

“That’s clever,” said Kate, craning her neck to read it. And then as her father frowned at her: “Sorry, Dad. It’s Sarah’s. She brought it round because there was a story about Robbie in it.”

“Robbie who?”

“Dad! Get with the programme. Robbie Williams.”

“Oh, I rather like him,” said Jilly. “Though I preferred him when he was in Take That. We always loved them, didn’t we, Kate?”

“Yes, we did,” said Kate. She shot an expression of triumph at her father.

“Anyway, Jim, why shouldn’t people read about him if they want to?” said Jilly.

“Gran, it’s not about him. It’s about
you
!”

“Me! Oh, how exciting. Is there a picture?”

“There is no picture,” said Jim heavily.

“Well, I’d still like to read it. Helen, after you, dear—thank you. Good heavens! Listen to this, Kate: ‘In the week that has followed the latest hospital scandal, and a neglected elderly patient…nearly died on a hospital trolley…57 percent of voters now think the NHS is in a worse state than it was when New Labour came to power in 1997. Will Mrs. Bradford and others continue to nearly lose their lives, as Tony Blair continues to play his guitar, while the NHS burns?’”

“What does that mean?” asked Kate.

“It refers to Nero,” said Juliet. “You know, fiddling while Rome burnt.”

“Well obviously, Miss Smartarse, I don’t know,” said Kate. “It must be so wonderful to be so clever!”

“Kate,” said Helen, “Juliet was simply answering your question. Now apologise. Please.”

“Sorry,” said Kate in the flat, automatic tone she always used when asked to apologise.

“It’s not very clever to display ignorance, you know,” said Jim. “You’ve had a perfectly good education and that is a basic piece of knowledge.”

“Oh for God’s sake!” said Kate. “I’m going upstairs.”

“You are not. It’s your turn to clear away.”

“Oh, for f—OK, OK, don’t say any more.” She got up, started packing the dishwasher very noisily, cramming two plates into the space designed for one, pulling bowls away from people before they were empty.